Knowledge and Belief

One long-standing theory of human knowledge is that it must meet the definition of a justified true belief to be knowledge. Huh? What? Why?

For me to say "I know" something I must first believe what I say; hence knowledge must be believed.

For you to accept that I do indeed know of that of which I speak, what I say must be true; that is, if what I claim as knowledge is flat out wrong (e.g., “I know if I release an apple it will fly upward”) it cannot be knowledge. Hence knowledge must be true.

Finally, if I claim knowledge on a subject, and it turns out to be true, one must eliminate the possibility that it was a “lucky guess”. So if you toss a coin and hide the result from me, and I say “I know it is heads up”, and it is indeed heads, then did I really “know” it was heads, or just guessed right? Hence there must be some justification for my knowing before you can say it is knowledge (e.g., I gave you the coin and I knew it was a two-headed coin when I gave it to you, then indeed I “knew” the result was heads).

Now there is a tremendous amount of discussion around the web on this concept of what is "justified", and whether justification needs causality and/or absence of false premise and/or countering evidence, etc. But I don't see much discussion on the “true” or the “belief”. I won't go into the matter of "true" at this time (the argument is fairly predictable in a philosophical discussion anyway), but allow me to address the "belief".

On what is based the premise that knowledge must be believed? I have a plethora of knowledge I do not believe. The ancient phrase "take it with a grain of salt" is based on the premise that some knowledge is not to be believed.

I am justified to say that the earth goes around the sun; it is true that the earth goes around the sun; I don't happen to believe that the earth goes around the sun (that's just silly, look outside sometime and see for yourself). My lack of belief does not eliminate the fact that I have the knowledge that the earth goes around the sun.

I am justified to say that Elvis died in 1977; it is true that Elvis died in 1977; I do not believe Elvis died in 1977 (he was killed in Korea and was replaced with a double for monetary and patriotic-moral reasons).

And this is not just limited to me, Carl Sagan had a tremendous amount of true knowledge about how the universe was created (in 7 days) and how the earth was destroyed by a flood killing all land creatures (save for Noah and his menagerie), and yet I understand (know?) that he did not believe any of this (I personally don't believe this latter point; he had to know the truth, even if he had to deny it--even to himself--to hold his position in society).

I need to stop now, the logic is getting too circular and a vortex is threatening to swallow us all (of course I don't know that for certain).