Welcome back to “Doggerel,” where I discuss words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.
Qualia Soup said it better than I can, but I’ll still give it my best shot.
As a skeptic, I’m often told to be more “open-minded” because I question various claims, particularly supernatural claims. The problem with many such critics is that they’re often quite unaware of the fact that I did seriously contemplate the issue with an open mind. I weighed in the evidence available to me, explored several alternative explanations, and settled on the most probable-seeming hypothesis. This review process can be revisited if new evidence comes to my attention or a genuine fallacy in my logic is identified. That’s what I think of as open-minded, and it’s how you’re supposed to think about the issue.
The Bronze Blog 