Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[emjay]

Well it's been about eighteen years since it clicked 'there is no god', but in the time since, my confidence in atheism has grown mainly by learning and developing other much more plausible ideas about reality from science, psychology, neuroscience etc, rather than debunking Christianity. That's where I've gone wrong I think. To put it the terms of contexts, an unrelated (to Christianity) context of science/physchology/neuroscience has taken the forefront in my mind but the old Christianity context was never truly addressed, and thus never allowed to die. In my opinion only (I have no wish to misrepresent his intentions in any way... it's me that's thinking in terms of contexts, not him... I'm just saying how imo his behaviour would fit in practically with this model but not that that is his intention) it seems that Min addresses it all the time, leaving its tendrils no opportunity to get a foothold and top up the context, and it sounds like you've done the same thing but in a different way, by reading and getting involved in presumably debunking Christianity (as opposed to learning more about unrelated subjects)? I think you guys are on the right track... you can't expect to let something go unless you debunk it and cease to feed it. I don't mean I've deliberately fed it at any point, but by not challenging/dismissing every single thought about it that comes up, I essentially give it implicit authorisation to carry on doing what it's doing, which is maintaining and bootstrapping the context. That was my mistake... so now I think I'm gonna take the minimalist approach maybe not out loud but definitely in my head... any time a Christian thought comes up I've gotta say 'that's bullshit' or otherwise dismiss it

I think a good dose of the Socratic method as you find in Plato's dialogues is helpful for de-programming from dogmatism. It really helped me to read the Classics, a variety of Greek and Roman authors, and even those more ancient works like The Epic of Gilgamesh, to put into context the sensationalized triviality of the New Testament, i.e. the recycled themes and ideas that the earliest Christians borrowed from preceding traditions -- which were often articulated far more coherently, and (in my view) aesthetically more "divine," so to speak -- and then packaged specifically for the most gullible of the masses; which, by the way, is *still* observed to be what pretty much every moderately successful religion does. All you can do is be honest with yourself. You don't choose to believe what you in fact believe. Remain open-minded and at the end of day, you'll continue to forge your own beliefs, exactly as human beings were designed to do.

Though I will of course take on board your reading recommendations as interesting and helpful reads, that's not exactly what I meant (well it might have been what I thought I meant but now I realise it's not). What I mean really is that I shouldn't have to jump through hoops and become an expert in ancient history, philosophy, or any other subject to debunk something that shouldn't have been there in the first place... something that was put there without evidence and without my informed consent... ie indoctrinated. I don't need to jump through those hoops to 'debunk' any other religion and I shouldn't need to do it for this. I guess what I'm saying is that that which was acquired without evidence should leave without evidence, as a matter of principle and a stand against indoctrination if nothing else. Anything that is a belief not on its own merits but simply by virtue of being implanted by the back door, shouldn't have the right to require debunking. So what I'm now thinking is not to try and debunk it, which gives it more attention than it deserves, but instead to starve it of attention and let the context die out that way. And by starve it of attention I mean what I said before... mindfully dismiss/divert all related thoughts when they occur... so almost the same as before with the minimalist approach, but instead of 'that's bullshit' - which is a kind of debunking because it's a statement about the falseness of something - a better response would just be 'fuck off' as in 'fuck off unwanted thought' ...without giving it the extra attention of making a judgement about it. The fuck off is not necessary but just an optional extra I do have proof of concept with this because I have already used this method to defeat and deactivate unwanted thoughts/contexts before.... I just hadn't really thought of Christian indoctrination in this light before, as something that could and should be subjected to it, but I don't see why not... it's a context like any other. Anyway, in practice what it means is that even if a thought has an emotional pull - such as ideas about hell - it must still be mindfully dismissed. And over time that pull diminishes until a point comes where it's almost a joy to dismiss it and no effort is required at all. The frequency and number of related thoughts diminishes because doing this deprives it of all its triggers as and when they come up, and eventually the context dies out.... those pockets of 'core', self-supporting activation die out as well because of something called 'neuron fatigue'... neurons can't fire indefinitely because if they could it would indeed end up with loads of infinite feedback loops in the brain, which would waste a lot of energy if nothing else... so thanks evolution for neuron fatigue and just a little bit of speculation/hope here, since neurons are constantly 'learning'... not just how to better detect what they do detect (through synaptic weight changes... a function of their activity alone), but also what they detect ... they may come to represent something else, so they could actually be put to a useful purpose rather than storing the neuronal and general waste of space that is religion

Anyway, thank you for the reading recommendations I am interested in reading them, but just not in service to this goal... just in their own right

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Yeah, I'd agree with what you say above Rob... it feels good to trivialise it etc, but I would say that some things can't really be debunked definitively... if they could all the Christians on this site would have buggered off by now and in any case, contexts can be pure fantasy - such as a book - but still be coherent. The Flying Spaghetti Monster for instance is a coherent context in that sense, but once posited impossible to disprove. But this blanket, starve-it-of-attention mindful approach doesn't concern itself with debunking anything. You just make a decision to do it for your own good... and that can be the hardest part... and then all it is is a reliable, long-term method of shutting down a neuronal context. By being a blanket method it takes the arbitrariness out of it... you just do it for every related thought, big or small, because big or small it is a trigger and potential maintainer/bootstrapper of the context.