INTRODUCTION

​You come to this book with at least some notion of answers to the Big Questions. Perhaps you believe what your parents believed, what was taught in school, or simply went along with popular opinion. Out of a sense of duty, respect, peer pressure, or the feeling of inadequacy in the face of such daunting questions, you may have never questioned these early formed beliefs. Or, if you did, it's likely that you sought affirmation from authorities who believe as you do and can help you sweep doubts away.
 
Nobody is looking to have their cherished beliefs overturned. Change, for most people, must be easier and less consequential than habit. Moreover, once beliefs are in place, we wrap our brains and lives around them. If challenged, we dig our heels in. That makes it harder to convince us we've been fooled, than to fool us.
 
As you think back to the source of the answers you have, they always trace to other humans. Unfortunately, everyone has vested interests and can't be implicitly trusted. Even if it's just being in love with their own ideas, we really have no business relying on others. Therefore, if you haven’t earned your beliefs with open-minded inquiry weighing all the pros and cons, but were handed them by an institution or person, you’re most likely wrong.
 
Wrong answers derive from ignoring reality. Reality is not the millions of ideas conjured in the heads of other people. It's not the mysterious etchings on a Bronze Age parchment, the musings of a philosopher thousands of years ago, or the speculations and hypotheses of modern-day intellectuals and scientists. Reality—truth as it can be known in the world we experience moment by moment—is accessed through our own intuition (common sense), reason, conscience, and experience, as well as consideration of evidence and nature's laws.
 
This book is intended to convince you that you are fully capable of using reality to determine truthful answers to the Big Questions. It’s heuristic, meaning it will reacquaint you with your own reasoning powers. Facts and logic presented will affirm what you already intuitively know but have set aside in favor of belief in someone else’s belief. Thus, you’ll likely find exhilarating "I knew that" realizations that you can own because you unearthed them from your own mind.
 
The truth-seeking process is just that, a process. It requires establishing truthful foundations consistent with reality and building from there. That is the way this book is constructed. So please read sequentially since each chapter provides the basis for the following ones.
 
I know emotions run high on this subject. Beliefs are so dear. But if truth is your goal, don't expect to end up where you started. As I said in the beginning, virtually everyone has wrong beliefs. Expect that open- mindedly unleashing your reasoning powers will overturn them. That's not a cause for dismay. Truth is what we all have to bend to eventually anyway, so why not discover it now and experience its peace and fruits.
 
Feel free to contact me with your thoughts or questions at: drwysong@asifthinkingmatters.com.