From: Brent Allsop (allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com)
Date: Mon Dec 14 1998 - 10:44:51 MST
Leon <blackman@pacific.net.sg> asked:
> does anybody think teaching critical thinking at a young age (<>6)
> would be helpful? perhaps it would bring about a more extropian
> society?
Yes definitely! Start even earlier than this and never let
up! Send out missionaries to catch people that were missed at young
ages...
> if yes, how do you think it could be implemented?
Do it exactly the way organized religion works so that people
don't have critical thinking abilities. Bombard the kids with
anything possible as soon as possible for as long as possible. Have
large well organized societies, Sunday schools, have family meetings
and workshops where you relentlessly work on the stuff, put more
critical thinking people (as in trained religious leaders) around
children sooner and longer (i.e. the hand that rocks the cradle rules
the world) and so on.
Just think about it. Such early applied brainwashing
techniques have successfully convinced almost the entire lay
population to abandon critical thinking, to give up hope and to think
everyone must die, suffer, and so on for this or that theodicy and
whatever. The real key to the success of these anti critical thinking
memes promoted by organized religion is their ability to take their
horribly hideous, hopeless, and faithless ideas like some God must,
instead of pulling us up to his level, must descend to our level and
infinitely suffer and hideously die for our "sins" and they are able
to successfully convince people that such ideas are something to hope
for and have faith in. They are able to successfully twist their
thinking so that they believe abandoning such hideous ideas is what is
faithless and hopeless. That is why the world works so hard pushing
and fighting against critical thinking.
Imagine how much more successful such intense brain washing
techniques could be if they were applied towards rational thinking
about real, reliable, and natural scientific miracles and other truly
good and hopeful things instead of such irrational fairy tails,
neither world after-lives, unreliable, unnatural, ununderstandable
miracles, justifications and acceptance of evil, hate, suffering, and
all the other faithless absurdities that organized religion is so
successful with.
I think the key is to get people to critically realize what
faith and hope really are. If an omnipotent God can't eliminate evil
(as in suffering, dieing...) for whatever reason, how can we ever have
faith that it can or should be, or hope to be able to over come evil?
You are instead left with attempting to come up with theodicies to
justify and accept evil rather than hoping it can be overcome.
But if there is not yet such a God?... Hey, maybe we can hope
overcoming evil isn't that hard after all!? And even better - work
with such a hopeful assumption that it might really be that easy
rather than giving up and merely miserably waiting for God to end our
lives for us as he allegedly did for his poor miserable "only begotten
Son".
I think all that is required to get more critical thinking in
the world is *REAL* faith and hope.
Brent Allsop
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