Belief

Belief is a really, really important part of how we perceive the world: more important than factual truth.

People have been arguing about the existence of God for hundreds of years. Many different sides of the argument have been put forward using historical facts, logic, rational thinking and common sense - alongside passion, guesswork and storytelling. In the end, what side of the fence we sit on is determined, simply, by what we believe.

Belief cannot be based entirely on what we know to be true - the word itself implies doubt. I do not know, I believe - I think this is true.

Belief plays an equally significant role in how we read truth writing like biographies and autobiographies. If nobody had ever believed A Million Little Pieces, there would have been no uproar when the story turned out to contain fiction.

I’ve always found it difficult to accept the view that life writing is different from fiction simply because it is factually true. Factual truth is something external to the text. What happens if we discover that a biography we’ve always loved is not true? The text itself stays the same, but our relationship with it changes. So, it’s not the text alone that matters here, but the relationship between reader and text. As readers, we bring knowledge and experience to the text, and that influences how we perceive it. But above all, we bring belief (or disbelief). Whether or not we believe a story absolutely changes how that story functions for us.

For some people, the Bible tells a story that can influence how we live.

For others, it contains the absolute truth.

The same words work completely differently depending on what, and how, we believe.

• The claim to truth
• Thank you, James Frey
• Novelists who lie

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