I came across the following snippet while doing some research on Ed Fredkin’s digital physics:

Among the scientists who don’t dismiss Fredkin’s theory of digital physics out of hand is Marvin Minsky, a computer scientist and polymath at MIT, whose renown approaches cultic proportions in some circles. Minsky calls Fredkin “Einstein-like” in his ability to find deep principles through simple intellectual excursions. If it is true that most physicists think Fredkin is off the wall, Minsky told me, it is also true that “most physicists are the ones who don’t invent new theories”; they go about their work with tunnel vision, never questioning the dogma of the day. When it comes to the kind of basic reformulation of thought proposed by Fredkin, “there’s no point in talking to anyone but a Feynman or an Einstein or a Pauli,” Minsky says. “The rest are just Republicans and Democrats.” I talked with Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate at the California Institute of Technology, before his death, in February. Feynman considered Fredkin a brilliant and consistently original, though sometimes incautious, thinker. If anyone is going to come up with a new and fruitful way of looking at physics, Feynman said, Fredkin will.

I couldn’t help but notice a parallel in my debates with atheists. I’ve never fit squarely into one camp or another when it comes to “theists” vs. “atheists.” I get hated equally on theist and atheist blogs. I mean, I believe in God, so that puts me squarely in the “theist” camp, but I also “believe in” science, logic, reason, rationality, critical thinking, skepticism, the art of questioning and a whole host of other things “your average theist” often eschews. It seems to me that most (a)theist debaters are as Minsky describes: polarized automatons following their respective dogmas. No wonder philosophy of religion is essentially a quagmire, and (a)theist debate seemingly intractable. Most (a)theists simply align themselves to pre-established positions and seem to do little critical thinking of their own.