Critical thinking about personal beliefs

I try to think carefully about my own feelings, my own "beliefs" if you will. I hesitate to call them that, because I associate belief with faith, with thinking something is true without evidence. But it also commonly means just things you think are true, no matter why you do. Anyway, its important to sit back sometimes and look at something you think to be true, and examine it. Why do you think it? What's the evidence? Have things changed since you first adopted that position? With the election coming up, I find myself doing this more often. And then Rebecca Watson at Skepchick sent me a note about the issue of gay marriage. Proposition 8 in California goes up for vote on the 4th, and if passed will basically outlaw gay marriage in that state. Rebecca helped make a very interesting video about it, comparing gay marriage to interracial ...