Open Minded?

Posted by stephen on Saturday, 21st January, 2006 @ 01:37

Warning: This entry may be considered somewhat controversial. I'm entitled to my opinions and use this platform to express them freely, just as anyone reading this is able to do.

I've always liked believing that I'm an open minded person. I don't think I'm sexist, racist, homophobic, heterophobic or overly burdened with any particular prejudices. I guess I'm a product of a good upbringing and a mostly reasonable and tolerant society.

Despite that, some things have recently set me thinking about how open minded I really am. Having watched a few series of Big Brother now I start to question the value of debate. When two parties argue from opposing viewpoints is there ever any chance of either party changing their mind?

Think about it. When was the last time you argued with someone and you walked away having lost the argument? Did it actually make you change your opinion?

Perhaps arguments actually serve to help undecided observers choose their side? Does the value of debate serve not to open the minds of the those who have already formed their opinion but simply to polarise the fence sitters?

I've just read this article about first impressions on the web. A quote that really stuck out for me was this one.

...where users search for confirming evidence and ignore evidence contrary to their initial impression. People want to be right, and tend to look for clues that validate their initial hypothesis.

There's one particular area where I'm not so great at being a tolerant and open minded individual. And I've tried to be, I've tried to allow for the alleged possibilities, but I keep finding myself slipping back into my own definite views.

And that area is religion, spirituality and science. I'll put my cards on the table, I'm a scientist. I'm a rational person and believe things when I see them or when a sufficiently reasonable argument and evidence is put before me.

Religion seems to me to be an outmoded social process that helped fill gaps in understanding and at the same time allowed for overarching control of large numbers of people. In modern times science answers or can begin to answer many questions about the nature of the Universe. With the levels of education available in the Western world and increasingly across the entire globe it seems strange to me that religion isn't dying off as a relic of an age of ignorance.

How is it possible for any reasonable person to take the collective works of hundreds of people across thousands of years, reinterpreted tens of times and read each and every line as absolute truth?

Which brings me on to spirituality, the whole New Age thing, where people don't ascribe to any set doctrine but instead build up a patchwork of beliefs that fit the way they want to see the world.

This same process seems to be used by religious moderates, pulling out the parts of their holy works that fit their world view and ignoring that which does not. Even the fundamentalists struggle when such holy works are full of internal contradictions.

I think my feelings in this area were rather well summed up by Prof. Richard Dawkins in his recent Channel 4 documentary "The Root of All Evil?". It's so easy to imagine that any person with sufficient education would come to the conclusion that religion is ultimately meaningless yet hideously damaging to humanity. But it's not the case, millions of people are indoctrinated and hold beliefs that are based on nothing. Yet so powerful are these beliefs, they give their entire lives over to them.

One might argue that science is just another religion. Another set of texts that attempt to explain the world. But science isn't a set of immutable facts written in a book. Science is a process for constantly striving for a better understanding of the Universe. It's about edging closer to the truth and taking delight at each step forward as we learn we didn't quite get things right last time.

Is the fear of no longer existing as a conscious being so great that it's necessary for us to scrape around for a higher meaning? Isn't every living thing, every land, every star such a wondrous and beautiful thing that living this life is absolutely worth while?

Isn't it rather arrogant and ungrateful to expect more when we're so ridiculously lucky to exist here and now and experience this life?