RE: Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.
May 11, 2016 at 11:50 am
(This post was last modified: May 11, 2016 at 11:52 am by robvalue.)
(May 11, 2016 at 10:25 am)Emjay Wrote:(May 10, 2016 at 1:33 pm)robvalue Wrote: Going back to the OP, I would say that my confidence that the specific god characters mentioned in the Bible/Quran etc. are fictional is as close to 100% as makes no odds. I'm as confident about that as I could reasonably be about anything.
I'd wager my life against a donut.
Trying to get back into the thread now, I agree with that but you come from a very different perspective... well almost very different. I'm like you are for every other religion other than Christianity... can just dismiss it out of hand as a bunch of silly, made-up characters... but since I have a background in Christianity I can't do that here so much, though I wish I could, believe me. If I hadn't grown up with it I'm pretty sure I'd see it just as you do, and just as I do about other religions, but as it stands it's too deeply entrenched to be able to treat it like that, and needs something more. Tbh I think it probably needs a psychological intervention - somehow - to defeat rather than reason alone. The question of how to unlearn something... the brain moves forward so (imo) when you forget something, you only forget how to trigger it, not the actual thing... so it's still laying there dormant even if you no longer think about it.
I totally understand that. I was lucky to not get programmed into a religion, but I did get programmed in other ways that still affect me today. Even though I know those thoughts I have are irrational and unfounded, I can't simply dismiss them. It takes regular challenging of those thoughts. I find writing it down helps a lot, and then writing what the evidence is for and against that thought. It's when it's bouncing around in my head unchallenged that it gains the most momentum.
Maybe some sort of cognitive behaviour therapy would help with thoughts that are still troubling you, it did wonders for me.
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