In My Opinion

A lot of random thoughts tend to go through my head throughout the day, most which get a couple minutes of recognition and then are forgotten in light of new/more interesting thoughts. Every once in a while though, a thought will pop into my head and stick around for a while and I'll get the urge to write it down. The only problem is that I have the meat of the idea in my head, the main points, but I can't figure out how to lead into it (hence this odd intro). Anyways, the random thought for today deals with people and our willingness (or unwillingness) to at least acknowledge other people thoughts on different subjects.

A bit of a pet peeve of mine is when I strike up a conversation with someone and they are absolutely unwilling to even just listen to an opposing view. This is more prevalent in serious conversations, but can really occur with any topic. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and are entitled to express it, without that variability the world would be a much more boring place. I personally love having a bit of a debate about different subjects every once in a while because it's stimulates the mind and forces you to consider other options you may not have thought of and in some cases can even change your opinion from what you originally thought. What gets on my nerves is when I'm talking with someone about a subject and they flat out refuse to listen or give any amount of thought to the notion that they may be wrong or that there is another way of thinking of things other than how they see it. I'm not saying that I'm always right or that people  should always change their thoughts after having a debate about something, but rather that we should be open minded enough to hear all sides of the story and even if you don't agree with the other persons point of view, at least be able to say well I see why you're saying that and I respect your opinion. We tend to see this type of debate more so in arguments about religion vs atheism, pro-life vs pro-choice, or politics. Many times we see the extremist religious person condemning all non-believers and preaching about the need for believers to convert  non-believers and "save" them while the extremist atheists laughing in their faces and begin to spout off a million reasons why God does not exist, but this is an argument that's going no where because both parties are going into the argument with their mind set that they are right above and beyond all else and nothing anyone says will change their mind.* It is completely possible for two people with opposing views to have a civilized debate it just requires an open mind and a willingness to take into account what the other person is saying before jumping in with our own arguments. It also means knowing when to quit and move on to something else. In any good debate there is always a chance that someone could change their mind due to what the other person has said but more often than not two people with opposing views will maintain those views and at a certain point the debate will end because all the points have been laid out, one person changes their mind, or they both get bored of the subject and move on.
*Note that I'm not saying all religious and atheist people are like this, just the people on the extreme ends of the spectrum.

This happens with any subject anywhere around the world, and I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means, but if more people were willing to at least take into consideration other people's reasoning and be willing to accept the fact that there is not a definitive right and wrong answer to everything then maybe there would be a little more tolerance in the world.