At what point does "listening to the other side" turn into "refusing to have opinion of your own"?
Do you always listen to the other side of an argument, even if you disagree with them? Do you like to play devil's advocate? At what point should you just pick a side and admit the other side is full of sh*t?
To be frank I don't trust or believe most of what anyone tells me but I still listen to what they have to say. I don't pick any side until I've done my own extensive research on any given subject and found it to be either true or false. For me it's simply a matter of getting the facts and not whether a person is full of s**t or not.
That would work well if "facts" only led to one possible conclusion. But few people are willing to assemble facts that do not fit our preconceived bias.
It takes knowledge, training, and innate ability to evaluate reality---extensive research is nothing but raw date. Discovering what the data actually means takes a certain disciplined skill.
And unfortunately, everybody thinks that he possesses that skill.
This post was edited by tom jackson at July 16, 2017 2:57 PM MDT
Tom, I never claimed to have that ultimate skill but doing the research is much more conducive to finding things out and sorting through them than it is to settle for the alternative guesswork and screw it, which sadly many people do.
And that would also be fine if you and I didn't constantly come to different conclusions in two of the most important areas that affect our daily lives---the government of the country and the nature of the God who created us.
Facts rarely lead to just one conclusion. That's the nature of humanity. Humans can only have so much access to objective reality. The rest will be filled in by our subjective experiences.
Everyone thinks they have it all figured out. It's difficult to live if you don't have some steady ground to stand on. One can't exist never formulating some concrete opinions.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at July 16, 2017 4:14 PM MDT
Oh, absolutely---that is why whether truth exists and is the proper object of study is such an important question.
Aristotle said that the human mind is a machine for coming to conclusions.
And yes, I think truth exists.
And, let's face it, some truths are self evident. (We hold these truths to be self-evident---Declaration of Independence.)
And there are some things about which if we disagree, one of us must inevitably be wrong. (Wrong as in having assembled our facts incorrectly in reaching our conclusions.)
I don't want to lose real friends because of controversy. Of course I have my opinions and I try to understand where the opposite view comes from, but it doesn't change my opinion very often possibly not as often as it should. .
Benedict Arnold 