Readers of this blog will know that my favorite game is “spot the irony” (based upon Monty Python’s “spot the looney” game). Here a colleague from another listserve brings Richard Dawkins’ statement from “The Enemies of Reason”
We’ve got to go back to the evidence and see what is true. We must favour verifiable evidence over private feeling otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth. We should be open minded, but not so open minded that our brains fall out.
The scientific method tests with objective observation and statistical analysis. Individual scientists may or may not be honest, but science with its’ safeguards of peer review and repeated experiment has scrupulous honesty built into it by design. Science replaces private prejudice with publicly verifiable evidence.
I have a hankering after what is actually true.
We are confronted by those who deny the evidence of the real world and instead bend reality around a dogmatic belief system handed down by tradition.
Sceptical rational enquiry is always the best approach. We don’t have to follow the herd, … instead we can think independently and be truly open minded. That means asking questions, being open to real corroborated evidence. Reason has liberated us from superstition and has given us centuries of progress. We abandon in at our peril.