I once had an indignant student tell me that what I was teaching in class about evolution was “just my opinion” and that they had a different opinion, and therefore they were justified in rejecting a major chunk of the class subject matter. I think I just gave them the standard line — you are allowed to believe what you want, but in this class, you have to demonstrate an understanding of the science, even if you disagree with it — but over the years, I’ve evolved towards a somewhat harder stance. You don’t get to declare whatever you dislike to be an opinion. You don’t get to regard your opinions as somehow sacrosanct. I am going to give you the information that shows your opinion is wrong, and the purpose of my teaching is to get you to change your opinions to something more productive and correct, and more in line with reality. Those kinds of opinions should not survive an encounter with the facts.

So I’m already in agreement with this philosophical position that “No, you’re not entitled to your opinion”. There are different kinds of opinions, and this is a very useful explanation.

Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief (doxa) and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “1+1=2” or “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.

You can’t really argue about the first kind of opinion. I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that’s one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they’re entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views “respected.”

I have to agree. The statements “I like chocolate ice cream” and “I think the earth is 6000 years old” are both opinions all right, in a shallow and colloquial sense, but they are qualitatively different. That I respect your right to have your own taste in ice cream should not imply that I also grant you the privilege to ignore our shared reality. The author, Patrick Stokes, explains all this with examples from anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers, but it’s true for lots of phenomena.

It’s the core of the Answers in Genesis claim that they are using the same facts, but different views (they prefer to use the word “worldviews” over “opinions”, but it’s the same thing). They think they’re entitled to their own opinions and interpretations of reality, and that they can look at a Cretaceous fossil and declare that, in their opinion, that dinosaur died in the Great Flood in 2304BC…they certainly have the right to say that, but they go further and demand that you respect that opinion as equally valid to that of a scientist.

We also see it in politics. Look at this claim by Scottie Nell Hughes:

“On one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go ‘No it’s true,’” Hughes said. “And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people who say ‘facts are facts,’— they’re not really facts.”

“Everybody has a way—It’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, as facts,” she added.

I’m pretty sure Hughes would argue that the facts show that she is a mammalian humanoid, with records to show that she was born to fully human parents, but it is my opinion that she, and all the other Trump surrogates, are actually alien reptoids who hatched from eggs incubated in a dungheap. And apparently, she’d agree that her facts are useless and my interpretation is perfectly valid.

Unless, of course, we can agree that some opinions are falsifiable.

Tonight is Krampusnacht. I just can’t muster any enthusiasm for fighting it, though; there aren’t any shared social customs that we atheists in America enjoy, and I don’t see anyone trying to force me to celebrate it in a religiously specific way.

I guess I’ll just half-heartedly say it’s a silly tradition, but you should feel free to celebrate it however you want and in any ethically reasonable way for any random reason. Hmm. That seems to be my stance on Christmas, too.