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Stop and think about what I actually posted. I'm talking about primary school aged children in Sunday School. Do you think they have the ability to apply critical thinking skills to decide what they should believe?
But yes, at least with your last sentence, knee jerk thinking goes on into and through adulthood.
Age-appropriate content and expectations should apply, but the tendency today seems to be to apply adult standards inappropriately to children in a quest to mold their minds early.
How do you reconcile what you believe with what you've been told to believe?
From birth to an age I cannot pinpoint, I was the student. I listened to people's various points of view while developing my own. Each individual belief has had it's switching point where I no longer cared what others believed but instead was confident in my own.
At 59 there are still things in this world where my beliefs are still held in a shroud of doubt due to others beliefs. I do not consider myself attempting to reconcile anything. Instead it's a continued search for what I want to believe. If I mesh with the majority then great, I'm a believer like the rest. But if I don't it doesn't mean I'm wrong, but that doubt pushes me to continue to seek out a belief that will stick.
How do you reconcile what you believe with what you've been told to believe?
From birth to an age I cannot pinpoint, I was the student. I listened to people's various points of view while developing my own. Each individual belief has had its switching point where I no longer cared what others believed but instead was confident in my own.
At 59 there are still things in this world where my beliefs are still held in a shroud of doubt due to others' beliefs. I do not consider myself attempting to reconcile anything. Instead, it's a continued search for what I want to believe. If I mesh with the majority then great, I'm a believer like the rest. But if I don't it doesn't mean I'm wrong, but that doubt pushes me to continue to seek out a belief that will stick.
Does that make any sense?
Yes, it makes the most sense of anything posted so far.
If you are actually affiliated with a specific religion or denomination of Christianity, how do you reconcile what your religion teaches with what you actually believe? If there's a conflict, do you just toss out the baby with the bath water and move on to a new set of beliefs, do you stress out about the discrepancy between what you believe and what you have been told you're "supposed to" believe, or have you found a good way to reconcile these conflicts while still remaining part of the group you affiliate with?
Converted to Judaism after being a Pentecostal for 40 years, a person who was obsessed with reading the bible everyday, always, a thousand times, and then I found out that Jesus practiced Judaism and that the first Christianity was a sect of Judaism. Took me years to find out how much I didn't know and still don't know, and I study like no other person, and all I find out is how wrong I was, and how much more I don't know.
Even if the story of Adam and Eve is a metaphor, there still lies the questions of what are right and what are wrong attitudes and behaviors.
The best I can come up with based on this story that is somewhat more precise than "right" and "wrong" - if somebody gives you a command, listen. Only break the command if you have to solve a problem in an emergency. It is preferable to tell the owner what you plan on doing if you need to break the order given.
Mark 2.22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins."
The problem with filling up with new bathwater is that you still look at that and tell yourself there's a baby in it.
To bludgeon the metaphor into oblivion, critical thinking applied to the religious claims, bails out the bathwater until it's gone and then we ask 'Where's the baby?'
Mark 2.22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins."
The problem with filling up with new bathwater is that you still look at that and tell yourself there's a baby in it.
To bludgeon the metaphor into oblivion, critical thinking applied to the religious claims, bails out the bathwater until it's gone and then we ask 'Where's the baby?'
Critical thinking is important, but if that's all you've got, you close yourself off to the possibilities of that which cannot be explained. You've cast aside the baby and let it shrivel up and get dirty (to bludgeon a metaphor even further, .) While that seems fine and dandy to you, some of us who still let ourselves roam the world of the not-easily-explainable don't want to live in that dry, shriveled state.
Good point. I wonder if there are some JW parents who encourage their kids to think for themselves. I ask because Mormonism, to a lesser extent that what you've described, really does encourage compliance with the group's way of thinking. My parents, on the other hand, while active, practicing Mormons, really did encourage me to explore various belief systems and to realize that much of what I heard taught in church was really just people's own opinions. I don't think the thought ever even crossed their minds that they might be doing something that would result in less than pleasant consequences for either them or their kids.
same here katz, as I alluded to, my parents did their job first.
If I chose "them", that was fine. If I chose "not them", they were fine with that too.
They were not fine with turning lose a dangerous adult child loose on society that would force others to deal with it, after it hurt somebody.
Critical thinking is important, but if that's all you've got, you close yourself off to the possibilities of that which cannot be explained. You've cast aside the baby and let it shrivel up and get dirty (to bludgeon a metaphor even further, .) While that seems fine and dandy to you, some of us who still let ourselves roam the world of the not-easily-explainable don't want to live in that dry, shriveled state.
its worse than that. we have fundy think type atheist in our ranks that are as narrow minded an self centered to think that their world view is what will save the rest of us. despite what the science says.
Critical thinking is important, but if that's all you've got, you close yourself off to the possibilities of that which cannot be explained. You've cast aside the baby and let it shrivel up and get dirty (to bludgeon a metaphor even further, .) While that seems fine and dandy to you, some of us who still let ourselves roam the world of the not-easily-explainable don't want to live in that dry, shriveled state.
Mmmmmmmm...I'm not so sure that's true (or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying). I think that coming to the conclusion that something is outside of the norms of experience can be part of critical thinking.
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Love it!
.) While that seems fine and dandy to you, some of us who still let ourselves roam the world of the not-easily-explainable don't want to live in that dry, shriveled state.
