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EVERYONE has the right to an opinion.
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No, that's just it. They don't. If someone hasn't taken the time to research an issue then they have no right to speak about it. If a person who is uninformed on an issue speaks out about it one way or another, then they will be doing nothing but blabbing someone else's conclusions without understanding how they were determined. This leads to millions of people mindlessly walking around saying things like "guns are evil" because they heard it on CNN.
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It doesn't matter if their opinions are wrong, they still have a right to hold and express them. That's what we call the Freedom of Speech. You may have heard of it.
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My cheap shot at RikWriter earlier notwithstanding, I agree with him on the opinion issue.
zonan is insisting that every opinion must be an informed opinion, which in a formal debate might be required and then defended (in that case it's called a position, I believe).
In life that is seldom the case. Very few people are "precisionists in thought and deed" and most people have casual opinions that they've given little thought to. They are entitled both by law (the First Amendment) and by natural right to think and hold whatever opinions they wish.
If you disagree with someone else's opinion, that's fine. You're expressing your own opinion; which someone else probably disagrees with too.
Different and opposing opionions are important, though. There is what I think of as the Socratic learning process that is vital to the way I grow intellectually. Someone tells me their opinon or perceptions of an issue and I tell them mine. Sometimes their view fits what I perceive better than the view I held previously and I change my view incrementally. Other times I perceive things differently than they do and I don't learn anything about the universe from the discussion, but I DO learn something about the person I'm discussing it with.
Reading this thread, I learned something about RikWriter that I didn't know. He's the son of a Baptist minister. I didn't know that before, and when I take that information and integrate it with my previous experience with the children of ministers, I have a better frame of reference to understand some of what he's said.
I still don't understand everything about him, but his opinions as presented here are a window on his mind. Perhaps he doesn't want anyone to peek through that window, but that's what discourse is.
Of course, if you never state your opinion, then it never gets to see the light of day. Your opinion never gets a chance to be challenged and you don't have a chance to grow. If you aren't allowed to state your opinion, then you are locked into that narrow perception of the universe with no chance to face your own preconceptions and prejudices and change them. That's fine and dandy when someone has a vested interest in keeping your experience and knowledge to a minimum because they want to keep you under control.
(going to get more philosophical wax, as I'm definitely waxing philosophical...)