In the movie Water Boy, Adam Sandler's character gets very angry with a college professor for telling him things that contradict what his mother taught him. So angry, he ends up attacking the professor. Very funny in a comedy movie, not so funny in real life.

    I recently read an interesting mystery novel titled The Eighth Scroll. I found it well written and researched and a very good read. Like many though, I did find it to have a clear religious and political agenda which was very pro Muslim. While I don't agree with many of the author's conclusions in that regard—except for his identifying Paul as the Wicked Priest Jesus warned about which is right on—I could still enjoy the read without agreeing with everything in it. But when I looked at the reviews on Amazon, I found that many devout Jews and Evangelical Christians cannot accept this novel at all and give it a one-star rating, the lowest possible on Amazon. The fact that the author has an agenda does not make it a crappy book, yet many rated it as such for that reason. They can't even listen to arguments that contradict what they believe, what their mammas taught them, and have to attack the author for being anti-Christian and anti-Jewish which he isn't.

    Religious people are not the only ones who are not willing to even listen to things that are contrary to what they believe. If you read the book Molecules of Emotion, you will see some good examples of how the scientific community has become just as dogmatic as religion, possibly even more so. If a scientist does proper research with an open mind and comes to conclusions that do not agree with the accepted theories, the scientific community will often not even look at the proofs of the new theory, but reject it outright because it doesn't doesn't sit well with their dogma.

If we are to continue to learn and grow, we have to get away from dogma and listen with an open mind. Even the strangest of theories may have some truth hidden in them that can be of benefit to us, so listen with a truly critical, but not dogmatic mind. And when it comes to matters of spirit, religion, and enlightenment, we all need to listen if we want to grow, or even just survive, in the coming age of enlightenment.