(December 9, 2014 at 11:45 pm)Quantum1Connect Wrote: 3) My beliefs were exactly that: just a belief. Which leads me to think: do true blue believers only have beliefs? Or have they found a way to make their belief appear as fact?We treat the things we believe as if they are fact. We can hold on to the things we believe via ritual and repetition, which is why so many religions use both so heavily. It's very difficult to just drop a belief system unless you replace the rituals and repetition with something else. It's a form of deprogramming. Take note of the things you used to do that are linked with your old religious beliefs (attending church and church functions, reading religious literature, prayer time, etc) and find activities to replace them with (going window shopping, meeting a friend for lunch, reading books, exercising, etc).
It's the old method for "taking your mind off of whatever troubles you." The less time spent thinking about it, the more it diminishes and is replaced by something else. Make a list of things you want to do or achieve, then make a list of ways to accomplish each one, and start to fill your time with those activities. You can kill two birds with one stone; building self-esteem through productive activities while burying the old belief system.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
