I always stand up for what I believe in. It’s intrinsic. I’m stubborn, pig-headed and very contrary. Sometimes I will play devil’s advocate just to stimulate thought. Although, I have found that there are times when arguing logic is thoroughly pointless. Nowadays, I tend to steer clear of political and religious debate since most people have firmly held stances on these issues and no amount of arguing, even with indisputable facts, will ever change that.

Circular logic and inductive reasoning drive me batty, so I tend to stay away from them altogether. I have found that the more preposterous one’s beliefs, the more one is inclined to fervently argue them, mostly with sophism and syllogism. For example, dogs have four legs, cats have four legs; therefore, cats are dogs. If someone truly believes that to the depths of their soul, no amount of logic will deter it.

Besides, I have no inclination towards proselytizing. I am all for people believing whatever it is that they want to believe as long as they their actions aren’t illegal, immoral or both, e.g. pedophilia. As long as your beliefs don’t interfere with my life in any way, I’m all for it. That is the whole point of the First Amendment to the US Constitution after all.

However, when your beliefs impinge on my beliefs, well, then we have a problem. I will argue and fight with all my might to make sure that we all have the right to express ourselves equally. We have the right to live our lives any way that we choose within the boundaries of man-made laws. We all believe in different things. That’s part of what makes this world so great. If we all held the same beliefs and lived the same lifestyle, then the world would be an incredibly boring and homogeneous place.

The excellent thing about being human is that we have brains capable of reasoning. We have the ability to think. We have the free will to choose what it is that we want to believe and to stand up for it. We can’t take it for granted. We need to protect this right and foster it.