Well, so I just asked a question today about the spiritual process of egg cleansing and after reading the replies of David Killens, I just realized something is wrong with me. Why didn't I think of egg cleansing and my narrated experiences the way David thought?
Then something even more terrible happened. I just browsed through my old questions and I probably have never been so embarrassed.
From asking explanations on how Muhammad became invisible to believing that dreams are true and blabla, like wtf. I think I've asked the most retarded questions that anyone could ever imagine.
So here's what I've thought of as a solution. I wish to learn about skeptical thinking, fallacies, biases and all the stuff that I can know to help myself in thinking rationally. My problem is probably due to 18 years of religious brainwashing but here's what I am suffering now:
1) Whenever I hear or read about a supernatural event, I become stressed. I deal with the event by finding out HOW it happened so I can understand, logically, if it really is supernatural.
But then, most of the times, the event has "bullshit" written all over it and I'm still trying to research about it and find out how it occurred. For example, foreign objects coming out of eggs, Muhammad becoming invisible, Muhammad splitting the moon (this one really took me some time to figure out how after finally realizing that there are marks on the moon which stretch for miles and they are natural. Muslims consider them to be evidence that moon was once split).
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In simple words, I don't know how to approach a supernatural event or religious claim, something which is out of the ordinary. I'm too used to believing things. Few days ago some Muslim scholar came to meet my parents. He also met me and told me some of his stories of how a boy of my age was possessed with a demon and how he (the scholar) drove out the demon, slapped his face and even got slapped in return and blabla. In the end he says he entrapped the demon in something and burned it. He smiled at me and said, "but you see the demon didn't leave me alone until he took the revenge for the slap that I gave him".
This so-called "true" story or "demonic possession case" of his really fucked me up. I was confused HOW DID HE BURN the demon and how can he get slapped. You see? I wasn't thinking about why should I believe this man's words and where is the evidence that this man is mentally sane and doesn't have hallucinations or mental illness.
Instead, I thought about how was the demon burned and how can he get slapped. Can you notice the illogical jump I make to explain an event? I approach everything in the worst and most inaccurate possible way.
Any advice on skeptical thinking? Like, right from step 1, what do I do?
For the sake of the health of my brain, just assume I'm retarded and I have no sense of logical or rational thinking. Now tell me where do I begin to learn about this and more importantly, practice it. I really admire people like Sheldon, Nyar, Cognostic, arakish, Tin-Man and other genius minds.
I know I'm a new atheist, new to the world of religious skepticism, but let's say I wanna fast-forward and learn quickly. I'm a hard-working individual and I just need direction. I don't know who else to ask.
I really hope you guys understand what I'm saying and how my brain is illogically approaching the arguments. Should I read books about skepticism? Should I read the topics on this website more and analyze how others reply and what arguments are being used? Should I learn the different kinds of fallacies that exist (I know none)?
Waiting for your response guys.
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I'd suggest simply taking a step back when confronted by something that is perplexing.
Then consider what is more likely,
A) The laws of nature have been suspended in the favor of whomever is making the claim.
Or,
B) Someone is talking utter bollocks and completely unable to back up their nonsensical beliefs or claims with even a shred of reasonable proof.
Allow yourself time to think!
But dont be afraid to post your thoughts too, keep progressing and try to weigh up evidence as you go.
You need to give yourself a bit of time. Your unskeptical way of thinking has been with you for a long time, it will take a while to change your approach to existential claims of the supernatural.
You might want to read, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan. It gives you a set of the best tools for discerning fact from fiction. It will turn you into a kind of a bs detector.
A newer book, which I haven't read but is supposed to be very good, is, "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake" by Bob Novella.
Let me add this quote from Philosopher David Hume, "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”…and should “always reject the greater miracle".
Sorry the above quote is sexist, but he Hume lived in the 1700's.
Seek3R you are not stupid.
But you are the victim of being brainwashed, being completely immersed in a culture of woo woo.
I suggest you just start slow, and begin, when faced with any issue, is to determine whether it is really true. If you can't feel it, smell or taste it or see it, then it is suspect and must be proven to be real.
Start slow with your new ability to discern reality from fiction.
@Seek3R: Color changing eggs is a simple magic trick I learned as a child. Add a spiritual element and a bit of slight of hand and you get MYSTICISM. Its all bullshit. I can put any color you like into an egg. I can put all sorts of items into eggs using magician sponges. I can put silk handkerchiefs into eggs and a thousand other things. Adding smell is as simple as brushing your teeth. There IS no MAGIC here. It is a bullshit con game. Here are some examples....
Solid colored eggs of any color you like, Substitute jello for dye and leave the eggs inside the shell and you can have a bloody mess or a black mass, whichever you prefer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRwhQ_IjG0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK58US1pxdM
With food coloring or dye this could be done in any color you like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDoigR3oss0
You do not need a plastic egg. Magicians use plastic eggs because they are reusable and require less prep time.
https://www.magictricks.com/latex-egg.html
get your magic egg here and amaze your friends by doing your own voodoo curse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRwhQ_IjG0Q
Rational and critical thought can be learned. The most important step is to dare to question what has been stated as fact, and ask for evidence. Then you follow the evidence, not the claims. Both steps require a willingness to change one's mind about the subject in question, or at the very least to change perspectives.
