Do you ever change your mind?
it seems a lot of people don't. A lot of people, when shown evidence their views may be wrong, simply go into a lockdown mode on their views and just shout them louder and louder. They claim that facts that refute their views are just opinions and their opinion is as good as anyone else's.
Some see changing one's mind as a sign of weakness, others see it as proof they can alter their views to fit new data.
Dr. who had a saying about that sort of mindset.
So I was thinking about times when I had a viewpoint or belief I later changed in the face of new data.
When I was a kid I believed that blacks just screamed racism at the drop of a pin. Yes, I thought that quite a while back.
Then, we had the handheld video revolution. I began to see incident after incident of police beating, terrorizing and even murdering blacks on no grounds beyond "My cop sense told me he was up to something." I've seen clear evidence of cops murdering blacks on video and walking away scott free.
And I realized they weren't just screaming racism as a reflex. They were right after all, and my views, some of which came from family members, were wrong.
Once upon a time I believed that mother teresea was indeed a paragon of human virtue and while I disagreed with her religious views I beieved she was this incredibl good person helping the poor. I was even outraged the first time I saw Christopher Hitchens call her "A bat from hell."
years later I was watching him discus the corrosive effects religion was having on personal liberty and freedom, and he began attacking Islam, something I do hate quite passionately, and I agreed with him on his views regarding it. So I listened as he stated other views, which i agreed with.
then he came to his views on mother teresea and i ground my teeth and listened. He wexplained she was a fraud, she didn;t realy help the poor, she actually liked poor people suffering and dying in poverty as she saw it as good for the soul. Her charity work for the poor mostly considted of giving them a matt on a floor in essentially a warehouse to die on and wanted people to accept the suffering of poverty as god's will.
The money people poured into her charity didn't buy food or medicine for the poor, it was used to fund missions dedicated to fighting against spreading birth control in poverty stricken areas because birth control is "sinful".
Well, i looked into what hitchens was saying about mother teresea and found out he was right. She was in fact a horrible person who did no real good and a great deal of harm. She was actually he;ping keep people suffering in poverty and starvation and encouraging them to quietly accept it and die out of sight as part of her horrible dogma. She caused more suffering than was already there and did nothing to really end it.
And later, when she was ill and dying, she wasn't laying on a mat on a dirt or concrete floor,
oh no! She was in very fine hospitals receiving the best of care, which was the opposite of her views on how the poor should die.
Hitchens showed me the truth about the mother teresea myth, and later her final years only proved that she was indeed a horrible person and a sickening hypocrite.
So, yeah, I can change my mind at times when sufficient cause is shown to get me to.
have you ever changed your mind on any significant point? If so what was it and why did you change it?