In academic fields, particularly in science, practitioners are often careful
to to say _they have confidence in_ something rather than saying _they believe
in_ it. Example: "I am confident the theory of evolution" instead of "I
believe in they theory of evolution". This distinction is important, because
_having confidence_ imputes having a body of evidence that leads the speaker
to find the idea probable; _belief_ implies having faith, which requires no
such evidence, and no empirical means to estimate how likely the idea is or
not.

In Japanese, it seems that 確信する is the closest means of communicating "to have
confidence in". But this phrasing uses 信, which means _faith_ or _belief_ ,
and has strong (?) religious connotations. Canvassing Japanese L1 speakers
I've found no way to avoid using 信 and no way to avoid communicating some
degree of (blind) faith.

So my question is: **Is this (pedantic) degree of precision possible in
Japanese?** Is anyone aware of examples where this distinction is made?

Corollary: Am I mistaken in associating 確信する with 信じる?
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2018-09-29T01:40:11.130
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word-choice words word-requests
Is it possible to "be confident in" without using 信 and implying having "faith"?
The following words are heavily used in non-religious contexts and so do not
have necessarily a religious connotation.  
確信  
信用  
信頼  
自信

But it is also possible to be more objective and instead of saying what you
believe or don't believe, make statements directly about the subject. For
example instead of saying:  
"I believe in the theory of evolution".  
you could say:  
"The theory of evolution is widely recognized by scientists"

In this way you can be more dispassionate and objective by avoiding making
statements about yourself and talking directly about the subject.
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2018-09-29T02:21:44.307
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If you want to get rid of the factor of faith, you can say (theory)を
有力{ゆうりょく}（だ）と 考えて/みなして いる.
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2018-09-29T05:41:26.357
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So you are worrying just because there is 信 in it? 確信 and many other compounds
using 信 (信頼, 与信, 信用, ...) have no religious implications, and they are usabe
in wide range of scientific contexts related to reliability, credit, trust,
confidence, etc. It's not about blindly believing in something. For example
"95% confidence interval" is 95%信頼区間 in Japanese. (As an aside, 信 also means
_signal_ and _message_.)

That said, 確信している is a strong yet subjective statement that means you have
almost 100% confidence based on the (scientific) knowledge you already have.
If you used it in a serious academic manuscript, it can look fairly
subjective. Normally, you should say 可能性が高いと考えている or something similar at
most, no matter how confident you are.

Outside manuscripts, when you think you have enough supporting facts, you can
safely say something like 無人自動車運転は10年後には普及していると確信している in interviews, lectures,
etc.
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