Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Open Minds and Closed Minds

I have frequently noticed whenever someone criticizes religion or religious beliefs, they are considered closed minded. It seems that the only way to be open-minded in this day and age towards religion is to offer no criticism towards it at all. But what does it mean to be open minded and close minded? I think to be open minded it means that a person is going to listen to the argument presented, evaluate it based on the logic, reasoning, and evidence presented, and then respond accordingly. Closed-mindedness however means to either not listen to an argument, not evaluate it based on the criteria mentioned above, or base an entire argument on prejudice or bias. Therefore, it is not closed minded to reject an argument if the logic, reasoning, and/or evidence are not sound. For instance, it is not closed minded to reject the argument of a bigot about how some group of people are inherently worse than other groups of people.

No comments:

Post a Comment