What do you believe that is not true?
I was at the Pony Pasture today and saw a bumper sticker that said, "Don't believe every thing that you think." This is great advice because everything that we believe is not true. What we think is largely determined by others. We are told thousands of things by our parents, teachers, advertisers, friends and politicians. Life is too short to independently verify every thing we hear. If we are told something enough times we tend to accept it as true. Many of the things we are told seep into our conscious and act to form the way we think.
Many of the false things that we think are harmless. If you believe a cup of coffee in the morning helps you think better, there is very little harm even if studies later prove this to be false. But sometimes we believe things to be true that are not true and it causes great damage.
About a year ago I found myself in a meeting with a psychologist who happened to believe in reincarnation. There were about thirty of us in the room and she said she was going to regress us and allow us to see some of our past lives.
I am not going to criticize her beliefs, but I am going to criticize her thinking.
You know, of course, that prior to the industrial revolution, the vast majority of people worked in agriculture. Also, a very large percentage of people who have lived before were Chinese since China has such a large population. So if past lives are uniformly distributed, you would expect that many of the people in the room would report that in their past lives they were Chinese peasant farmers.
No one reported that they had been Chinese in a prior life and only one person reported being a farmer. If we assume that just 20% of the people who lived prior lives were Chinese, than the chances that none of the people in the room had been Chinese in a prior life is .8 to the 30th power. That's almost zero. The occupations that people reported having in their prior lives were much more interesting than being farmers. There were ship's captains and General officers and princesses.
The psychologist who believed in reincarnation looked only for facts that supported her preconceived belief that she had in fact lived many times before. What she never did was look for ideas and evidence that people do not have multiple lives.
The point is, if you are making an important decision, it is often a very good idea to write out what are the facts and assumptions as well as what you believe and ask what are the things that you believe that may actually be not true.
Many of the false things that we think are harmless. If you believe a cup of coffee in the morning helps you think better, there is very little harm even if studies later prove this to be false. But sometimes we believe things to be true that are not true and it causes great damage.
About a year ago I found myself in a meeting with a psychologist who happened to believe in reincarnation. There were about thirty of us in the room and she said she was going to regress us and allow us to see some of our past lives.
I am not going to criticize her beliefs, but I am going to criticize her thinking.
You know, of course, that prior to the industrial revolution, the vast majority of people worked in agriculture. Also, a very large percentage of people who have lived before were Chinese since China has such a large population. So if past lives are uniformly distributed, you would expect that many of the people in the room would report that in their past lives they were Chinese peasant farmers.
No one reported that they had been Chinese in a prior life and only one person reported being a farmer. If we assume that just 20% of the people who lived prior lives were Chinese, than the chances that none of the people in the room had been Chinese in a prior life is .8 to the 30th power. That's almost zero. The occupations that people reported having in their prior lives were much more interesting than being farmers. There were ship's captains and General officers and princesses.
The psychologist who believed in reincarnation looked only for facts that supported her preconceived belief that she had in fact lived many times before. What she never did was look for ideas and evidence that people do not have multiple lives.
The point is, if you are making an important decision, it is often a very good idea to write out what are the facts and assumptions as well as what you believe and ask what are the things that you believe that may actually be not true.
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