Religion and brainwashing

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I've been reevaluating my beliefs for a long time and have been vexed by the idea of me being brainwashed my whole life to accept all religious dogma and molded into an acquiscent religous naive credulous person. where at one point i was an adamant believer i have been deliberating perpetually and am vacillating between agnostic and skeptical believer. sigh

the sad thing is ill never know the truth of whether i have been brainwashed to gullibly swallow religious dogma or corrupted by the devil to deviate from my religion.

Salad, this might help:
http://recoveringfromreligion.org

How interesting, Thanks



What may also help, is study some philosophy for a while, it will help you rediscover your self.

Also study other religions (Shintoism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Hinduism, etc). And read the Bible. The latter sounds unhelpful, but when you get down into it and try to read it from cover to cover, at some point you just have to start laughing.

Some more recommended reading

http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/twain/letearth.htm

Yeah, don't be afraid to let go. It'll be a great relief, I promise.

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

– Thomas Jefferson

Think about it, a human walking on water, a man being swallowed by a giant fish and lived inside him for three days? have they heard of digestion before?lol, alsoto me religion is just a bunch of brainwash,corruption and its all controlled by money, those extra coins or couple dollars u put in at church to donate go straight to the preachers new car, or priest, think about it, my familys are highly catholic, but im not afraid to show them wrong because its an extra boulder off my shoulder, study horus,the sun god, study other religions from india and youll see a pattern of sameness come together, horus and jesus were born dec25, funny thing is horus came before jesus, watch the movie called zeitgiest on youtube or netflix, great and informational, cheers!

Religion=Brainwashing especially Christianity and Islam!

You might be brainwashed as you start thinking you were previously brainwashed, so never lose your guard. But don't get too paranoid!

More than just religion is involved there since we all need human community, so the challenge is to find fellowship with others who are identified by their actions -- known by their love for one another -- rather than by their beliefs.


Being skeptical of religion is healthy, imho, just do not step into the snare of believing it ever came from our Creator.


I had that very same concern when I began walking away from religion in 1981. I have yet to find the final answer on every detail, but today I know for myself what luanqibazao has quoted from Thomas Jefferson: "[God] must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

Well you're on the right track. The bible is extremely unjust and comically bloody minded. It's just another tribal group justifying its wins, losses, history and legal code as the will of magical beings. Knocking down a tribal with a sling is one thing. Beating Rome might be more interesting. The Jews repeatedly lost in the face of overwhelming military superiority, as anyone would, and then justified it as the judgement of god. The fact is that they never had a chance against certain threats.

If you view the NT and OT in the contexts of their time and place you can also see that they repeat existing stories and themes. The NT in particular was written in an era when an imaginative and literate elite existed that was capable of generating all sorts of stories. As even Christians have to admit because they burned or condemned the ones they didn't like.

Read the bible cover to cover when you get a moment.... or several months. I think you'll find a lot of answers.

Really the bible is nothing like our present church culture, Sunday school is nothing like it, and what gets provided in our culture - the reason so many Christians don't read the bible - is what you might call a loosely nit and agreed upon cultural egregore of sorts.

I don't know what you'll find more interesting - whether it'll be John's neoplatonism, the Chaldean astrology loaded in the Torah and Ezekiel, or just the sheer amount of killing 'supposedly' done by a God who was so angry at Jephthah in Judges for offering a human sacrifice for victory in battle that he sent Jephthah's daughter out as the sacrifice (which doesn't jive at all with Samuel's men and David's men killing each other, Israelites fighting Israelites, and rather vague reappearances of the voice of Yahweh rubber-stamping their decisions).

After pouring over it as much as I did trying to really understand it I finally decided to bounce it off of the Hermetic corpus, some of my 'spiritual warfare' readings into stuff like Manly P Hall's Secret Teachings of All the Ages kicked in, and as I started studying Kabbalah/Cabala/Qabalah and it's various history I'm starting to understand the whole "milk for babes, meat for men" thing - ie. what really seems to be hidden under the Torah is something more akin, at least in my mind, in flavor to Hinduism or Buddhism albeit taken in the Hermetic direction it cleaves to material optimism rather than material pessimism. When I first started reading MP Hall and others with their claims of various patriarchs being mystery initiates I just took that as being their own particular brand of koolaid to sell but when you reall think of it - Moses was an adopted son of the Pharoah during the height of the Egyptian mysteries (arc building was an Egyptian art, the ten commandments or something very similar are in the Papyrus of Ani), and then you have people like Daniel and Ezra in Babylon - the place where most people believe that the Pentateuch or Torah were written and based on the Babylonian creation stories it makes sense when you have seven day weeks and cycles or a complete Mazaloth or zodiac being described as encompassing the Earth (whether it's the twelve renumbered tribes among the Levites to make thirteen or it's the twelve disciples around Jesus - that repeats). Another fun bit of astrology - the four faces of the cherubim (Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius, Taurus) gets thrown in not only in Ezekiel but also in Revelations in the throne room of Revelations 4. Revelations seems to be a complete throwback to the Old Testament in how the gifts to the overcomers of the seven churches in Revelations 2 and 3 are all given gifts that would mean far more to a mystery initiate than to us - things like new or secret names in particular has a very pagan-mystery type of flavor, add certain overcomers being made permanent pillars in God's throne room and you very quickly get the feeling that we're looking at something much closer to a document on pagan-style gnosis than the 20th/21st century church-isms of the US or other places. The Lucifer thing is even worse - however they describe the king of Tyre in Isaiah 14 get's reused (bright and morning star) not only as a gift to the overcomers of Thyatira but also is used to describe Jesus. Gematria for 'serpent' and 'savior' are also the same - so much points in the direction of virtual dualism within monism that it gets hard to keep track of.

Anymore I still think that the bible is an incredibly important and valuable book but as a storehouse of various mystery teachings from antiquity from some of the best schools of that time - IF you can walk it backward and get a good understanding of the cultural contexts and hermeneutics.

salad, you might find this book answers your questions:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/055277331X

^^Oh my daughter's got that one.^^

She's a staunch atheist.

The book would help salad to focus and consider his doubts. Many other people have doubts and wonder about their religious indoctrination and question whether they have been brainwashed. The book will help him explore why religious beliefs arise and pertinent questions to ask himself. Where he goes from there is up to him.