On Sat, 12 Feb 2000, Ziana Astralos wrote:
> Oh, if only! Everyone else in my family is highly
> religious; only recently have I made the only slight
> inroad of progress so far, talking my mom out of
> making me attend church (they're Catholics) every
> Sunday morning (although I'm supposed to spend that
> hour at home reading religious literature).
> Eventually....
>
You might try to get by with archeology books related
to the history of the Middle East ("Mom, how can I properly
interpret the things the Bible says if I'm illiterate about
the culture and society that existed in those times...").
A more fictional, but philisophical note might be C.S. Lewis,
but our philosophers might want to comment on the relative
benefits and risks of pursuing this. Some of the early
Christian philosophers might be interesting. Finding
the flaws in the premises or arguments helps strengthen
analytical thinking.
If you can sell the point, any of the literature about Zen
(with or without the Buddism attached) is both educational
and thought provoking.
I was pretty much in identical circumstances about 28 years ago.
It is survivable, but editing the foundation memes is a long term
process.
As a suggestion when discussing things with people, you want to
ask something like: "Are you your thoughts or beliefs or are you
the being that *has* thoughts are beliefs?". Only if they can
make the distinction between *being* the memes and *having*
the memes do you stand a chance of changing their viewpoint.
When they consider themselves to be an automobile (for lack of
a better analogy) and you are slowly crushing it, you will get
resistance. If on the other hand they realize that they are the
"operator" of the vehicle and you are simply offering to trade
them an "old" model for a "new" model, then you stand a fighting
chance.
Robert
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