Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why YOU are so damned smart?
Total lack of doubt is poisoning our society
by Terry 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Knowsnothing
Terry, I don't consider myself smart. There is always something to learn...
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Terry
http://thefabweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TBbPZ-900x506.jpg
On big problem with belief is that it stops you from ever actively thinking about it (the thing you believe) because it is....settled.
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Terry
Click on the Lecture: BELIEF
Bertrand Russell breaks it down like you've never seen before
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cedars
Terry, I couldn't agree more.
Cedars
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Terry
Why is doubt ingrained in our society as a "negative"?
Skepticism is pro-survival in animals and insects.
First you check it out.
Sniff it before you eat it.
Be wary and alert.
But, no.
If the Universe has one certainty in it that certainty is identifable as this: THINGS are always CHANGING.
In view of change there has to be a thinking mechanism that monitors it....tracks it....and updates it.
Monitoring change is pretty good idea.
How can we do it unless we adopt the notion that we may have gotten it right last year, but, circumstances are different this year?
Faith is marrying yourself to unproven principle and refusing to budge no matter how many updates are available along the way.
How is this healthy unless Mere Certainty gives you the cosmetic appearance of confident forward movement?
Confidence is postive when the outcome is positive.
Confidence is negative when the outcomje is negative.
What is the bottom line?
Look at your life and it puts the test to all your beliefs about what is true.
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breakfast of champions
As far as I can tell, BELIEF always comes first. It has to, or else we wouldn't be able to interact with the world on any coherent level.
The problem occurs just after the initial belief, when we refuse or forget to do the 'sniff test' to validate our perception.
That's why magic works. Not imaginary Sparlock-style magic, but the real kind magicians use to fool our brains.
Doubt is uncomfortable to most people. It takes extra time, mental effort, and often causes pain. That's a large part of why most people don't bother with it most of the time.
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jgnat
Albert Schweitzer maintained that skepticism in one's own ability to reach conclusions is the bane of our age. From "Out of My Life and Thought" he says, "The organized political social, and religious associations of our time are at work convincing the individual not to develop his own convictions through his own thinking but to assimilate the ideas they present to him. Any man who thinks for himself is to them inconvenient and even ominous.
...Corporate bodies....try to achieve the greatest possible uniformity....
Man today is exposed throughout his life to influences that try to rob him of all confidence in his own thinking....
The spirit of the age never lets him find himself...
...man of today is forced in to skepticism about his own thinking, so that he may become receptive to what he receives from authority. He cannot resist this influence because he is overwored, distracted, and incapable of concentrating....moern man no longer has any confidence in himself. Behind a self-assured exterior he conceals an inner lack of confidence. In spite of his great technogical achievements and material possessions, he is an altogether stunted being because he makes no use of his capacity for thinking....To renounce thinking is to declare mental bankruptcy....
To blindly accept a truth one has never reflected upon redards the advance of reason. Our world rots in deceit. Our very attempt to manipulate truth itself brings us to the brink of disaster."
Schweitzer goes on to say that once institutions let the skepticism genie out of the bottle, first convincing society that it cannot govern itself, that skepticism runs rampant, and people have no faith in the institutions who purport to serve them.
I would say that Schweitzer was prophetic on this point.
