One thing I have observed in my day-to-day interaction with people is the amazing depth of penetration of superstitions in their/our daily lives! Agreed that great truths have been discovered down the centuries by our ancestors and dismissing all of them in a single wave of hand might be like throwing out the baby with the bath water but, at the same time, accepting everything as the sacred wisdom of the ancients will be counter productive - needless to say, we had morons as ancestors too!
At the individual level: Question* everything, accept nothing without questioning.
At the mass level: Impart scientific education sandwiched between education in human values with a missionary zeal.
*Two things can happen when we question everything:
- We will end up discovering that something is a myth or fallacy or simply not the truth!
- We will end up getting a better, deeper and stronger understanding of what we were questioning and our faith will be cemented and will withstand the storms of doubt and internal/external criticism later on!
BTW this questioning has to be done with utmost humility and sincerity and in genuine quest for the truth. Else, A fool can ask more questions in a day than a wise man can answer in a lifetime (Quote - Aristotle), will become more relevant!
Now at the other extreme -
"I do not understand it and therefore I will not believe it".
How often do we find ourselves using this logic in our day-to-day lives? Many of us used to mock our grand mothers when they used the same logic and refused to believe in the 'moon-landing' but I have noticed so many of us do the same mistake very often even now. The right thing to do would be to research/investigate/explore and find out the truth behind 'things' instead of casually dismissing them as "Naah! I don't believe in such crap" and conveniently hide behind our lackadaisical intellect!
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