Do believe in any things only because you were raised to believe them?

[psychoblast]

I look around and it seems to me that a huge number of people simply embrace the religion that their parents indoctrinated them into during childhood.

I was raised Christian, and I think I was simply incapable of doubting this, being surrounded by believers who just took it as true. I think a lot of people hold beliefs as true without regard to the logic or evidence, based solely on indoctrination during youth. Essentially, brainwashing. Maybe "light" brainwashing, but when the washing goes on for years, it goes very deep.

I think it would suck to realize your world view was the product of brainwashing rather than actual logic and reason. Basically, you'd have to avoid any sort of "deep" debate with other people about any "deep" issues because you could not defend your views with any sort of reason or evidence. So conversations would be highly superficial, and people would generally feel deep alienation from one another. People might try to escape this by surrounding themselves solely with others who share the same beliefs and will not in any way remind them that their views are not based on reason. Sounds like a lot of people and social groups I know.

Now, without suggesting any particular "belief" is right or wrong, I would suggest that if you are interested in knowing for sure if your beliefs are the product of brainwashing, or are something you embrace because it actually makes sense and is a rational belief, you do this: Imagine you were born an adult without any belief at about anything, and dropped into this world. And you looked at all the different, competing belief systems out there (e.g., all doctrinal religions). Would your reasoned examination lead you to select the very same religion you hold, even if you had not been indoctrinated in childhood? If not, you are a brainwashed, and are basically the analogous to a person who uses wheelchair rather than walking/running simply because that's the way you were raised. Sounds pretty crappy, huh?

~psychoblast~

 

[amzam]

*believe* *only* *because*

Most people believing only because, don't believe they are believing and OP isn't likely to get to engage them. But some former believers might have some insights. When you are integrated into a group-think equals reality situation challengers of your collective reality are perceived as evil or ignorant or delusional. One's beliefs being "attacked" gets seen as an affirmation of their truth rather than any cause for doubt.

 

[alasdairm]

Most people believing only because, don't believe they are believing...

do you mean that most people never have, never do and never will consider why they happen to believe certain things to be true. they "just do"?

alasdair

 

[No one]

Unfortunately, an extremely large number of the population, have very little brains to be washed in the first place

 

[amzam]

do you mean that most people never have, never do and never will consider why they happen to believe certain things to be true. they "just do"?

alasdair

Some people do question what they believe, and some will question later on. People who have been believing their whole lives and live surrounded by other believers, have a substantive deficit in being able to distinguish their beliefs from reality.

When I say I believe, I'm indicating I don't have proof."I believe" for me is an expression of wish, feeling, or other unverifiable, unprovable stuff. Honestly, when I say I believe, I'm tipping you off that my position is suspect. Not suspect like it couldn't be in a poem, standup, movie etc. Suspect like it cant be proved or disproved. Things that are not factual or unfactual. Those things are personal, and not fodder for a reasonable public argument. They are proof regardless.

A lot of other people saying "I believe" are saying something entirely different.

In some social contexts saying " I believe" is a declaration of a shared reality. This is our real.

Mostly, I'm saying people raised as believers, surrounded by believers, consistently called to affirm their belief, don't understand belief vs reality like fish don't really comprehend water. And I don't blame them.

 

[JessFR]

There are some things I believe perhaps because of how I was raised, but they're all ethical values stuff. Like believing in personal independence, ideas of right and wrong, stuff without clear objective answers, subjective stuff. My actual opinions I formed over time on my own and I have lots of attitudes that aren't the same as my parents. In some cases I think my mom has come to believe my views rather than my following her initial ones.

For example my support of nuclear power. I share my moms environmentalist beliefs, though not to the same extreme. But I think I had a lot to do with showing her supporting nuclear power was a logical extension of support for the environment.

 

[Memnoth]

I met a buddhist in my early adult life, after being a secular atheist, and were seduced by his carefree idiosyncrasies and kind charisma so I chose to convert.

