If you are convinced that something is true, you believe it, otherwise you don't. You cannot will yourself to believe, although you might be able to strengthen an existing belief temporarily by shielding yourself from alternative explanations. A child who happens to catch his parents placing presents under the Christmas tree may try to rationalize what he saw, or simply deny it. And if his parents decide to offer up a poor explanation for what he saw, he may readily accept it because giving up the belief in Santa Claus is unappealing.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
