I’ve been a non-believer all of my adult life, as have most of my friends. I assumed we believed the way we did because we were more rational, or better educated, or more ready to embrace new evidence as we became aware of it.

But after thousands of conversations with fellow non-believers over the last two years, I have come to suspect it has more to do with the circumstances of our particular lives, and less to do with any superior intelligence, or education, or certainly moral character. It may be that we are all just human after all.

My mind has been changed about things large and small. A small one is that I was taught from the cradle apparently that it's "correct" to type two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. My wife, who is a former journalist and presently a writer, and who cites things like the Chicago Manual of Style, vehemently disagrees.

Of course this is an arbitrary rule: one space or two? But I realized it was an artifact of my growing up in the pre-personal computer era, with mono-spaced typewriters, and putting a bit of extra whitespace between sentences made more sense then. It doesn't anymore. So I relented, and changed the habit.

As to a big thing ... I changed my mind going on 25 years ago about the existence of god, when I realized my belief in god was (1) a product of confirmation bias and agency inference (2) a near-total failure at explaining or predicing experienced reality and (3) supported by a failed epistemology -- namely, religious faith.

A long time ago, for at least the last 25 years I have assumed data to be probable to a greater or lesser degree unless they are provably impossible within the bounds of accepted reality. Accordingly I have adjusted those degrees dependent on data received and assimilated.

The last time I can recall actually changing my mind about anything was after a conversation with my wife upon the correct use of apostrophes where she proved to me that her method of using apostrophes for possessive pronouns ending in the letter S was more comprehensible and less open to misinterpretation than that which I had taught at school.

What a great question. I'm pretty demanding when it comes to someone making their case on an issue.
Unfortunately I don't remember how it came up but I'm pretty much anti-gun. I was convinced that single females may in fact need a gun for protection. I understood it, and it made sense.

i had a conversation with a young lady about rabbits.
i told her they were rodents and she corrected me and told me there not.
i said as i am well into animals of course they are ill bet you a fiver/£5/$7 ish.
i only bet on what i think to be true and i thought she was very young and nieve
turns out im full of shit and less rich by £5 lol
i don't mind being wrong really and i shouldnt be so cock sure.
i bought her a keep out i live hear sign with a rabbit on it instead of a dog which surprised as well as pleased her.

IDK about the most recent mind bending experience, there have been many over the years. My most important mind bender saved my life, and probably added at least a decade to my life; nonetheless, it took me from a horrible life to a much better one.

In 2000 I had a heart attack (got 2 stints) and a back operation (3 lumbar). Before these events my feet had become numb and a bit painful. My heart suffered minor damage. The back operation was temporarily traumatic. My left foot pain, diagnosed as neuropathic pain, increased in intensity until I sat in a chair writhing in pain most of the time, and it lasted over five years. I saw six pain specialists; they tried everything to reduce my pain. None helped, not even morphine. I sat and cursed, sat and suffered, sat and prayed (LOL) for relief, then cursed again. I gained weight until I weighed 450 lbs.

The mind bending conversation occurred during a regular checkup with my PCP. Dr. said that the common link among my medical conditions was my diet, which caused plaque to build up in veins and arteries, which, in turn, lowered blood flow to any and all parts of the body. Sometimes plaque stops blood flow, such as when I had a heart attack. Thus, reduced blood flow may be killing nerves in your feet, causing pain, may be killing cells in my lumbar disks causing back operation, etc. My Dr. Said that I should stop eating meat and animal products of all kinds, and start eating a whole-food plant-based diet.

I was skeptical. However, I sat writhing in pain day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month, .... I had no other options. Change my eating habits ... OMG how could I survive on veggies? I was hooked on pizza, hamburgers, and fried chicken. Little by little, I switched my eating habits as the pain ravaged my psyche year after year.

As I gained weight my lymph system went into overdrive causing lymphedema, which grew bags of lymph fluid and vessels similar to blood vessels that may have weighed 40 lbs on each thigh. Then the lymph fluid started seeping through the skin on my thighs forming ulcers. I ended up in the hospital for eight weeks, with an antibiotic drip for six weeks to kill a systemic infection that attacked my kidneys. They saved my left arm for dialysis, in case of kidney failure, which luckily didn't happen.

Just before being hospitalized, I'd been eating no meat and no animal products for about two months. The doctor stopped my high blood pressure medicine! What? I weighed almost 450 lbs. Since that time, I've not needed blood pressure meds, and my BP is about 115/69. I've lost 150+ pounds. Most important, the pain stopped about the time my BP normalized. My diabetes is easily controlled, and a recent angiogram showed no plaque in my arteries. I feel as if I will live till 90, yet about six years ago, I lay in the hospital, hoping dialysis wouldn't be necessary. Now, I think feeling may be returning to my feet; if so, it is very slow. In a decade I'll know one way or another.

My experience going vegan is not uncommon; in fact many people have experienced miracles. Moreover, eating vegan reduces CO2 release in the atmosphere, and f everyone was vegan, CO2 release would fall about 15%, about the same as everyone driving electric vehicles.

I did not grow up in religion, but as a child naively thought that people who did, were bound to be good people, because they claimed to espouse an altruistic belief system, naturally how could they not be. A meeting in my teenage years with a theist teacher, who expressed the deep selfishness, narrow mindedness, snobbery and sense of exclusive entitlement, that is at the corrupt heart of religion, cured that for good.

To a lesser extent, because I sort of knew it in principle anyway. I have had a couple of conversations on here with people, who convinced me that you can hold the right convictions for the wrong reasons.