What is more important: what you believe or why you believe it? Both are certainly important and it may be difficult to argue that one definitely surpasses the other, but in general people should pay closer attention to why they believe things than they already do. Unfortunately, in the context of religion the "why" is greatly neglected.

In Why Atheism?, George Smith writes:

The leap of faith is a strategic impasse that confronts every Christian in search of converts; and, as he sees the matter, there is no wrong way to become a Christian. It is the end that is important, not the means; it does not matter why you believe, so long as you believe.

For the philosopher, in contrast, the paramount issue is the justification of belief, not the fact of belief itself. [...] What for the theologian is a commendable act of faith is for the philosopher a violation of intellectual integrity. This tension is as old as Christianity itself...

In Christianity, believing the basic Christian doctrines is a virtue and is rewarded with a place in heaven; disbelief is a vice and punished with a place in hell. Given such a context, it’s really not surprising that the “whys” of belief would be given such short shrift. If it’s a matter of getting to heave and avoiding hell, who cares why you believe just so long as you do believe. That it is understandable, however, doesn’t make it justified or forgivable.

When you don’t care why something is believed, in the end you don’t really care about what you believe because the methodology we use for determining our beliefs cannot be entirely disentangled from the content of those beliefs. When your beliefs are determined by reason and a skeptical, critical examination of the evidence, you demonstrate that you want the content of your beliefs to be reasonable, rational, and connected to reality.

When your beliefs aren’t determined by reason or a skeptical, critical examination of the evidence, you demonstrate that you don’t much care whether your beliefs are reasonable — or if they are connected to reality. If that’s the case, how can you even claim to care about reality itself? The only way to successfully deal with reality is to care about how we arrive at our beliefs and how we distinguish between justified and unjustified beliefs.

 

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