Believe and reality are true when claimed by the majority. It changes when the majority claims otherwise. The majority has the ability to create a belief that turns into reality which basically means FACTS.
So, the majority creates the facts and so the next generation inherits those facts and continues the belief. It’s the way it has always been and it’s how humans are wired. Actually, animals too. It’s like these beliefs are stamped in our DNA.
When a brave person stands up to change those beliefs, he will either: be ignored, be ridiculed (or killed), or become a hero.
Examples: Jesus (challenged the Jewish authorities) or Ignaz Semmelweis (despite various publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis supposedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues.)
