Opinions are the indulgence of an undisciplined mind—one might say, if one was trying deliberately to be provocative.  To be more precise, though, one should say, “If you could ever nail down exactly what an opinion is and find one in nature, it would be purely the indulgence of an undisciplined mind.”  Seriously, though, I would be willing to bet that you’ve never actually had an opinion.

Now you just thinking I’m being provocative, but I’m not.  I’m asking you to consider what it means to have an opinion.  Can you give me an example of you having an opinion?

“Well, I like the color blue.  It’s my favorite color.”

That’s not an opinion.  That’s a statement of fact about yourself.  It’s either true or false, and you can tell me which with absolute certainty.  Care to try again?

“Well, what if I said I think the color blue is better than the other colors?”

Better how?  Define better.

“Well, just, you know, superior.”

No, I don’t know.  Superior in position?  Have you created a vertical arrangement of all colors and placed blue at the top?  (If you have, then we’re back to a statement of fact, within the meaning of your assertion.)

“Morally superior!”

Ah.  Define morally.  The color blue is most in keeping with God’s law?  The color blue is less likely to shoplift?

“Well, what if I said that I thought people exposed to the color blue were less likely to shoplift?”

That sounds like a theory to me.  An assertion (proposition) with a truth value, meaning it is either true or false, and we can probably even test it with experimentation to determine its truth value.

“Well, what if I came up with a theory that couldn’t be tested?”

Oh, please try.

“Well, what about whether or not aliens exist?”

What about it?

“Well, let’s not talk about UFOs, because you’ll just say that’s a theory—”

“You mean, whether or not any given UFO represents the incursion of an extra-terrestrial intelligence into earth’s atmosphere.”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, I would call that a theory.”

“But, I mean, even if UFOs aren’t aliens, that still leaves whether or not there’s aliens out there in the universe.  Say, if aliens evolved in the last billion years but on a planet that’s two billion light years away, we would have no way to know if they exist for another billion years.”

“That’s true.”

“So if I say that I believe those aliens exist—”

“Such aliens.”

“What?”

“If you say that you believe such aliens exist…”

“…yeah.  So, if I said that, wouldn’t that be an opinion?”

You mean to say, if you took a firm position on the truth value of an unknowable, untestable hypothesis which can have no bearing or influence on the lived experience of mankind, asserting that hypothesis to be true or false despite, by your own admission, having no evidence at all to support said position and knowing that your assertion can never be proven one way or the other, would you finally have succeeded in having an opinion?  Yes.  Yes you would.

“So what do you think?  Do aliens like that exist?”

I couldn’t possibly say.  To have an opinion on the matter would be a pure, immature, undisciplined self-indulgence, devoid of any merit.