deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out ho… - Carl Sagan

Sakharov in the Cold War year 1968 boldly wrote — in a book published in the West and widely distributed in samizdat in the USSR — “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of peoples by the mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships

development of such gifted individuals required a childhood period in which there was little or no pressure for conformity, a time in which the child could develop and pursue his or her own interests no matter how unusual or bizarre. Because of the strong pressures for social conformity both by the government and by peer groups in the United States — and even more so in the Soviet Union, Japan and the People’s Republic of China — I think that such countries are producing proportionately fewer polymaths.

It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid - if we’re talking not about an internal mindset, but about understanding of the external reality.