Engaging in Discussion

I feel like I should address the way in which I go into a debate or intellectual discussion.  I have many beliefs.  Some of which are very strong beliefs, while others are very loosely held.  However, the way in which I have grown to discuss these beliefs in my post-religious life is this.  Treat your beliefs as though you were in a library.  When you enter the discussion or the debate, you are walking into the library of your own mind.  You pick the topic.  Which means you walk up to that book in the library and pull it from the shelf.  You sit down with someone and discuss each page of the book.  You go through all of the points and validate what is in that book.  There are some passages or pages that you have leaned on for years and years that after having new evidence brought to your attention you realize, "This cannot be so.  I must discard this."  Once you reach the end of the conversation and you have weighed the book's merits against the other person's book, you must then make a choice.  Do you get up from the table and put your own book back onto the shelf?  Or do you set your old book to the side and make a copy of the other person's book and place that new book on your shelf?  Or do you both draft a new book together and both of you walk away with a new book on the shelf?  This is the way that people learn.  This is the way that people should progress in their intellectual pursuits.  Why?  Because it is honest.  You should never arrive at a point in your life where a book on that shelf can never come down.  Everything you know about everything could potentially be wrong, so once you begin at that honest starting point you will begin to find truth in the world.