Education is a good way of learning rational thought in addition to knowledge about how nature works. For me, having gone through the university system learning physics, mathematics, and computer science has been a supreme eye opener. It equipped me with some basic tools needed for critical examination of claims. But it was external stimuli that triggered my interest in critical examination of extraordinary claims. In particular, it was outrageous claims from creationists and a well-known incident on the Internet some 25+ years ago involving a particularly nasty religious cult that got me started.
But you don't need a university education to become a good rational and critical thinker. Like I stated above, you need to dare ask questions, even about the most solidifed dogma. You may start out by trying to understand it better, and then maybe you find some irregularities you might want to investigate further.
Read. Read lots of books on science and the scientific mindset, and what science actually says, as opposed to the distortions that religious apologists put on the table. Read about biology, evolution, geology, astronomy, cosmology, physics, engineering, or whatever subject you might find an interest in.
Learn some basic tools to distinguish real arguments from logical fallacies, and learn to recognize the fallacies. Start with the simple ones, know them well, and proceed to the more advanced. A list of fallacies can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
Discuss. Find a web forum or something and start discussing. Just make sure that the place is populated by some rational people, and that you don't end up in an echo chamber. Practice your line of reasoning. Learn from others.
But in the end, perhaps the two most important questions you can ask are "Why?" and "What's the evidence for that?" Those should get you a long way.
Edit: added some stuff + fixed spelling
Hi everybody,
Thank you so much for your responses. I've tried to analyze my problem more and I think whenever I approach a supernatural claim, story or something out of the ordinary, the emotions overwhelm me way faster than I can use my mind first.
That is, I become scared. What if this is true? Omfg, but how? But then I read religions are false, how this then? Wtf, how did he do that? How is it possible?
These are probably SOME of the questions that rise in my mind and along with them comes the swarm of unnecessary emotions. The funny part is, by the end of some loooong hard-work, I always discover, with the help of Atheist Republic, that whatever I was worried about, is AS ALWAYS fake and bullshit like the other parts of the religion.
The end result is same - the truth is revealed. The starting point is also the same - wrong questions causing the accompaniment of negative and unnecessary emotions - a cycle of worries ending up in a brainfog.
I've been trying to stay away from religion which is why I'm not much active here. Whenever I come online, it is to ask a question which completely fucked me. I guess, I need to change my perspective of everything. I have recognized some very wrong things about how I look at my ex religion i.e. more like a criminal who wasted my entire life instead of looking at it in the way that it is the reason why I am a liberated atheist today who doesn't have to be a slave to an invisible god or prostrate five times on the floor every single fucking day.
I'm full of hatred for my ex religion. I wish I could remove it from the face of this earth. I sometimes which I could go back to the time I was still not much into religion and then bring back today's knowledge and put that in my younger brain so I could avoid the shit I am facing today. I chose to follow religion more profoundly because my parents had made me believe it was the only right thing to do so.
But whatever happened, it is in the past. The worst thing is that right now I'm not at all what I want myself to be. To become that, I need time and time is what I hate right now because I want this to happen quickly. Religions are everywhere, especially my ex religion since I still live with my conservative family and perniciously extremist country. The questions, the anxiety that follows, the inability to think, the innocence of believing every religious bullshit.
But then, when I look at myself in the past, the day when I became an atheist, 27th May 2018, 7:09 A.M. declared my beliefs to my family. I was much fucked up back then. I see myself quite improved today but that "quite improved" is only 10% of what I want my best self to be.
@Get off my lawn: thank you for a comprehensive response. It really helped me understand what I should do next.
@Simon Moon: you won't believe it but I just downloaded the Demon Haunted World yesterday, yet to start reading. I also downloaded "Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments"
@Cognostic: I figured the fucking El Limpia bullshit, replied to you on my el limpia topic with a detailed step-by-step method of how it's done.
@everyone else: love you all, thanks. You're all like a family.
Seek3R do not hate your religion but despise those who use it to further their personal agenda. For you, religion was a long and painful learning experience. Now you know what it is, and once it has been revealed, it is not the mighty and dangerous dragon it wants you to believe, but rather a tiny little insignificant insect you can squash with your thumb.
The important thing to understand is that religion no longer controls you. You control it, and over time, you will learn to calm your emotions when thinking about religion.
Take the high road, because religion teaches you to hate and do bad things. Now you are free from the evil influences of religion, and you can follow a higher and better moral path, and be a much better person.
Never ever forget that the purpose of religion is to enslave and control people.
Those in power use either religion or military to enforce their wishes. If they do not send in the army, they send in the priests.
@David Killens
This reminds me of the Sid Meier's Civilization series. In expansions, or the original game, (for civ 6) one way to achieve victory was via religion. A very effective way to "win" in that game was to send in the priests/prophets/holymen and capture/control religious sites/artifacts. While a video game about conquering the world in a myriad of different ways (conquest, science, political, cultural, etc) is hardly a good indicator of reality, one of the best strategy game series ever created adding in religious conquest does speak volumes to how we should at least suspect how things are in reality. Religious domination victory was a lot easier typically then a "conquest" victory in the civilization series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T_jwq9ph8k
re: "Whenever I come online, it is to ask a question which completely fucked me. " IMO - That is a great way to use the site. You keep popping in whenever you have a question and the guys around here, myself included, are going to keep popping off!