I shared to a friend that one discussion I went to wasn't as stimulating as I had expected and posited that it's probably because we all thought about these issues before hand and ended up with the same stances and conclusions. He was surprisingly skeptical about this occurrence and I am taken aback. Which got me thinking, why is he so surprised that a group of people who don't know each other end up concluding the same things independently? Is it his bias against secular individuals? Or is it due to the fact that this group has very different belief systems and each person purport to follow his or her own unique philosophy in life? Maybe it's because in his belief system, people don't agree with other and he's surprised how our heterogeneous group achieve a consensus that easily. My take is that we all end up concluding the same thing because we follow a very short list of clear principles: 1) Every human has rights. 2) Human rights should be protected. 3) Rights of one person should not be sacrificed to ensure the rights of another individual. 4) Government should be secular. Those who have confusing systems have a book or a series of books or even books about the original book or chapters that were removed from the original book.