Free thought

I've always encouraged people who read my writing to think for themselves and to question everything. The more something is accepted as orthodoxy, the more we should examine it to find out why. After all, the historical precedent is that human beings often get things wrong and thought movements develop which catch popular fire before they are eventually extinguished.

I have done this all my life which may be part predisposition and having an intellectual for a father who extolled the virtues of critical thinking.

We need to figure things out for ourselves and adopt thinking which can be defended. For if we cannot answer why we believe something we won't be very convincing in a debate. The more self-assured someone is the more it invites me to dig deeper into the origin of their ideas. More often than not the people most convinced they are right are the most easily derailed and holes more readily poked into their dogma.