Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of
The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of
Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of
Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of
Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of
Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and many of her talks can be seen on YouTube. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of
Best American Erotica. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow her on
Facebook.
The sense of your title and the sense of your content are directly opposite. And I think the title is wrong.
“Open minded” does not, or should not, necessarily include accepting what is not true.
llewelly: I didn’t mean “accepting that what is not true is true.” I meant “accepting that what is not true is not true.” Or rather, “accepting the reality of what is not true as well as the reality of what is.” Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Thank you for the clarification. However – I still think the title will leave many people thinking the opposite of what you intend to communicate. On the other hand – I don’t have any suggestions for fixing it.
Can’t you just say:
“Open minded” means accepting that some
really stupid shitthings are not true!“Open-minded” has become a catch phrase for “doesn’t question my shit.”
When people say that someone is closed-minded, what they’re really doing is making an implied argument that they don’t have an epistemological right to question another person’s beliefs.
So, when they say that we ought to be “open-minded,” they’re really making the argument that we ought to keep our pie holes shut.
“Freethought blogs” seems to indicate a certain level of open-mindedness, but maybe the name is not quite apt. Or, are you just free to think in error without worry of being corrected?
““Open Minded” Means Accepting What Isn’t True” – Absolutely not. It means being open to the possibility that it MIGHT be true. I am open to the possibility that there is no God, but I don’t accept it because I have way more evidence for His existence than I do for His non-existence. You should check out the Defeasibility test: “Are there any considerations, arguments, evidence, or reasons, even hypothetically that could possibly lead me to change my mind about God? Is it even a remotely possible outcome that in carefully and thoughtfully reflecting on the broadest and most even body of evidence that I can grasp, that I would come to think that my current view about God is mistaken? That is to say, is my belief defeasible?” http://www.provingthenegative.com/2011/02/defeasibility-test.html