When nobody believes what everybody believes - more on Word Spells

In response to Francis Berger's comment on Word Spells in Christian theology
Maybe it's like this... 
If someone becomes convinced by the usual-mainstream-modern assumption that truth is objectively located in the external world ("truth is out-there"), and our job is just to perceive and recognize this external truth...
Then such a person never has to convince himself of truth. 
He feels more confident of some proposition only secondarily, not inwardly; e.g. by re-reading and reciting it, by propagating and defending it in public discourse. 

This way of thinking may explain how arguments that cannot really convince, become perpetuated over centuries. 
It happens because, when truth is out-there, reasoning does not even need to convince.
Indeed, nobody ever needs personally to be convinced! 

So we get a world (and this is our actual world, and the world of historical past) where everybody claims/ argues and acts-like they believe some-thing... some-thing that - inwardly - literally nobody believes!