General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Agree or Disagree - Religious DUers are "satisfied with not understanding the world." [View all]Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)"satisfied with not understanding the world." - which implies that those who are not religious do understand the world or at least want to. There are those here who refer to themselves as "free thinkers" - meaning they are atheist. No doubt there are many atheist who are relatively free thinkers. And there are many people with a spiritual view of the world who are relatively free thinkers. There are also plenty of people of both categories who don't have the slightest inclination toward intellectual honesty. Or lets take the term skeptic - a skeptic is someone who is open to a possibility that something might be the case but they have serious doubts. For example I am a skeptic that the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives this November. I think it is possible - but is probably unlikely. Where as an organization like skeptic.com fraudulently call themselves skeptics - or at least completely change the meaning of the word. If someone believes that it is possible that a spirit world exist and is capable of interacting with this world - but they seriously doubt it and consider it unlikely - that would be a skeptic. If someone calls themselves a skeptic of the existence of the spirit world and its ability to interact with this world - but actually does not even consider the existence of the spirit world a remote, far fetched possibility - they are not skeptic - They have completely made up their mind and excluded any possibility of being wrong on this matter. When they call themselves skeptics they are lying - One is not a skeptic if they have completely made up their mind before the question is even asked.