(April 12, 2015 at 5:21 pm)I don\t recall you saying anything bad about your parents. Cognitive dissonance is a state we enter when we discover a differencce between what we've been taught to believe and what turns out to actually be true. If, like me, you've been raised to think that honoring your mother and father means honoring everything they say with no objections and now you find you can no longer do that, you might be experiencing cognitive dissonance, too. It's tougher when you live with them because there's no respite. Wrote: I agree, authors like Lewis can make things sound so lovely, but like you said, we can't unread what we've already read in the Bible.
I'm enjoying the forums. Over there building with some folks. Though so far it's like here's a nickel, give me five pennies. I won't find out what it's really like until I get over there in the debates.
I'd like to say something about this idea about the fall of man because when you really think about it, God was the one who made the choise, not Adam. But that would digress from the purpose of the Introductions forum. I will share it at a later time in a more appropriate place.
emjay
(April 12, 2015 at 12:03 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: Greetings emjayHello Rhondazvous,
I'm new here too and thought I'd read what you guys were saying before jumping in.
That's an interesting story. I know what you mean about those conversations that invariably end in tears. Once I actually got into it with my mom on Mother's Da,y of all days. Though for me, it usually ends in cognitive dissonance. I have to check myself and remember that I waws one a Christian and know how the Church programs our mind to think a certain way and guard against real thought.
What about C.S. Lewis did you find most compelling?
Welcome to the forum
Cognitive dissonance? I'm not too familiar with that term... is that emotional ambivalence? Or living a lie? I feel I'm living a lie in the sense that it feels uncomfortable saying anything bad about my parents - as I had to in intro on here in order to explain my situation - but apart from the religious aspect I love them to pieces.
The C.S. Lewis book just struck me as very original. It just concentrated on a very simple idea: that the 'fall' of Adam was him making the simple choice of self over god, and that hell was the absolute conseqence of that - the complete absense of god - and that heaven was a return to the pre-fall state. The idea was that in the pre-fall state consciousness was somehow purer/more evolved that it is now and that it had full control of the body and was in a state of perfectly blissful dedication to god. The book didn't bang on about the ten commandments or even Jesus, just this simple idea.
I'm interested in meditation - not religious meditation - just meditation and the book appealed to me on that level because it made heaven seem (to me) like a meditative state rather than a physical place and that I could just about buy into as a pleasant fantasy. But a fantasy was all it was because however poetic an author can make it sound in a book at the end of the day when you put that book down you're still left with the Bible, and I can't read even a few pages of that without seeing its contradictions.
How are you liking the forum so far?
The god who allows children to be raped out of respect for the free will choice of the rapist, but punishes gay men for engaging in mutually consensual sex couldn't possibly be responsible for an intelligently designed universe.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
