You are probably right about the voluntary or non-voluntary aspects of the behavior being more important here. I can certainly choose to say “the probability of X is 75%” and choose to conform my behavior to that. So maybe the article could be rewritten to emphasize that aspect more. But it would still happen that people have two kinds of assessment of reality which do not necessarily line up completely: a voluntary one and an automatic one. The problem I see with “belief in belief” is that it seems to suggest that people are wrong about what assessment they have. Instead of this, it seems to me that what people are talking about when they say they believe something is precisely the voluntary assessment. When they say “I believe in God”, they mean that they are choosing to act—including in their own minds, insofar as they can control this—as if God exists. They do not necessarily mean that they have a high automatic assessment of the idea that God exists. I agree that if they did mean the latter, you would sometimes find people who are mistaken about their own assessment. One thing I did not talk about in the article is the fact that people are also more or less consciously aware of the contrast between their automatic assessment and their voluntary assessment. A religious person I know said he would he happy with a 30% chance his religion was true, but he did not mean by that he would act as though it had a 30%; he acts as though it is absolutely true. So he realizes that his voluntary assessment and his automatic assessment do not match.
You are probably right about the voluntary or non-voluntary aspects of the behavior being more important here. I can certainly choose to say “the probability of X is 75%” and choose to conform my behavior to that. So maybe the article could be rewritten to emphasize that aspect more. But it would still happen that people have two kinds of assessment of reality which do not necessarily line up completely: a voluntary one and an automatic one. The problem I see with “belief in belief” is that it seems to suggest that people are wrong about what assessment they have. Instead of this, it seems to me that what people are talking about when they say they believe something is precisely the voluntary assessment. When they say “I believe in God”, they mean that they are choosing to act—including in their own minds, insofar as they can control this—as if God exists. They do not necessarily mean that they have a high automatic assessment of the idea that God exists. I agree that if they did mean the latter, you would sometimes find people who are mistaken about their own assessment. One thing I did not talk about in the article is the fact that people are also more or less consciously aware of the contrast between their automatic assessment and their voluntary assessment. A religious person I know said he would he happy with a 30% chance his religion was true, but he did not mean by that he would act as though it had a 30%; he acts as though it is absolutely true. So he realizes that his voluntary assessment and his automatic assessment do not match.