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Growing up, I remember hearing lots of stories about monsters. From monsters that live in the mirror and are summoned by chants to monsters who stray outside kids’ windows to that punk who lives way up north who will give you coal for Christmas if you’re bad.

With monsters, there’s always some contract that you’re under, and if you break it, you get punished. Sometimes monsters reward you for not breaking the contract (Santa brings you gifts if you’re good!), but most of the time they’re more rooted in fear than reward.

Some time in our maturation there’s an awakening, where we realize that there are no monsters. We realize that saying “bloody mary” in the mirror 3, 5, or 127 times yields the same result - wasted time in front of the mirror. We learn that the dark isn’t something to be afraid of, and that it only means there isn’t as much light to reveal the furniture about to bruise your knee. And we learn that our parents, not Santa, are responsible for the shower of gifts we (hopefully) receive during Christmas, despite our terrible behavior.

Some people don’t get rid of monsters entirely. In an anecdote sure to get me in trouble, my wife is still terrified of a certain movie about a guy who comes out of mirrors, and she’s terrified of the dark. I have friends who think there’s a devil who’s trying to make them do bad things. I’ve even got family members who think that alternative medicine is the true way to health, and that “the big pharma” are trying to hide promising health care options.

Monsters aren’t entirely obvious, and human thinking lends itself to believing in them. From Big Foot to Santa to the Lochness Monster to Intelligent Design, people want to believe things there’s no evidence for. It’s not easy to give those things up. It requires a different kind of thinking.

It’s called skepticism. It means that you question statements put in front of you, not to be rude or an ass, but to be sure that the truth is what permeates your conversations and the decisions you make. It’s accomplished by asking questions, requiring evidence before believing, and basing your arguments in sound logic.

Skepticism needs to be taught. Ideally, it’s learned in science classes, but I know that I didn’t really realize what it meant to question things until after high school. Lots of people older than me still don’t know what it means.

The opposite of skepticism is faith. Faith requires that you accept something without thinking through the contradictions and questions. Faith leads you to fear mirrors, think there’s a guy up sitting on the clouds listening to your thoughts, and can be used to justify killing innocents. Monsters live in faith.

The brilliance behind skepticism and asking questions is that monsters die out really quickly. They’re not made to withstand questioning. Acupuncture, Big Foot, Colt McCoy’s talent, mirror monsters, intelligent design, whatever god you choose, they don’t last. There’s a great reason that they’re found to be inconsistent when evaluated by reason: they’re not real, so they’re naturally paradoxical.

Try it out. Think about the assumptions you make and base your life on. Then ask, “why should I believe this? Where’s the evidence?” See if it changes your daily approach.