After reading our blog, a good friend suggests that "we must educate our children to truly think for themselves," or they will fall victims of dogmatic ideologues. I'm walking a fine line here because I strongly believe that thinking, educated people can benefit from reading, for example, both The God Who Is There by D.A. Carson (a fundamentalist view of the Bible) and The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, by Christopher Hitchens.
We learn to think for ourselves by learning to evaluate others' ideas, some of which might be dogmatic ideologies. Thinking for myself, I might even adopt the thinking of an ideologue. But if I am able to do so after understanding the ideology and finding good reason to support it, then I am at least moderately rational.
I try to do something similar to what Andy suggests, in reading political columns and commentary from both sides and with diverse viewpoints.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, if the material I'm reading is well written and thought out, I may learn something from it, and can acknowledge that different viewpoints may each have something to contribute to the discussion.