About

Welcome to Mere Dogma!  I’m Kai Haswell, and I created this blog to explore pressing issues in politics, morality, and religion.  I strongly believe that the best way to learn and grow is to receive feedback from others, so I hope that this blog will be an active exchange between myself and my readers.  I am always open to different opinions and worldviews.  Please don’t hesitate to comment!

A Short Biography

I was raised in a deeply conservative Christian household, and was homeschooled for the majority of my childhood.  When I left for college, I was a shy, conservative, Christian heterosexual.  Four years later, I graduated as an outspoken liberal pansexual atheist.  You might reasonably wonder what happened in the interim!  The short story is that I was exposed to many various worldviews and I had unprecedented opportunity to examine my own beliefs in light of the alternatives.  I realized that most of my opinions were uncritical reflections of my upbringing rather than the product of informed reasoning.  In other words, my beliefs were what John Stuart Mill refers to as “mere dogma”.

This blog is my endeavor to destroy mere dogma.  Like Mill, I believe that opinions, regardless of their truth value, must be subject to debate.  It is not enough that a belief happens to be true, we must understand why the belief is true.  Furthermore, it is dangerous to pretend that anyone has all the answers, and so it is important to constantly reevaluate every position to ensure that the beliefs we hold are actually correct.  With this goal in mind, I invite criticism and debate from my readers so that everyone can benefit from the exchange.

Quick Facts

Age: 24
Gender: Male
Location: California
Occupation: Law Student
Education: BA Philosophy, MA Philosophy
Areas of interest: Politics, morality, science, religion
Hobbies: Cooking, photography