Faith: The Ultimate Brainwashing Tool of Ignorance?

Hi thirddensity,

I read your post and felt compelled to reply. I can understand where you come from as I have been raised a Christian all my life as well and know people just like your parents.

It is important to understand that many people need to be told what to believe and that a majority of these people do not question what they believe. This, I would call is Blind Faith. Blind faith is not good, and you can have this in anything, not just religion. But then again, is it faith or the perception that what you believe / have is better than anyone else. This comes down to belief. Possibly not faith. One would have to come up with a definition between the two.

I will give you some examples.

- My doctor told me to take 2 pills a day of xxx, and I will not get sick. If I believe him (have faith in him) I will do this.

- I believe that my religion is correct. Everyone else has it wrong. I have faith in what I believe will get me to heaven.

Now, it is obvious that both of these are wrong. People 'believe' in the rules of the institution. Each institution is different. As a Christian, I believe in the Bible and the values and principles that it teaches. At the end of time, the only person I have to answer to is God. Not an institution. God has given us a brain to use to question. I personally use the Bible as the measuring stick to question against. Is it Biblical? Yes or No. this enables me to have a definite set of principles.

Just my pov.

I�m slowly but surely dragged towards these two huge pearly gates, as they swing open there stands Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and all the other self righteous maniacs I�ve come to detest in this lifetime. In a horror worse then all horrors ever known I�m thrown thru the gates and they close behind me for all time. For me, there could be no crueler fate.

Sorry I don't want to take anyting away from the original post
of this thread....but what a truly horrendous end of life that would be,
spend the rest of eternity with those two idiots.

Originally posted by Arrowhead
Definition of Faith: Unconditional belief and worship of something that you cannot see, hear, touch, smell.

How is this a good thing? It shows peoples inability to handle the possible truths.

I agree here. To accept something without question because that is how you were taught is what ignorant is......though faith isn't brainwashing it can definetely be manipulated by other people for a myriad of reasons..

When I was a child, about 4 or 5, I would often fall asleep in my parents bed watching TV with my mother. When I woke up in my own bed the next morning, I believed that Jesus put me there in the night. The truth was that my father carried me to bed when he was retiring for the night. My parents were not overly religious. They were both educated in schools that taught and practiced the Christian religion, my mother's run by a nunnery. They never went to church or forced us to though, as children and as a family. I am not sure where I got the notion that Jesus put me to bed or that God and Jesus were real. We had religious friends of the family though. And I guess I just grew to believe through what I saw and experienced through others, as a young, naive and innocent child does.

Throughout the years I never went to church, never prayed and never practiced religion. But I still held onto the concept of God and Jesus etc, because its what I was lead to believe from a young age. It wasn't until my teens that I had a major shift in my thinking, where I learnt that belief systems are just that, systems you are lead to believe. It's hard to put into words, but I just kind of woke up and realised that everything I was lead to believe is possibly false, and that no matter how strong my faith was it could all possibly be all for nothing. I started researching into alternative theories and explored many different avenues. Doing this opened my eyes to the fact that what people understand of their religion, interpreted through a 2000 year old text, could very easily be explained another way. And that it is far more important to walk through your life with an open mind, ready to consider more possible scenarios than close your eyes to all but one. It was a very important time for me. And after being lead to believe one scenario by many people for many years, it only took myself to pull me out of that system of belief and open my eyes to many other explanations.

You should always trust in yourself.

Faith is a necessity of life. It leads to Hope.

I disagree with those who say that religion is brainwashing and that once implanted a man cannot change. It is up to the individual to start looking for the Truth. But it is normally religion that starts him on his way to that Truth. Remove religion and you remove the catalyst that may start the action of self searching for the majority of mankind.

And yet again we have people looking for scapegoats instead of blaming their own ignorance and laziness. When you were born, you were given Freewill and a mind. If you choose not to use them, you can't blame anyone else.

Sure, religion isn't perfect. Far from it. But it has to cater for the masses. As somebody said earlier in this thread, the spiritual is within the individual. As every individual is different, is it therefore any wonder that religion is flawed? It is impossible to find a system that would suit everybody perfectly. Yes, man has corrupted it further for his own political means, but there is plenty of informaion out there that will give you the information to make up your own mind. It's just up to you wether or not you want to take that step and maybe have to work hard or if you want to sit back and receive a condensed sort of Faith that can never be as personal or perfect as the one that you could find for yourself.

Western society has recently started asking itself these deeper questions in a myriad of ways. Movies, internet, music and tons of other media are imploring you to think for yourself. If you choose to ignore them, how can you blame anyone or anything else?

Wasn't the old saying "Seek and Ye shall find?"

Originally posted by Leveller

Wasn't the old saying "Seek and Ye shall find?"

While I completley agree with the old saying, I have also heard one that states, "Faith without works is dead".

I write what I write because a conviction without action is meaningless.

Love and light to each of you,

Wupy