DEALING WITH SYSTEMS THAT INSTIL AND FEED CONTROL BELIEF

A control belief controls and co-ordinates how you look at the evidence and how you interpret it.

Believers in religious or political systems make up their minds and then they interpret the evidence to fit their belief.

A control belief can be conscious or unconscious. You may not be aware of how you treat something as probably true.

To avoid and minimise the damage and risks of control beliefs you need to know what the default beliefs are. That helps work out why people are not settling for these beliefs or sometimes are unaware of the need for the right defaults.

Child initiation into the system and child indoctrination are the keys to instilling and empowering control beliefs. We will look at religion as an example.

BABY BAPTISM

The default position is that babies do not need to have original sin taken away in baptism. They don't have any sin of any kind.

Baptism is based on the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is no evidence at all that Jesus rose. There is no evidence that anybody in the gospels believed that he did. There is only evidence that they said they believed he rose. The witnesses of the resurrection were never cross-examined or investigated. It's just gossip and hearsay. Baptism is insulting to the child. It tries to make them members of a man-made religious system.

Baptism is supposed to work a miracle on the child. Parents should ask for extraordinary evidence for this miracle. What they get is none at all. This demeans the child.

CHILD INDOCTRINATION

The default position is that children have no need of religious faith. We know from Freud, that if we do harm, the reason is the unhealthy thinking patterns that got into our programming before we reached six or seven or whatever age one takes to be the age of accountability. Doctrines such as that, "God watches you all the time to see if you are being good," or, "God will punish you or send you down to the Devil", or "Santa will bring you no presents if you are bad", all ingrain such patterns. Children would be better to be taught that actions are good and less good. No action is completely bad or completely good. To encourage a child to think of himself as bad or good is too black and white and is abusive. Telling children to take all their comfort and joy in God is really teaching them the crave for instant gratification that later on in life will turn then into alcoholics or drug addicts. Children do not distinguish between themselves and the good or bad they do. If you call something they do bad, they will think, "We are bad". To use fear to control a child is abuse - especially when it is religious type fear.

Finally, we need our defaults. We only want other beliefs. That is why control belief mechanisms are inherently oppressive.