What if you say you don't like fish, but are ready to try a fish you've never tasted before if someone asked you to? What would that make you?Originally Posted by papayahed
What if you say you don't like fish, but are ready to try a fish you've never tasted before if someone asked you to? What would that make you?
Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes.
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
Vacuum - good point papayahed.
It really depends. Fish, if I'd never had it before I would probably try it. However if it was that puffer fish that was being sold on a street corner in Omaha probably not. Does avoiding potential illness make me close minded? We have a brain to guide us why not use it.What if you say you don't like fish, but are ready to try a fish you've never tasted before if someone asked you to? What would that make you?
Would you do something just because somone asked you? I don't think it's all or nothing. I don't have to engage in a same sex marriage to know I don't care if someone else does it, nor do I need to try herion to determine if I am willing to accept the risks.
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
I agree. Common sense should always be used.
Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes.
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
I don't know about you all, but I always feel like I'm at my open-minded best when I'm criticizing others for not being as open-minded as me. (joke)
“Oh crap”
-- Hellboy
My understanding of The Atheist's comment was that yes, we do have pre-conceived ideas, but we should try to consider other possibilities as well without letting those pre-conceived ideas interfere.
Eg, in the case of fish... One can refuse to try any fish (even the new ones) based on the pre-conceived idea that they do not like fish. Or they decide to give a new kind of fish a try.
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
So farrrnyyI don't know about you all, but I always feel like I'm at my open-minded best when I'm criticizing others for not being as open-minded as me. (joke
it seems professors all around the world are the sameI run across people, usually professors or professor wannabes that proclaim that they are absolutely open minded about life
To me , having an open mind means having , always, enough rooms in your brain for new visitors without prejudices or preconceptions . And to allow these new visiters to take place of another one of your residents if they proove to be better of them.
Well, there;s your answer!
As Scher noted, you just put them away and use critical analysis to decide.
I had an excellent example this morning when a friend sent me an e mail claiming a link between underarm deodorant and breast cancer.
I'd never heard this one before, but it turns out to be an old theory. My initial thought was "Wow, that makes some sense", having regard to breast cancer incidence increases since 1950 and the fact that beasts are in fact quite close to armits. (In most cases!
Even better, there has been very little proper scientific enquiry into the subject, so information was sparse. On some fairly deep analysis, it turns out that the premsie is extreme;y unlikely. We can't prove that no link exists, but it appears that it isn't true, so we can ignore it while keeping an open mind as to new evidence.
In fact all of us kind of are not open minded and we live with lots of prejudices.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
We seem to be talking about two different things here. People can be open-minded whether they're religious or not. However, religion itself doesn't promote open-mindedness. Faith, by definition, is believing something without regard to evidence. Such a belief can't be tested or refuted, and it isn't meant to be.
I think we all believe things we can't necessarily prove. But only religious believers consider credulity a virtue. And believing things even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is no virtue.
Last edited by Babbalanja; 10-16-2009 at 10:48 AM.
The OP:
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
There's a lot of things one can't be or do without upsetting all those open-minded peopleWell done, Annamariah!
Yes, I think you hit it right on the button there.
That is interesting... I find it easier, probably because I no longer feel that I need to win every discussion or argument (Oh, yes, I think I may have been a handful in my younger days).
You too, eh? I had this information handed to me by a bloke handing out leaflets downtown the other day. It would seem that he took exception to the fact that I questioned the logic of some of his reasoning).
Hate is overrated: It consumes too much energy...
Open minded, I guess...But I can respect other people's views too, and like a good conversation about things we might not agree on. So what does that make me?
I would like to think so. At the very least I would interpret an honest attempt to do so as openmindedness.
I think that is a very sensible outlook.
Yes... The problem is that common sense is not all that common.
Great discussion, everyone
/Claes
Last edited by ClaesGefvenberg; 09-15-2010 at 02:39 AM. Reason: Typo
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
A mind as open as the sky is indeed worthy of having, but not so wide that the ground is no longer a boundary. The doors of perception need to be able to close and occasionally lock, this is why I could never fall into any sort of religion, it is actually more closed-minded, IMO, to limit all the possibilities in the universe to one answer: God. Not that I have totally shut out any possibility that a god could be true, but it is really a hypothesis no longer worth investigating as it does not really explain anything. The 'higher power' worth keeping an open mind for would be truth, which no god can top.
An interesting counter to such a dismissal of God is offered in Ibsen's first successful play Brand of 1865. Here the priest Brand, living in a humble manse under the overhang of a remote glacier subject to avalanches, willingly sacrifices his life to an omnipotent and unchangeable God, a God of love.
His God is fully defined by an unqualified, infinite and absolute love for the individual, a love without weakness or wavering. Brand is unreservedly a disciple and, for him, uncompromising love is the only possible truth. Human truths fade into insignificance alongside his timeless and limitless perspective. He is a man of action while other look on.
"Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself"
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