I'm of the mind that belief itself is a silly, childhood thing to eventually stop believing in.
Please, hear me out.
Just about every post in this thread demonstrates that at some point in their lives, everyone is apparently proven wrong about something they were sure was true. Whatever they believed before is replaced by something else that they become sure is true. Did your parents ever tell you milk was good for you? Did something change your mind later? Did something else change your mind again? Whether or not the stuff is actually healthy is irrelevant, if you've ever changed your mind about something you believed, (maybe you believed in ghosts, or didn't and do now, something like that) I think you'll understand what I'm saying here.
Would you say you've ever found a final answer for something? Found sufficient evidence for something that you know, without the faintest possibility of doubt, cannot ever be disproved or replaced by new information? Or has it just not happened yet? Don't get me wrong, thinking the sea is salty, that standard rocks are hard at room temperature, and that fire is uncomfortably warm are perfectly reasonable; everything we've seen (unless I missed something?) suggests those things are very true without exception.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to believe something when all of the evidence points to it being true and 'true/not true' is how we're apparently wired to think. This is part of why I think most of the world still has the capacity to believe things, moreso when those things don't seem to change, the other part being (and this is pure speculation) fear, a kind of insecurity at the prospect of not knowing and not being in control. I'm typing this right now under the assumption that tapping the keyboard in the right places will form words on your screen when you see this post, because that's consistently how it's worked up to now.
However, it remains that we can be and have been proven wrong before. Does it really make sense to assume it can never happen again now that we're "older and wiser"? I am not saying everyone should drop the concept of belief altogether, assume everything they've ever understood can only be false, and dive off the nearest cliff since gravity is no longer a thing, just that sticking to the same mindset as when you were an impressionable toddler seems logically iffy.
I think I might have picked this up from a combination of quotes in Dogma and Men in Black.
"You're saying that having beliefs is a bad thing?"
"I just think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier."
"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody 'knew' the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody 'knew' the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you 'knew' that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll 'know' tomorrow."
Bearing all of this in mind, I try not to believe any information I've ever processed is unwaveringly true in all circumstances, that I can never again be wrong about things on account of not having been shown that I was wrong about them yet. Naturally, it follows that I wouldn't say I believe anything I've typed here, or believe I'll have changed your mind all that much even if every word made sense to you, as I could very well just be wrong (if there is such a thing as 'right') again.
That was probably the case when as a child, I thought there was bound to be buried treasure under about a foot of dirt in every square inch of the world.
