TNZ wrote:
"Sounds new age doesn't it, sorry DA)"
Yes but I actually agree with you. I think it is, in fact, the power of the human mind but not the power you may be thinking.
It has been proven, repeatedly, that human memories are not a tape recording of events that can be played back at will. They are easily constructed to match events as one wishes to believe them. Take, for example, the research done with a clown, or whatever, walking across the court during the middle of a basketball game or the law school exercise in which an event is staged in the class and students are asked to testify as to what happened. Those who wish to believe woo-woo feel-good fuzzy nonsense have no problem doing so. That is the way the mind is wired. And memories are constructed to match the predisposition.
I don't think belief systems are all bad but I do think that contemporary religion has far more to apologize for than to smile about. No matter what value it may have had in the past it now serves the purpose of picking pockets and to my feeling is best summed up by a oft repeated quote attributed to H.L. Mencken:
"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to
mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking."
Not to mention genocide, war, and a bomb that murdered more than 120 people in Baghdad within the last 24 hours.
