QUOTE:
If you believe in something, anything, why do you need to come to a situation where you might be dissuaded (sic) of your beliefs?

If you believe something, NOTHING anyone says, will make a difference, no?

Well, two things to say here. One, the more challenges a particular belief can face down and survive, the more trust we can have in its truth. Saying "Macedonia never lose penalty shootouts" is not very informative if they've never been in one. But saying Germany never do is an informative statement, even if it's not strictly true.

Secondly, there's a difference between belief and dogma. If you hold something dogmatically, you'll adjust just about anything else in the face of inconvenient data rather than relinquish it. If you simply believe it, you're open to refutation, and it's precisely this that makes your view worth taking seriously. Compare and contrast; many people thought Portugal were the best side in Euro 2008 after the group stages, but nearly all would now think that they flattered to deceive, that weak opponents masked the flaws in a fairly one-dimensional team. But AIATL appears to be firmly convinced that Manchester United were the best side, and gave the best performances, in every tournament they have entered since he started watching football, and explains every failure to win as the result of injuries, bad refereeing, bad luck, freakish and unforseeably brilliant performances by standardly mediocre opponents, bad weather, resting for more important games, opponents having a lighter schedule, FIFA conspiracies...

Like an Arsenal fan but without the habit of doing the Telegraph crossword during games?

bull bull:

yes, I meant my post to be about faith, sorry, not belief.

Belief can be disproved... not sure faith can.

Toro, I don't want to get into this either, but one point of clarification. I don't think "bringing children up agnostically" is a default position, but I do think a scrupulous attempt, however necessarily flawed, at even-handedness is (a) worthwhile and (b) less likely to occur in households where adherence to a particular set of opinions is seen as inherently virtuous. There are religions that don't make the link between belief and virtue, but yours isn't one of them.

Oooh, religion threads. I love those.

I must confess that until this thread I had no idea that bull bull was toro and Juallaterpe was Wyatt.

Fucking people changing names every five minutes.

We're both on a Spanish kick for the tournament. I've translated my name out of Spanish, he's gone all phonetic innit.

Wyatt, I'd completely agree that children should br brought up even-handedly and open-mindedly. But either that's not what you were proposing in the initial post, or we have rather different notions of what it amounts to.