- Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
- Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
- Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
- Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
- Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
- But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.
Now if only we can get the creationists, anti-vaxxers, homeopaths and other anti-science people to take that to heart, along with fundamentalists of every stripe, then maybe we could move along way towards the utopia that a modern world was supposed to eventually provide but the post-modern world so obviously isn't.
