Every so often I come across the phrase in some news item that “you at least have to respect him for his beliefs.” (Or her.)

Why? Because we’re all entitled to believe whatever hocus-pocus we want, that means our phantasies are deserving of respect? Let’s take a closer look at this.

Mormons, AKA “The church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”, LDS for short, believe that Native Americans are actually “Lost tribes of Israel” even though the Native Americans arrived here about 13,000 years ago and the Israelis came into being about 3000 years ago. I’m supposed to respect that? How? By nodding my head sagely in apparent agreement and keeping my mouth shut when confronted with this lie in the presence of children?

Muslims believe that their murderous pedophile “prophet” Mohammad was pulled by winged horses and flown over Jerusalem and ascended to heaven accompanied by the angel Gabriel. Oh, okay, sure, that kind of stuff happens every day, who couldn’t respect that? We are talking about the same guy who loved to hack off his victims hands and feet and leave them that way, yes? Just proves God loves us all, right?

Christians believe that Jesus turned water into wine, turned a loaf of bread into many loaves and performed all sorts of miracles that defy common sense.

Religions are based on a belief in spirits that goes back to ancient times when we had no science and people tried to explain things that were beyond their understanding. They thought stars were candles in the sky, that the Sun went around the Earth or was a torch carried by some being in a chariot, that weather disasters were caused by angry gods. The human race wallowed in ignorance.

Ignorance is not worthy of respect. That’s why we have schools for our children, to dispel their ignorance, get rid of it, make it go away.

Some people believe that they are meant to lead us and tell us how to live our lives. I don’t respect that. Some of us believe in political philosophies that oppose other political philosophies so violently that there can be no dialogue, only war. I don’t respect that.

You can believe in the Tooth Fairy, I don’t care. You can believe that a five-foot tall blue duck dressed in a pink-polka-dotted tuxedo and a lovely matching chiffon tutu tells you what to do with your day, every morning. I don’t care.

But certainly, don’t expect me or anyone to actually respect the crazy crap you believe. Keep it to yourself. Please.

Beliefs are not facts. Beliefs are what we use to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, the stuffing we put in between the cracks of things we actually know. Why do we do this? Because we have to make decisions on a daily basis. All day long we’re busy trying to decide what to do, whether we should do this instead of that, or do nothing instead of something. If we should tell Jim about that or let him find out for himself, if we should buy that thing now or hold off, if we should invest in this, or would that be better, or wait.

We try to make the best decisions we can, and we base our decisions on what we know. Most of the time we simply don’t know enough, so we fill in the gaps of our knowledge with a mix of logic, wishful thinking and beliefs that we’ve been taught, and erroneous stuff we’ve simply assumed to be true.

In other words, because we all start out in life knowing pretty much nothing, we make the important decisions of our lives according to our beliefs, and not according to factual knowledge. Then we wonder why we keep suffering setbacks and disappointments, since we all know that our opinions and decisions are superior to anyone elses opinions and decisions.

I have no respect for beliefs and I learned a long time ago to have no use for them either. Beliefs are ignorance, 100 %. You either know something or you don’t.

So here’s a little piece of advice. If you have an important decision to make that will affect the rest of your life, such as, should I marry this person, or buy this house, or do this or that as my life’s career, and you’re not sure which way to go, then you need to gather more facts until the number of facts you have are greater than the number of gaps between them, before you can make a decision that has a decent chance of being right.

Because you know what? If you decide wrong, it’s you who you will be beating up forever after. It’s you who you will have lost respect for, it’s your ability to make decisions that you will have lost faith in.

Never respect belief. Belief is for people who are just too damned lazy to seek the truth.