This is what my Parents Taught Me, and this is what I Believe

This post can also be titled: "Teach your children to think for themselves".

From tender ages, children are taught things which aren't true. Most of the time, this is because people believe that it is true - political viewpoints, religious viewpoints, religion in general, and urban myths and legends are some of the many examples of this.

First, I'll address a common myth that really annoys me - you don't catch a cold by being cold. It should be obvious to anyone who knows that there's a cold virus, but it's not. You don't catch it by being cold. You may get a runny nose, but that's not a cold in itself. The common cold is caused by a virus. Enough said on that topic.

From this point on this is about religion. The feeble minded may leave the room if they so choose.

From young ages, people teach their children what to believe. The #1 falsehood that they are brought up to believe is their religion. Somehow, very few people seem to have this revelation and then draw the correct conclusions: "If I was born to different parents, they would believe something different". The correct conclusion is: "Why should I be believing what my parents taught me about religion when any other parents would have a different set of beliefs? What makes their any better than all the others?" From there you can extrapolate: "How is their religion valid just because they were taught it? Why should I believe in any religion if it all depends on how I was raised?"

If you still haven't gotten the point through your head, it's this: people believe these things because they are raised to believe them. There is no reason to believe in them. Some people switch between religions. The whole idea of switching religions is practically an invalidation of religion in itself - the idea should lead you to these conclusions: "If people are supposed to change what they believe, how come the old one is suddenly wrong and the new beliefs are right? How can any of it be true if beliefs about the nature of the world are so malleable?"

This all applies to beliefs. You might argue that it can also apply to science, but it does not. Science is based on logical explanations, proofs, and disproving as much as you possibly can so that the tip of the golden kernel of truth sticks out. Or in cruder language "You have to dig through a huge pile of shit just to find the chocolate". Yes, it's a quite disgusting, but it's a pretty good analogy for experimental science. There's also mathematical science, which is even more reliable. Science is not, and should never be, a belief system or religion. You should believe that the scientific method unveils truths in our world
 simply because it's true, not because  you are told to by something which makes no attempt to prove its worth and which instead does nothing but justify itself over and over.

Unfortunately, the large majority of people will stick firmly by their religion even in the face of all evidence which points to it being little more than hokum.

I leave you (assuming that one reader visits this blog again) with this thought:
There is no animal more deluded than a human. Only one animal continually fools itself in each generation into believing what the last generation believed with undue ferocity.