--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tartbrain <no_re...@...> wrote: <snip> > Plus, its my observation, that people are far less likely > to change their minds, is sustained and deeps ways, if > you simple challenge their beliefs. They may indeed dig > in deeper not that their egos are involved. It is often > more productive, from my experience, to create conditions > that enable the "believer" to challenge their own ideas, > and to see the light -- to create that "ah ha" experience > within them - on their own terms, using their own logic. > Not always easy -- but not always hard either.
Exactly what I think. As I've said to Curtis, it seems to me that one way to approach this is to address actual behavior without reference to beliefs. If you can make a convincing case to the believer that a particular behavior is actually harmful, with no redeeming value--preferably by using examples of harm that the believer is familiar with firsthand (such as banishing a gay child)--the believer is going to have to question the belief that this is something God wants them to do, since God presumably wants only what is good. And once this question has arisen, it can lead to other questions, such as whether the believer has accurately interpreted the scripture of his/her religion, or even perhaps whether the scripture itself accurately represents what God wants. From there, all kinds of additional questions become possible, right up to and including God's very existence. As you say, if it's the *believer* who asks these questions of him/herself, it's much more powerful than if the critic poses them. The *primary* goal, though, IMHO, is to stop the bad behavior and the suffering it inflicts. If beliefs change or are dropped as a result--and there's no guarantee of that--it's a bonus. But futzing around with epistemological challenges which, valid though they may be, don't influence the bad behavior means that the suffering inflicted by the bad behavior continues. It's more satisfying intellectually to trot out one's grasp of epistemology and use it to triumphantly wrestle the beliefs to the ground, but it's unlikely to spur the same wrestling on the part of the believer. To the believer, the virtue of faith is that it transcends epistemology. (I subscribe to the rest of the points Tartbrain makes as well, BTW.)
