As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions -- to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational -- the powers of reason are suprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind. -- Steve Allen

As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of

religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the

methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions --

to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven

years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the

untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy --

and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and

high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational -- the powers of reason are

suprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind.

-- Steve Allen



Source: http://www.askmatt.info