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Notes -
You get it. That's exactly what I'm referring to.
I really like your point about atheism. I've noticed something perhaps similar with the rise of being "spiritual". It more strikes me as someone wanting to have their cake and eat it too; they want the palliative benefits of religion without having to suffer from the way religion is regarded culturally. In other words, they want the benefits of religion but they also want to be cool and progressive.
Also a good point about true open mindedness coming from a place of principal and not simple agreeance. I do agree that the tendency to determine one's conclusion and then reverse engineer the argument is all too common. I suppose this has probably been common to some extent throughout human history, but what strikes me as unique is that this psychology has infected institutional thinking as well. It doesn't seem that there are really any adults left in the room on that regard; institution managers who engage in the boring, almost technocratic practice of simply assessing the information and then making the right decision based on that.
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