Beliefs? I’ve got ’em.

I have beliefs. Some of them are almost certainly false, but I still have them. I do the best I can to hold onto the true ones* and let the false ones go, but sometimes I fail.

I’m hardly rational, all the time– I’m practically made of biases. I can try to correct for those, and realizing that I have them is a huge part of that, but I can’t make them go away.

My default state is not rationality– rationality is what happens when I’m able to focus on an issue and carefully consider it without my emotions running high, using the tools I’ve been taught. Sometimes I use them wrong. I don’t always use the ones I should.

I let the beliefs related to theism go, some time ago– most of them, but I still tend to anthropomorphize all kinds of things, see patterns that aren’t there or at least aren’t there intentionally, and sometimes I’m guilty of magical thinking.

In all of these things, I am very like every other atheist out there. Because I’m also a human being, and that’s how we work. If you consider yourself a rationalist, please stop pretending otherwise. That really isn’t rational.

*Knowledge being justified true belief.