What it means to hold a belief based on evidence is, by definition, that one is open to the possibility that evidence might be discovered that would … - Peter Boghossian

Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. [...] Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.

Peter Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I'd be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive — and very much needed.

I'm worried about 33 trillion in debt. [...] I'm worried about the fact that one third of the taxes collected last year went to pay the interest on the debt. I'm worried that nobody really gives a hoot about it. I'm worried about the national divorce talk. I'm worried about wide-scale ideological capture of our institutions, particularly legacy media and legacy institutions. I'm worried about the geopolitical situation. [...] I'm worried about the Israeli Palestinian problem [...]. I'm worried about Chinese militarization of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry. I'm not worried about rogue [artificial intelligence] [...], but I'm worried that we have lost an understanding of what makes America great. [...] I'm worried that we have forgotten why freedom matters, why it's important, that's what I'm worried about. And unless we start to care about those things then we can't reconstruct reason; we can't reconstruct a civil society.