Quantum Windbag:
First of all, philosophy does not exist merely to make arguments. Logic and argumentation is only a part of philosophy, although a very important and useful part. Logic itself can be considered the "method" of philosophizing, and arguments can be made to demonstrate points or truths, but it does not encompass philosophy.
Epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy and other parts of philosophy do not exist simply to argue. They exist to understand truth, not to argue.
Philosophy is "the love of wisdom" and was developed by the greeks to understand the world naturally, and rationally. You're claim about nothing being true in philosophy is also wrong. For the most part, claims are inconclusive, because the questions that are asked are simply too abstract or can not verified empirically, but for example, the laws of logic can be considered "true" descriptions of our universe, which falsifies your point.
"This is why I refuse to use philosophy for anything other than a tool to make philosophers look silly."
So, you don't even care about philosophy. Obviously, you have not kept up on it, because whatever you studied in college, you have clearly let fade. You're understanding of epistemology is off.
I think its laughable when you said I reject epistemology. I fully embrace epistemology, and all of philosophy, because it addresses questions seen no where else, which I enjoy immensely. You obviously find no use for it. Fine. I do.
The simple fact is knowledge and belief are interchangeable in a true philosophical debate. I am guarantee that you know something that is demonstrably false. Given enough time, I could convince you of that observation by providing multiple examples, but all I have to do is prove that you don't know what you just sated is a fact.
I reject your claim that two different terms with distinct definitions are ever fully interchangeable in a "truly philosophical debate." Belief and knowledge may be very closely related, they are not the same. If you are referring to discussions of the abstract where nothing can truly be known, then I may be willing to grant you this, but this is a special case or kind of discussion in which all of the subjects are and are so incredibly abstract, such as morality, that invoking the concept of knowledge is hard to do. Further, I don't believe that any philosopher would consider any beliefs about morality, for instance, to be knowledge, in a philosophical discussion. I have heard this, and I have listened to many "purely philosophical discussions" (The Partially-Examined Life podcast). This is the essence of epistemology, and asks the questions "what is knowledge?" "How do we know if something is true?" "When are we justified in believing something?"
The idea of justification is an important one, simply because can't truly know much of anything, with any certainty. All we have are logic, reason, and evidence. Without these, we could believe anything with full justification and we would all be insane, literally.
What evidence do you have that the ancients, whoever you think they are, believed that thunder was caused by the gods? Is it based on first hand interviews with them? Writings that were handed down from that time? Do you have any actual facts to back up that statement?
Of course you don't. the best you can come up with is experts writing thousands of years later about how our scared ancestors must have huddled under rocks whenever lightning lit up the sky, and how they invented gods to explain it. These were the same people that could easily take a professional football player and toss him around like a rag doll, my guess is they were not nearly as afraid as the experts who claim to understand them.
I have reasoned evidence and inductive logic to conclude that the ancients believed that thunder was caused by the gods. It is probabilistic proposition, as is always the case with an inductive argument. They were humans like we are. They lacked scientific knowledge, and so the only information they had to inform them of the natural world, was their religious beliefs, and indeed, we see this all over the ancient world, and any time prior to the scientific age. This is nothing new. To say that the ancients were special and didn't consult their religions to explain the natural world would require an entirely different epistemology for this one group of people. What justifcation do you have for that???
We see evidence of their beliefs about thunder explicitly in their writing, and knowing what we know about their religious beliefs, and their lack of scientific knowledge about the natural world, it is justifiable to conclude that they believed thunder was caused by the gods, as they did about earthquakes, and the stars, the sun, the moon, space (the "heavens"). Certainly within history there are different standards of evidence we use. I can't know anything that happened before this present moment, technically. The past could have been an illusion, but the evidence we do have, if you accept that assumption that the universe is not some kind of simulation or that we are simply "brains in a vat," points to the ancients clearly believing what I have said.
This doesn't simply come down to experts making claims about the ancients without evidence. They do have evidence, and it all comes back to evidence. Justification of belief relies on some kind of evidence. That's a key point. Sure, we don't KNOW that they believed this. They could actually have believed something entirely different, but not written about it, and instead, purposely deceived future generations, by writing about something they didn't at all believe knowing that later others would read their writing and be deceived, but this is highly implausible, and is what you're logic might suggest. This is absurd.
