“I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
Nej men allvarligt. Framför allt så tror jag inte att tro är någonting som är värt att bråka om. Själv är jag skeptisk till det allra mesta, och tror att världen skulle vara en bättre plats om alla delade min övertygelse (eller snarare brist på den). Jag så gott som vet dock att världen skulle bli en mycket otrevlig plats om alla försökte tvinga på resten av befolkningen sina egna trossystem. Det har vi sett otaliga bevis på genom historien, och gör det fortfarande. Därför försöker jag undvika att predika. Diskuterar gör jag dock gärna med folk av alla uppfattningar, så länge de är kapabla till saklig diskussion (vilket inte brukar vara fallet med fundamentalister av endera slag). Själv finner jag diverse koncept såsom allsmäktiga gudomligheter, himmel och helvete, homeopati, köttproduktion, dansbandsmusik och kapitalism vara fåniga, vilseledande och rent av skadliga. Det är min övertygelse för stunden, baserat på fakta, logik och säkerligen en ansenlig mängd fördomar. Lyckligtvis är jag skeptisk även till mina övertygelser, så jag ifrågasätter dem konstant och ändrar mig när det behövs. Det kallas vetenskapligt tänkande, och jag tror att världen skulle må bra av mer av den. Jag tror inte att världen skulle bli tråkig, meningslös och hopplös. Det har i alla fall inte min blivit. Men för all del, jag kanske är ett undantag.
“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.”
— Voltaire
