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Would "facts" change your mind?

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
We've seen them before: the questions like "atheists, would you change your mind and believe if there were proof of God," and the converse, and of course everybody answers in the affirmative. (After all, who would want to admit that facts don't mean a thing, and that they'll believe whatever they like no matter what the facts say.)

Same thing with the evolution arguments, the sexual orientation brouhahas, and so many others.

And yet, having read several score thousand such arguments here on RF and elsewhere, one of the things that I find most remarkable is how little all the back-and-forth arguments, no matter how well supported, actually make any dent at all in the opinions of the debaters. I have yet to see, in any such debate, one side or the other declare, "oh, that's a fact I didn't know, and it has made me reconsider."

Here's an article I found in the New Yorker that discusses this very issue. It shows that, "once formed" (as the authors drily remark) "impressions are remarkably perseverant."

So here's the real question: what, if anything, would really make you change your mind?
 

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
I think most opinions contain both elements of truth and misinformation, and to switch sides, often is just a different flavor of this.
 

Terry Sampson

Well-Known Member
Cash-1-e1554306373528.jpg
 

Samana Johann

Restricted by request
Not even the fact of aging, sickness and death can turn blind aways from what is without essence, impermanent, subject to decay and not under ones control. Bond to f-acts, suffering, ever on.
 

Daemon Sophic

Avatar in flux
“In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really goodargument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.” - Carl Sagan

Yes. For me, demonstrated evidence of facts will change my mind.

That said, I seldom have my mind changed, because I have grown up basing my beliefs/opinions upon facts first.
It is not a matter of ‘It is true, because I say so’, but rather ‘I say so, because it is true’. ;)

Vanity has little role in my life. As Dr. Sagan indicated above, and the article cited in the OP, it is human vanity to believe something is right, just because that is the way you first heard it, or just because Mr. High Muckity Muck says that it is true. :rolleyes:
 

Daemon Sophic

Avatar in flux
I have just flipped a coin 27 times, and every single time it turned up "heads." What are the odds that on the next flip, it will turn up "heads" again?
Statistically its 50/50. However, the evidence of your previous 27 “heads” would suggest that another factor than ‘chance’ is at play. i.e. a trick coin, your technique in flipping, a ferrous metal coin and you have magnetic cuff-links on your shirt, etc...etc...
 

Shakazuluuuuu

Deist I guess what that is
The facts. Hmm. I would imagine that it would entail one extreme to the next with no expanation of why it happened even if the surroundings were questioned.
 

siti

Well-Known Member
Oh Good Lord no! We can't go around changing our minds just because of some inconvenient facts. Heaven forbid!

Actually, I have changed my mind significantly throughout my life - from traditional Anglicanism through fundamentalist JWism to agnostic via deist and on to humanistic possible scientific pantheistic "sexed up" atheism to openly acknowledging my own personal and profound ignorance of almost everything...but I'd never admit it in a religious forum discussion...

Dang - I just did didn't I - drat!
 

siti

Well-Known Member
Statistically its 50/50. However, the evidence of your previous 27 “heads” would suggest that another factor than ‘chance’ is at play. i.e. a trick coin, your technique in flipping, a ferrous metal coin and you have magnetic cuff-links on your shirt, etc...etc...
In the absence of any other information, what reason would there be to assume anything other than a fluke run?

And is that not also part of the "not changing one's mind" syndrome that we all suffer from? We just can't believe that a run of 27 heads could possibly happen by chance - even if we happened to witness it. And therefore if it is revealed that it just happened, we refuse to acknowledge the evidence before us and remain firmly of the opinion that it couldn't possibly have "just happened" - even though it probably, though rather improbably, just did.
 

Shakazuluuuuu

Deist I guess what that is
Oh Good Lord no! We can't go around changing our minds just because of some inconvenient facts. Heaven forbid!

Actually, I have changed my mind significantly throughout my life - from traditional Anglicanism through fundamentalist to agnostic via deist and on to humanistic possible scientific pantheistic "sexed up" atheism to openly acknowledging my own personal and profound ignorance of almost everything...but I'd never admit it in a religious forum discussion...

Dang - I just did didn't I - drat!


You are more vocal than I could ever be. In the world I am not much more than that. What sex got to do with it?
 

siti

Well-Known Member
You are more vocal than I could ever be. In the world I am not much more than that. What sex got to do with it?
I am very vocal - in real life too - anyway, the "sexed up atheism" thing was a reference to Richard Dawkins' definition of pantheism - but in any case, as far as the origins of human life is concerned its all about sex - isn't it?
 
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