Believe - accept as true or as speaking truth

Religion is based on belief. Belief is the acceptance of something being true, but without empirical evidence. Therefore, just because you believe something, it does not actually mean it is true, it just means you wish to accept it as true.
It always seems strange to me that in a court of law it is necessary to prove something to be true beyond reasonable doubt. But when it comes to religion we have to respect without question the beliefs of someone else. When it comes to religion, if you believe it to be true, somehow it seems to become fact beyond question.
I really do not understand this. It is all the more of a mystery when you have different people of different religions killing each other over opposing beliefs, or even the same religion with different customs: for example - Catholic vs Protestant : Shia vs Sunni.
What is even more astounding is that all these religions preach tolerance, love, acceptance, respect etc etc towards others. Am I missing something here? Also, just because you believe it, that does not mean it is true, so how can you justify killing someone on the strength of something that may not even be true?
This leaves me to wonder how often religion is used as an excuse to kill people you just don't happen to like or agree with on political, economic or ethnic grounds! Or am I just being a little naive here!!!

The Great British Car

I'm one of those silly old-fashioned people who like British cars and in particular Jaguar. I know it is very fashionable to buy foreign cars and we all know the best are German of course. I mean, after all, there hardly is a British car industry any more, is there? Speaks for itself. Curiously I did have a C-Class Mercedes once (2003-2004). It was the most uncomfortable car I have ever driven. It was not very well put together and was generally quite unreliable. I'm sure that had nothing to do with it being built in South Africa though.
Here's a question. Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Jaguar - what order would you put them in for reliability - 1 is best, 4 is worst. Yep - you are absolutely correct. 1 - BMW : 2 - Jaguar : 3 - Mercedes some way back, and finally : 4 - Audi. This from an actual results survey by Warranty Direct who provide after market warranty. So much for great German engineering. The Astra was also more reliable than the Golf - but who cares about that!
An elderly woman I used to know came into the pub one evening and proudly announced that she was never going to buy another British car again. She had just traded her aged Vauxhall Nova for a Nissan Micra. Let's face it, where's the kudos in buying a British car? Silly c*w - the Nova had been built in Spain and the Micra in Sunderland.

Why am I doing this?

Like most people I get things into my head that I just want talk about - not to anyone in particular, but to everyone in general. Sometimes it's a great idea; sometimes a frustration; it may even be to say something enthusiastic or encouraging; it may be just a RANT!! So instead of these things just going round my head and getting nowhere - I'm going to put them on my Blog - just how good is that!!