Why we can't "change" our (or others) minds

[Ryantology]

There have been instances where others have demonstrated some belief of mine to be so wrong that I've had no choice but to abandon it, or (more often) simply pointed out something I never thought about on my own. I drifted from Christianity to middle-ground agnosticism on my own, the 'we can never know if God exists or not so both sides are pointless' variety. What caused me to complete the shift to atheism was a combination of both of the points I made above. The first was a simple fact I'd never even considered: even if we can't know, it doesn't mean both possibilities are equally likely. The other was being corrected in my false belief that there were only positive/strong atheists.