[thulldud]

I was talking about the core of one's being. Not an institution which one may join or quit, nor a set of secondhand dicta (often called "tenets" but are anything but) which may be regurgitated more or less intact on demand, and which can be changed from time to time, since their function is to conceal the core rather than to explain it.

Everybody has got something that they "know" is true, meaning that they expect it to be true even if they themselves don't believe it. The usual practice is for this to be concealed under a smokescreen of obfuscating rhetoric, and the same thing that generated the smoke will respond with fire to any attempt to strip away the cover.

That's what I meant.

[stuartcr]

OK, but since you used it a couple times and bolded the word religion, that’s why I thought you were talking about religion, my mistake.

You don’t think people can change their core?