three wise men

one of my coworkers is brilliant. he is smart enough to realize there are a lot of things he doesn't know but wise enough to kindly explain those he does. and, he gets my jokes. he believes that a couple thousand years ago a junior high school aged virgin girl gave birth to a baby boy, which baby was conceived by an act of the supreme creator and was designed & destined to die by sacrifice thereby becoming the saviour of the world. what a tale, eh? how could a brilliant man believe such a thing.

i know another equally brilliant man who demonstrates his brilliance in the same manner as this first - he asks when he doesn't know, he patiently explains when he does, and he laughs at all the right moments. he believes that although this very same supreme creator could have, and in fact plans to, do the very thing [or something quite close thereto] that the first man believes... this man believes the supreme creator has not done so quite yet. he has an equal belief in this wildly impossible tale, the only difference being he sees it as a tale of the future, not of the past. what a tale, eh? how could a brilliant man believe such a thing.

i know another man of brilliance equal to that of these first two. his curiousity drives him to avidly seek knowledge he doesn't yet have and his compassion drives him to gently share that which he already possesses, and, of course, he understands my humour. this man doesn't believe at all what the first two believe. this man believes in neither creator nor creation, in neither father nor son, in neither story - past nor future. this man believes in the tale of the present, told in the actions of his fellowman. what a tale, eh? how could a brilliant man believe such a thing.

to my mind, the tale of no tale at all is the most wild tale of all. why? oh, sure, it's to do with the way i was brought up, with things i learned in childhood, yes, sure. but, because i believe what i believe, i believe human minds are made a certain way to be opened a certain way at a certain time and that what goes into the mindvessel at that certain time, that specific time that the mind is opened in a specific way... that very knowledge becomes the core, that very knowledge goes past knowledge that is held and looked at and known with the mind, and becomes knowledge that simply IS.

do i believe in this certain-time tale because my mind was given this belief at this specific time... making the certain-time tale in fact true? or, is this belief in the tale because of the tale a sort of doubling-back, a sort of building the tale on itself. if i had been given another belief at the certain-time, i would hold true something else... if i had been told, at the certain-time, a tale contrary to the certain-time tale, then i would not believe the certain-time tale, and my disbelief in the certain-time tale would be precisely due to the certain-time tale's being true.

but, i digress.

three men of equal intellect hold to be true three divergent belief systems. is one correct and the others alltogether wrong, or is there perhaps another system of belief that is outside these three and instead of excluding any, it includes them all.