Depends on what you mean by "matter". If you're talking in an objective universal sense, not really, people are utterly insignificant, what they think, do, or say doesn't have any real far reaching consequences that amount to anything in the long run. If you're talking in terms of the life of a individual, absolutely beliefs matter. As you and I established in our debates way back when, our entire structure of knowledge and ideas is based upon a single fundamental uncertain idea, that can only be considered an unsupported and unsupportable belief, never a certain fact. That belief is the ultimate motivating factor in everything we ever think, do, or aspire to do. Without our fundamental beliefs, correct or incorrect, we could never begin to try to know or understand anything else. Without the fundamental beliefs that build the framework for our webs of beliefs, we couldn't function. We as humans, in our unfortunate limited form of existence, can never truly know anything, beliefs are all we can ever really have. As for why some people are less concerned with finding certainty in the truth of their beliefs, there could be numerous reasons. In the case of religious beliefs, for example, that the individual would no longer care to function if they were truly without purpose, without meaning, and destined to fade into obscurity without making any significant impact in this reality or having anything to show for it afterwards. A guy like me doesn't really care one way or another, so I'm fine being agnostic and accepting no beliefs as truth, someone else might not be able to function in a world where they thought of themselves as insignificant and temporary like I do. On the reverse side, some would be equally incapable of accepting that we can't ever know anything and all our progress being for nothing in the end, and cling to more scientific beliefs and the belief that through science the world can be understood and improved by an individual, even in the absence of certainty.
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