Beliefs are a curious entity in the human mind.

If I like it, its true but if I don't like it then its false ... a dumb line of reasoning if ever there was one.

Imagine what would happen if you were to walk to the bus stop and announce to the people waiting there that all the busses had been cancelled that day.  What would these people say to you?  They might ask you where you got the information from, they might ask if there are any exceptions to the cancellations, they might ask for advice about trains or taxis that they might be able to use to complete their journey.

In fact the sort of questions that the people would ask you would probably all be very rational and sensible questions.  They would be asking is this true and, if it is true, how does it affect me and what can I do about it?

Now imagine going to the same bus stop and announcing that you had just heard that almost everybody in the world, including the people at the bus stop, would burn in hell because of their sin.  What sort of reaction would you expect from the people this time?

This time probably nobody would ask “is this true and if so how does it affect me and what can I do about it?”  You might get all sorts of responses but I am confident that almost nobody would react with the sort of sensible and rational questions that they would have asked if you had announced a cancellation of the bus service.

Now why do we get a sensible and rational response to one sort of question and a completely irrational response to the other sort of question?  It seems that when it comes to “religious beliefs” or questions about the character and actions of God people change from rational beings to irrational ones.  Now reason-4-living would never like to be accused of discrimination (well, not often anyway) so I would like to point out that this irrationality afflicts Atheists just as much as Bhuddists just as much as Christians just as much as ... whatever religious or philosophical entity has a name that begins with the letter D.

It seems that very often people people do not ask “is this true?” but instead they ask, “do I like it?”.  But if something is not true then there is no point asking yourself whether you like it and if it is true then it will still be true even if you don't like it.

In the pages of this web site I present many ideas and lightly touch on many topics.  You might agree with some things I have written while some other statements or ideas you might find troublesome.  My hope is that you will not ask yourself “do I like this?” until you have first asked yourself “is this true?”.

Related articles that you might like to read:

Believing “on trust”.

We all have some sort of beliefs or personal philosophies; but WHY do we believe what we believe and how do we know that it is true?

Christian Jargon ... Oh, how we hate it!

When you clear the jargon out of the way, the Christian message starts to make a lot more sense.

Gaining knowledge

Understanding how we gained some information might help us decide what that information is worth.

If God is so marvellous then why is the world in such a bloody mess?

Lots of people want to believe in a good God but just cannot do so because they see so much evil in the world and cannot understand how a good God would let such evil happen.  This article shows that there is no contradiction between the goodness and power of God and the presence of evil in our lives.

Irreconcilable differences 1:  Christianity and modern faiths.

“All religions will take you to God eventually”?  — Only a fool would think so!