 

[tantric]

in some ways, you can think of religions as diseases, particularly when it comes to transmission. for most of our history, the only way a person contracted a new religion was via forceable conversion or parental transmission. the internet has drastically changed that. when i was a kid, i was lucky to have an encyclopedia, and you bet i read the damn thing. other than that, it was the library. the internet, however, can spread religion germs/memes faster than a TJ ho needin a fix. i LOVE it. as a kid, i had no way whatsoever to experience anything other than christianity, and i bless my parents for not making it mandatory. i think things are gonna change in the future - the trend toward abandoning religion in the west will be answered by people finding new religions from outside their cultures. i will also predict a lot of these will be muslims and buddhists, but hell, gnosticism could come back

 

[tantric]

I met a buddhist in my early adult life, after being a secular atheist, and were seduced by his carefree idiosyncrasies and kind charisma so I chose to convert.

as part of a major in japanese, i took a class on buddhism taught by a monk - about half the class converted. textbook "the vision of buddhism" remains my core text

 

[Cosmic Trigger]

It took me over 50 years to get the fear of god out of my psyche. My parents were fundy christian and hammered that shit into my little child psyche and basically ruined my life with it. We are so vulnerable as children mentally. That's when most all the programming takes place. IMO 95% of what we believe was implanted early on and now we don't remember that so think we came to the conclusion on our own. And often we will defend it to the death. Culture does a serious trip on us and again imo those who state they are not programmed are the most programmed.

 

[Cosmic Trigger]

First off if you're trying to make a connection with me on this then why the are you constantly making disparaging remarks about me personally in other threads rather than just dealing with the subject matter?

And then I never said life has nothing to offer but pointless suffering. It would help if you didn't put words in my mouth I never typed.

Much of my early life in spite of what my parents did was spent in wanting to be alive and striving to have a good life so while my parents have had great influence on me of course there is more to this than that. Empathy. That's what I have for the suffering of much of humanity. Not just humanity but all living things. A percentage of humanity has lives of great suffering. That's just the facts of life. Some have it very good compared. My position has always been that suicide should be a choice for those that want it and society and haters should get the fuck out of the way and let people lead their own lives.

I personally don't care what you believe and do as long as you don't physically harm anyone else. I never once said suicide is for everyone or that everyone should do it. I said it should be a basic human right of free choice and when someone is in great suffering with no relief or for any reason they choose. It's one of life's greatest gifts to us to be able to quit when we're ready. I'm an advocate for free choice. It's something that we are rapidly losing in this world. I have no idea what your problem has been with this position because all you've done is take it as a personal attack on you for some ungodly reason and then to go after me personally when you couldn't present a case that could dispute mine.

Does that answer your questions?

 

[JessFR]

You're right about the programming/vulnerability, but you also say what your parents did to you ruined your life. Is it safe, then, to say that your advocacy of suicide and anti-natalism originates from an aversion to your parents' beliefs and brainwashing approach? And if that's the case, could you honestly claim that suicide is man's greatest gift and that life has nothing to offer except pointless suffering? Do you not see how your emotions make it possible to rationalize these objectively irrational existential conclusions?

I don't mean to sound insulting or patronizing because this is something people deal with constantly, and most don't even realize it. Like even this post I'm typing right now, it's primarily a spiritual exercise. I'm trying to find the right words to build a coherent argument and advance the conversation, but in making that effort I'm also breaking the wall between us which keeps you from understanding what I'm saying. Sometimes the words come to me without effort and other times I really need to work on it in my head before I can articulate it the way I want. The thought process - my actual thoughts, the way they pop in and out, that little internal dialogue, the self-doubt, the self-assertion - it's a spiritual endeavor more than anything else.

This is pretty much my objection to science and rational thought. More often than not, emotion and reason will be inconsistent with each other. This gridlock calls for a spiritual exercise which you must engage in, otherwise you won't be able to move forward. I'm not saying it's easy, but obviously it's harder than killing yourself right? But if you don't face this difficulty, it starts filtering your thoughts and distorting your worldview. Suddenly you can find yourself defending and even wanting something you never wanted.

It's analysing stuff like this which tempts me to believe that there's a purpose in life, that there's such a thing as God etc. I mean there's probably a way to explain all of this in strictly academic terms, but ironically our evidenciary standard is very limited, so rational thinkers reject it a priori in the name of reason, when in fact they are just as much a part of it as anyone else who's willing to believe in it all. Don't get me wrong - skepticism is great, but we've reached the point as a species where we need to accept that there's something more.

