Why Beliefs Don’t Change?

Just after I had written this post about Trump -
Trump Ends 2018 with an Average Approval Rating of 42%?!

Alex at the 'Skeptiko' podcast interviewed Ed Opperman (a guy I hadn't heard of before) about beliefs.

I thought this talk was interesting, not because I believed what Ed was saying (some of it I did and a lot of it I question very much), but because Ed Opperman is a Christian private investigator turned podcaster who claims to have read the Bible at least a dozen times cover to cover and has no problem believing it.
I've read it from cover to cover once and that was enough for me to see it was clearly mainly made up of manmade BS and fairy tales.
I can see how people could get into it from a mystical/mythical level, but as hard fact it is very hard to swallow.
I'm with Alex as far as thinking that the Jesus of the Bible was about as real as Santa or Superman.
I don't really have a problem with people who want (or need) to believe that the Jesus and the God of the Bible is real, if that's what they need to get them through their life.

But when a private investigator won't ask himself the tough questions about their faith to come up with some real answers then it makes me wonder how that effects their work when it comes to the beliefs they reach when it comes to the people who they investigate.

"Do Not Judge…

41 Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?

42 How can you say, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

43 No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.…"
... comes to mind when I'm listening to Ed talking about his "brothers" in this interview.
Sometimes you have to ask yourself the hard questions first.

Then again, how do we know that Ed is really who he says he is and really believes what he says?

We could speculate that he is just part of the same machinery he is claiming to be examining with all of his "proof".

I mean it wouldn't be too hard to suggest that his superman type logo is a disguised phallic symbol like Crowley was fond of drawing;-)

ALEISTER CROWLEY badges, OTO
Golden Dawn Magick Occult Thelema

I guess it's easy to believe what you want with a few tenuous links.

It pays to be skeptical of such stories about Trump, even though I do think he is a scumbag, I'm not too sure he is as big of a scumbag as Ed makes him out to be.

And let's not forget Ed claims to be a hard line Leftist and Christian, so that has to be taken into account when it comes to the conclusions that Ed draws in his here-say evidence ... or should that be 

hearsay?-)

And some of Alex's beliefs like "Pizza-gate" and "Sandy-hook" I find rather questionable as well.

But beliefs are what this podcast was mainly about and why I found it rather fascinating to hear just what some people will swallow in their quest for the truth.

I wonder what Jesus would believe when it came to this kind of stuff?-)

If Jesus is real, that is.