What You Believe is What You Get

About two years ago, a chain e-mail was going around stating that if you opened up Microsoft Word, typed in the alleged number of the first plane to crash into the Twin Towers "Q33 NY" and converted it to Wingdings, you would get the cryptic message up above. This myth circulated and was true to many for a disgustingly long time. One day I decided the flight number looked funny, so I looked it up. It turns out, the flight number was completely false (the true number being American Airlines Flight 11). People thought these things were true, because there was some part of them that wanted to believe the mystique of it. The people who discovered this saw these things because they wanted to believe there was a preconcieved notion about the attack of September 11th being more than what it really was - just an awful attack by a group of terrorists.
After talking in class today about "seeing is believing" and "believing is seeing", I realized later that this is shown in so many ways from the 9/11 hoaxes. People began searching for foreshadowing and excused and found so many that people began to think it was a premeditated apocolypse. For example, the date of the attack. 9+1+1=11. Now, several people would begin to get anxious about that, but why? It doesn't mean anything to those of us who know better. But does that go the same with religions, a set group of morals that person follows?
If your friend is Buddhist and he is gay, and you are Christian and you are straight, should you tell him, because it is your religion (and therefor the right one?) that he is doing something wrong? Will he go to Hell because you believe in it, or because it exists? Can someone be exempt from Hell because they don't think it's real?
That may be what makes a set belief. In a particular episode of Friends, Ross is outraged when Phoebe does not believe in the concept of evolution. He badgers her for the entire show, attempting to make his points and prove that evolution was true. He even brought in thousand-year-old fossils detailing the events leading up to human evolution. Phoebe began screaming (credit to the Devoted Fans Network), "Wasn't there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed that the world was flat? And, up until like what, 50 years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open, and this like, whole mess of crap came out. Now, are you telling me that you are so unbelievably arrogant that you can't admit that there's a teeny tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?" Ross stopped, and then said there might be a small possibility. Phoebe laughed at him, and said "I can't believe you caved." Her point was, when you admit that others might be right too, you're probably poking a hole in your own belief system. If you cannot believe in something 100% and be ready to back it up at all times, you probably don't really believe in it.

You just abandoned your whole belief system. I mean, before, I didn't agree with you, but at least I respected you. How, how, how are you going to go into work tomorrow? How, how are you going to face the other science guys? How, how are you going to face yourself? Oh! That was fun.

Whether or not the Native American people actually saw their relatives at the ride commemorating The Massacre at Wounded Knee is a question, to me, of science. "Making something out of nothing" (to quote RENT) is not physically impossible. You cannot see those things and believe they are real and true by the laws of science. However, I do not doubt that those people saw them spiritually by their own account because of a true belief they held. I am not calling it "hallucination" because that would mean I thought they were seeing falsehoods. I think whatever you believe it what is true on your account. If you believe in Hell, you have the option of going to hell. If you believe in reincarnation, you will be reincarnated.
My personal view of the afterlife is that when you die, you are buried and your spirit comes back up to perhaps harass your loved ones on earth. There is no way to earn your ticket to eternal happiness, you do not do bad things that will make you suffer forever. If my friend tells me stop doing things because I will go to Hell and it is their duty to make sure I don't suffer eternally, I would not be concerned. Hell does not exist. Hell may exist to others, but it does not exist to me, and I don't see how I can go burn forever in a place I didn't believe existed for my entire life. What afterlife you believe in is where you go.
I have known Christians who have sat through sermons bashing homosexuality when they personally did not think that way. But because it went against their beliefs, it would be undermining the whole belief system and therefor they would not be a true believer of the faith. Once you begin seeing flaws in your faith, you begin to wonder what credibility it has.
I have personally expierenced this with the Bible. Once I found that it had serious errors (looking back to the Renaissance, for example, the astrological fulcrom of the universe was not the Earth) I began picking apart other things. Soon the Bible lost all of its credibility to me, at least in the Old Testament. It was not scientifically proven, its sources were not cited, why should I believe in it? You cannot fully believe and engage in something when you find that you do not agree with parts of it.
This may sound like the horrible early Western Civilization, conservative white man's opinion of religion, but your religion (no matter who you are, including Native American) should make you feel like it is superior. If you think equally of both religions, you can't truly believe your religion is right for you. You may tolerate that religion but still think yours is right.
Without our standpoints, without always thinking you are right, what do you have? You could be easily swayed by the next person to present an idea or religion to you. Who are you without your views?

The truth is, without your definite views on things you cannot be considered an activist for what you believe in.