I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about.

 

[Foreigner]

In general, we have a lot of things ingrained by who raised us, I think that's pretty normal. It takes years of debunking to get to the bottom of some of it, and even then sometimes it's hard to change. One thing my parents always taught me was to always treat people the way you want to be treated, and to always do the compassionate thing. I'm happy for that. On the downside, they had that British propriety of always caring what other people thought, and keeping up appearances. I've had to change that over the years because sometimes if you don't call people out on their bullshit they'll walk all over you.

Spiritually speaking? My parents were Catholic but my dad hated the Church, so I got a lot of anti-God lectures growing up... not even based on anything intellectual, just raw hate. He grew up with friends who were molested by the Church and saw some other really gruesome things in his time. So his utter hatred of religion and all things "God" was always stated.

But you know how kids are... they are often the counter-culture of their parents. So all that did was make my sister and I curious about religions and different spiritual systems. Now we are pretty cosmopolitan people.

 

[Cosmic Trigger]

Even if you have the right to suicide, do you really think it'd be a free choice for you to make? Have you ever actually kept track of what's going on in your head? Have you noticed the contradictory nature of how we think and behave irl? How your rigid opinion can suddenly become flimsy without good reason? How we accept one person but reject another even though they're saying the same thing? How we repeat the same mistakes and pretend like we didn't know better? How we tend to blame everything else but ourselves? How trapped we are in this shithole of a planet yet somehow we talk about and strive for happiness? How futile any effort seems theoretically but how the smallest change of scenery can change your attitude? How tension or fear can accelerate or subside without really doing much at all? The list is endless...

Anyway it's all part of the process. Stay informed, but most of all pay attention to yourself. No matter how much you want to believe it and how much you think the evidence suggests it, you are not just a body on a rock. There is more.

You saying there is more means you must know and to know you must have created all this. Otherwise how would you know how your brain works and be so sure? So I guess I'll just have to bow before the creator's wisdom. You must know what you're talking about.

And as to free choice if there is none then all this is moot and I mean all of language and everything in our heads along with this subject. But since we don't know that for sure...

For me whether it's actually free or not I'd rather be the guy who thinks and says that people should have that freedom than the guy who thinks and says they shouldn't. In the same way I prefer Gandhi to Hitler.

 

[Ninae]

No, I was raised to be an agnostic, and wanted to try something different.

 

[assclass]

People are often a product of their environment.

 

[swilow]

I sometimes think that certain ideals, such as christianity, that we were raised with are sort of superficial, and can be somewhat shrugged off. I think the things that are harder to remove are the smaller, difficult to pinpoint motivations behind the zillions of micro-decisions that we make daily.

I was raised a catholic. I do not follow that faith and consider it pretty preposterous. I feel deep guilt about things I have done. I understand that a conscience is an inherent feature of humans, but the ease with which I feel guilt and remorse and the sort of ridiculous desire to tell somebody of my failings is a hangover from being raised by Catholics. The idea that forgiveness is only valid if it results from personal debasement and self-punishment. I have made myself tremendously unhappy as a result and am only now, at age 33, seeing how I do not need to punish myself for my wrongs. No one does. This belies my earlier statement; I'm sorry. Forgive me.

The list is endless....

I'm not sure what your list is meant to mean. To me, it shows me that humans are products of that have evolved in their environment and so inherited a certain pallete of responses to factors that arise in that environment. So we end up making the same mistakes or performing the same actions, over and over, because we evolved to automate our behaviour and emotional responses. Our striving to be better or do otherwise is something unnaccountable though, something no animal has ever tried to do before. Humans are unique in the path evolution and ourselves walked.

 

[Nixiam]

I was raised to be Christain.

I jumped off that boat and swam back to the beach.

 

[Ninae]

I think many want to rebel. After all, that's what's fun, right. But you don't necessarily want to shut God out of your life just because you don't like the particular faith you were raised in. There are other concepts of God, like in Hinduism, that could be more to your taste and turn out to enhance your life.

 

[Nixiam]

I always leave room for god, whenever he wants to show the fuck up.