I like this thread because the discussion has turned more towards open-mindedness and trying to discern what is true. Ultimately, the truth-finding process is much more important than any particular debate.
One of the biggest problems people have is that of the false dichotomy, also known as binary thinking. We either accept all or nothing. You either believe someone or you reject them completely. This may be one of those things that takes years to unlearn, but we have to gain the ability to pull out truth wherever we find it. There will always be inconsistencies to someone's story or reputation, but that doesn't make something they say which is true be any less true.
The second thing we need to do is not invest ourselves in any particular 'picture of the world'. Our beliefs should not be emotional attachments, but rather probabilities of what we think the truth is based on what we know. Fundamentally, discovering the truth is all about taking in information from the world and seeing what's self-consistent. The truth will always be self-consistent. Big lies will also be self-consistent. Therefore, just like puzzle pieces from several puzzles mixed together, we have to start fitting them together in several separate chunks. The chunk with the most puzzle pieces on it is 'what we believe to be true'. The smaller chunks with less puzzle pieces are not then discarded, but instead continually built upon.
In the method described above, we first accept everything as being potentially true, then build parallel possibilities. This is an important distinction, for it is not deductive reasoning but abductive reasoning.
We're taught to use deductive reasoning. In that case, when we're about 5 years old, we're given a puzzle piece and told "this is the absolute truth". For the rest of our lives we see what fits onto it and discard everything contrary to it. Deductive reasoning only works if it has some absolute foundation from which to build upon. Abductive reasoning on the other hand more closely matches the situation we're in as humans: we enter the world knowing nothing and have to figure everything out from there. It won't give us that secure feeling of 100% assurance that we are right, but it will hopefully keep us over 50% and allow us room to grow.

![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/sp_en_6.gif)

Reply With Quote
...
