It matters what you believe. I mean, really believe. Not just think you are supposed to believe, or even wish you believed. If the concept has any meaning, it refers to the actual wellsprings of behavior, the assumptions you make about how things are and about how you actually respond as a result. Ultimately, it is only what you really do believe that matters.
If you are uncertain about this, ask yourself how you behave "as if" you believed. It is likely different from what you tell yourself, and others, about what you believe.
PBS is running a three-part series by Jonathan Miller titled "A Brief History of Disbelief." It had previously aired on the BBC. The series was introduced recently on the Bill Moyers program with an interview with Jonathan Miller.
For history buffs, and all of us with short historical memories, it is a rough romp through the history of the diversity of opinion on matters religious. It is also a review of the challenges to literalism and dogmatic orthodoxy in Western Christian history.
On a deeper level, it is about the curious human phenomenon of belief itself, about the ways in which rigid belief can shred lives and breed violence. It is a reminder of just how tenuous freedom of belief is and how peculiar the "modern" idea of religious pluralism is.
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