Habits of Minds (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Many skeptics, atheists, and/or freethinkers pride themselves on their willingness to change their mind on the basis of reason, evidence, or other new information. This should be a source of pride and should be far more common than it is. After all, we are the ones who often claim that we are not beholden to any sort of dogma, tradition, or authority. This leaves us free to follow the evidence without being locked into maintaining views that are inconsistent with reality. It also grants us the room to change our minds as we identify the shortcomings of our previous positions.
We skeptics, atheists, and/or freethinkers should not only be willing to changes our minds; we should celebrate it when others do so. Again and again, we say that this is how reasonable people are supposed to behave. If the Bigfoot skeptic was presented with solid evidence supporting the existence of such a creature, we would expect him to change his mind and acknowledge that such a creature could be real. If the third-wave feminist was presented with clear evidence calling commonly cited rape statistics into question, we'd expect her to stop repeating them as if they were 100% accurate. When we encounter someone who willfully disregards the evidence to maintain a belief (e.g., creationists, climate science deniers, GMO opponents, users of homeopathy), we tend to be critical. We seem to expect that rational people will allow themselves to learn, changing their minds based on the evidence.