Most people are close-minded about some things...usually because they don't know enough yet about those things or are carrying a strong prejudice concerning them.

But as Carol said " it's not so much belief, as it is being willing to trust our own perceptions more than we are willing to trust what someone else tells us our perceptions ought to be."

I trust my own perceptions, Wolfgang, more than I trust what you decide to tell me about them. And I am an exceedingly cautious person. I was cautious enough not to believe in God or anything else "otherworldly" (except Santa Claus for about 3 or 4 years when very young) until I was around 20 years old. This came of growing up in a very rational, scientifically-minded, atheistic family...that in their own way were: closeminded.

And in case you're wondering, I never experienced a dramatic "conversion" to any religion, never got "saved" (to use the evangelical term, nothing like that. No, I just gradually opened up to an awareness of many things that I had not been prepared to open up to when I was younger, when I thought I knew everything...or that if I didn't know it, then I could find it in a science book or an encyclopedia. I started trusted myself, Wolfgang, instead of letting other authoritative sources in the World decide it all for me.

- LH