Why are there not more open minded people?

Answer 1

There are lots of open minded people. Some just want real evidence to believe in something. That's not unreasonable. That's intelligent.

Answer 2

Open minded about what? You are being too vague here. There might be a lot of open-minded people, depending on what the subject is, or maybe they just are keeping quiet, so you don't know they are "out here".

Answer 3

That's one big question you're asking, there -- one could write books' worth on this.

One reason is that people are insecure, and so cling to the rightness of their beliefs. They identify with their beliefs, as being theirs, and feel attacked when their belifs are questioned.

I lay a lot of blame on the way we teach in school. We do not teach for open-mindedness, intellectual humility, or respect for reason and evidence.

We teach by authority -- whether it makes sense or not, believe it because we're telling you to.

Students don't learn, as they should, how to think for themselves, and do a good job of it -- to use their minds to understand things, and to reason with clarity, accuracy, breadth, depth, appropriate precision, relevance, and a respect for strong reasoning and quality evidence.

Thus, people use other methods than reason to come to conclusions, and have to close their minds to evidence and to other views, because they don't know how to handle them.

They haven't learned how to distinguish what they know from what they merely suspect to be true.

Many people simply give up and choose beliefs that are comfortable or that serve their purposes.

Quality thinking can be hard, and often leaves more questions than they answer.

Since students don't learn how to deal with the difficulty and uncertainty, they reject them.

Answer 4

often thought that myself. The yahoo politics and religious sections are basically a big shouting match where everyone insults those who dont agree, but dont listen to other people views

Answer 5

Strict relgious upbringings.