[MD] Buddhism's s/o

[Mary]

Hi John,

Marsha has chosen to abstain from this conversation, but I'll jump in
because the question you raise ties in with something I've been thinking
about lately.

On Behalf Of John Carl
> Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 3:43 PM
> Marsha,
> 
> You need no argumentation to convince at least me, that Buddhism used
> logic
> and purely rational philosophical methods to achieve realizations which
> are
>  highly advanced, even today.
>  
> I believe this ties in to a dialogue I wanted to have with you, that I
> tried
> to raise with you on an earlier thread, but which I never found your
> answer.
> 
> The dialogue concerns whether it is better for society to have an idea
> of
> God to struggle against and overcome, or no idea of God at all in the
> first
> place.  My analogy centered on whether we should rid our children of
> such
> ideas as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and just give them the
> straight
> facts from birth...
> 
> Or, whether perhaps, there is an intellectual strength to be gained
> from
> attaining to atheism on your own, bucking your parental authority,
> bucking
> social authority, bucking God Himself! in order to assert your own
> intellectual being.
> 
> See, I see that as a process.  A way of strengthening and in fact
> creating
> an intellectual "muscle" that wouldn't exist unless it had something as
> big
> as God to push against.  And that future generations are deprived of
> this
> musclular selfdom, by our egoistic assertions of subjective
> enlightenment as
> absolute.
> 
> Is kinda what I wondered if you'd ever thought about...
> 

[Mary Replies] 

To be polite, I'll respond to the question you actually asked before going
off on my own tangent. :)

I was raised to keep an open mind.  I am grateful for that.  It has saved me
a lot of time and effort overcoming things that would have needed to be
overcome so I could get on with things more interesting.  I attribute my
open-minded upbringing to giving me the freedom to investigate things that
would have been forbidden knowledge otherwise.  Religion is such a waste of
valuable time and emotional energy.  Perhaps you object to my use of the
term "open-minded"?


I liken religious indoctrination of children to child abuse.  Why do we do
that to them?  If God is real and religion is right, wouldn't that be
obvious to an unindoctrinated adult?  Children are very impressionable.  Be
careful what you teach them because it will be very hard for them to unlearn
it later.  Which brings me to my ulterior subject.

My question centers around the nature of belief.  How do we become
convinced?  What is necessary to achieve the state of being convinced of
anything?  It seems much easier to convince a child of anything than to
convince an adult.

Following on this, I think beliefs are some kind of "static pattern of
value" we all absorb.  If you become (by whatever means) convinced of
proposition A, then later someone tries to persuade you of proposition B,
and B is opposed to A so that you can't logically believe both A and B at
the same time, I think it will be harder to convince you of B than it would
have been had you not previously been convinced of A.  

What you believe first has more value to you than what people try to
convince you of later. 

Most - no - all human disagreement arises from differing fundamental
beliefs. 

Beliefs are static and difficult to overcome - so be careful what you choose
to convince your children of.

Mary