[ExI] de Waal

[William Flynn Wallace]

see bottom

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 1:28 PM, Henrik Ohrstrom <henrik.ohrstrom at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
>
>> I'm not saying there is a gene for religion, I'm saying there is a gene
>> that predisposes the young to believe what adults tell them. If adults
>> don't push religion onto their kids then they probably won't grow up to be
>> religious nuts. And church attendance may be in decline, at least in
>> Europe, but I don't think mosque attendance is in decline
>>
>> John K Clark
>>
>
> From observing our new citizens here in sweden, first arrival are a mixed
> lot vsv religion. Second generation who came young or born here by new
> arrival parents, confused and go to mosques quit a lot. 3:e generation,
> about as eager as your normal swede. That is, not a lot.
> /henrik
>

​I think what is being searched for here is simply the influence of
conformity and compliance.  One learns early that Mom and Dad's rules are
obeyed or negative consequences occur.  If they are religious, then that
gets put in early.  But soon the kids go to school and conformity pressure
is enormous.  Many studies show that conformity is greater to the society
at large, exemplified by the school kids, than to the parents.  By the teen
years, parents are largely ignored - are considered 'out of it' and
irrelevant, causing even more stress at home and differences between home
and school.

So yes, there is definitely a tendency to believe what you are told
(parents don't generally teach a child to consider all alternatives; that
is, presenting a one-sided argument that is rather easily refuted by later
exposure to two-sided arguments).  College is often a time of great stress
because one is exposed to opinions sometimes far different from what one
got at home and at school.  I, for example, was a small town boy and when I
went to LSU and encountered Arabs and Armenians​ and Cajuns, well, it was a
different world with far more variety than I ever expected and thus for me,
college was a time of having my beliefs challenged and challenging them
myself.  I'm still not sure about everything I believe and that's a good
thing.  Being sure is commonly a sign of a closed mind.

bill w

>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20180620/a8ba0ea3/attachment.html>