Consciencebound

I am currently listening to an audio book by Christopher Hitchens entitled The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non Believer.  It is a collection of excerpts  of various books written by free thinking individuals such as Lucretius, Omar Khayyˆ°m, Spinoza, Hume, Darwin, Mark Twain, Marx and others.  It is actually quite enjoable reading (or listening in my case) and very thought provoking.

One of the authors that I cannot recal at the moment discusses the prevelance of superstitions thought both in our own day as well as in ages past.  He points out how common and easy it is to latch onto beliefs about the world that are simply not grounded in reality and how whole entire populations can believe such nonsense.  Beliefs such as: unlucky days, unlucky numbers, supriority of a certain race, superiority of a certain sex, superiority of a certain nation, beliefs about the afterlife, etc.  He lists a number of things that one can do to help keep one’s self from falling into this sort of unwarranted beliefs  which I found very helpful. The list below are either directly taken from this man’s examples or they were my own which I was reminded of in listening to this book

- Pay attention to how angry or hostile you get when presented with a different viewpoint on any given subject.  Usually, the more angry or upset you get about someone espousing a certain position means that your own beliefs are actually not as well founded as you once thought and subconsciously you know this whether you are ready to admit it or not.  Listening to a differing viewpoint should encite curiosity as to the reasons that someone believes it or possibly pity if the person has no good reason for their belief but never hostility and anger.

- Take every opportunity to learn about a different culture and their beliefs.  The very act of observing different belief systems at work that are held by large numbers of people can be very humbling and cause us to take a second look at the reasons that we may have for our own beliefs.

- Observe that which you doubt the least.  That which you doubt the least, is often the very thing that you should doubt the most.  We regularly make assumptions for one reason or another that we have no reason to have.  It is when we step back and take a look at our most basic assumptions that we find ourself becoming uncomfortable and realizing, if we are honest with ourselves, that we actually do not know why we believe this thing that we have assumed for so long.

- Take a look at your beliefs and observe those beliefs which are grounded in fear.  Fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd,  fear of not being with the herd, fear of disaster, fear of uncertainty.  Fear is the mother of all superstition.  It is the fear that guards the superstition from scrutiny and analysis.  Because we are fearful of a given thing, we cling to various beliefs that we think will save us from that thing which we fear.  Therefore, to challenge our belief, is to make ouselves unsecure about that which we fear.  This is a psychological straight jacket which keeps us from understanding the true nature of the world.  Once we reaslize that we should only believe something if we have very good reason to believe it, we can let go of our need to be attached to a given belief and then we can truly examine it for what it is.

-   Can we admit the posssibility that we may be wrong?  For me this is huge.  It is when I feel that I am right, so right that there is no possibility that I could be wrong about something that I exibit my weakness.  I find that when I let go of my need to be right and have the answer to everything that I am much more able to learn about opposing viewpoints and honestly consider their logical merits.

Jeff

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