Dear Foxy,

«We're all entitled to informed opinions. Opinions
based on facts. Evidence-based.»

Even then, "I wish so" is a fact like any other, and is self-evident.

When God said, "Let there be light", He had no objective evidence, His will was sufficient to form that opinion.

Hi Yuyutsu,

Why do you refer to God as male? There is no God, male or otherwise in the bodily sense. One might get away with describing God in a spiritual sense, If God is to exist at all, then God exists within the human sprite. The concept of God as being indistinguishable from the human sprite is more difficult to understand than the old man with a white beard (a physical god) concept. Its all the godly treats, love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, etc that makes up the spiritual god. people bring God down by giving "him" human characteristics.

Dear Paul,

In order to be understood, I need to address each person according to their own understanding, culture and faith. My previous post was addressed to Foxy, not to you, and had it been addressed to you then I would have used a completely different language.

Anyway, the point of my post was that opinions need not rely on empirical material evidence, that it is OK to base opinions on one's will alone, because will precedes matter, not vice-versa.

Whose will? What anyway is "will"? How does it relate to matter?
That indeed is a fascinating topic, but which hardly fits into a discussion about the appointment of an envoy for Anti-Semitism.

When forming personal convictions we often interpret
factual evidence through the filter of our beliefs,
values, feelings, ideologies, tastes, and past
experiences. Hence most statements that we make are
assertions of fact, opinion, belief, or prejudice.

A fact is verifiable, and an opinion is a judgement
usually based on verifiable facts - or it should be.

An opinion is of course potentially changeable, depending
on how the evidence is presented, and as new facts come
to light.

By themselves, opinions have little power to convince.
Because we need to let others know what our evidence is
and how it led us to arrive at our opinions.

Dear Foxy,

So far so good - your last post is the opinion of H. Ramsey Fowler.

But earlier you added your own opinion that "We're not entitled to
ill-informed opinions. Nobody is entitled to be ignorant."

Such ill-informed opinions may indeed, as Fowler mentioned, "have little power to convince", but in my humble opinion, the lack of ability to convince others does not constitute a privilege to deny other people's freedom of thought, which includes their freedom to have ill-informed opinions and/or to remain ignorant.

So if you opine as above, that "We're not entitled...", then where is your evidence for that?

Yuyutsu,

There are plenty of examples of ignorance and being
ill-informed in our daily lives. I'm sure that you
have encountered them. We all have - we've all seen
a lack of knowledge or information in many areas and
on many subjects and issues.

Of course there's also wilful ignorance which
basically amounts to not wanting to be informed or
apprised of certain things.

There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity.
Stupidity shows a lack of a good sense of judgement.

My objection to being ignorant - and ill-informed is
you can be manipulated. And that's something most
of us would wish to avoid for ourselves and our children
and grand-children

See you on another discussion.

Cheers.