Gateway beliefs

Everyone knows that marijuana is a gateway drug, that if you use marijuana, you will soon be homeless and destitute and hooked on crack.  Everyone knows this and everyone is wrong.  Mostly wrong.  Marijuana is not addictive and it's effects are mild even with heavy usage and all negative effects are temporary.  It does not have major performance enhancing effects and that is it.  If you tell people what I was told as a kid and you try it you may conclude that the other drugs are also equally beniegn, they are not, not all of them.  LSD appears to have only positive effects, if you are happy.  If you are not happy LSD can be a negative experience.  LSD is also absorbed by fat cells and if you burn off those fat cells later in life you will have a second trip, called a flash back.  Other drugs are addictive and you can become physically dependent to them, they can be dangerous, but marijuana is not.  The only way marijuana can be a gateway drug is if you are exposed to other drugs by drug dealers either by free samples or by dealers cutting other drugs into your supply of marijuana.  Other than that, marijuana is not a gateway drug.

Gateway beliefs are different.  They are insidious and are widely told to the most vulnerable sector of the population: children.  Gateway beliefs are beliefs that reduce the mind's effectiveness from combatting silly ideas with critical thinking.  Children who are taught gateway beliefs are more likely to believe other nonsensical ideas are true as well.  They will believe that vaccines are dangerous.  They will believe that Monsanto is trying to take over the world.  They will believe that the government is hiding the truth that aliens are visiting the government.  They will be susceptible to the belief that a cable of powerful men is dictating the history of the world, the Illuminati and the New World Order.

Gateway beliefs will lead people to think that people who do not believe what they believe are wrong and that critical thinking should be discouraged.  They will start treating fairy tales as equal to scientific journals.  They will start to ignore the advancement of society, the advancement of science, the advancement of the species.  They will believe that people who do not believe what they believe should die.

The Gateway Beliefs I am talking about are Religions.  I am serious.  There have been studies that have shown that religious indoctrination at an early age inhibits critical thinking skills.  Children who are read stories that contain magical characters and non magical characters, there are two groups of children, one who has been indoctornated with a religion and those who are raised without.  The children who are raised with religion feel that both stories are realistic and those raised without religion, can say that magical characters are fantasy.  

I have a friend, Seventh, she was indoctornated late in her childhood.  She was a smart girl, but she was indoctornated nonetheless.  After joining her religion, her critical thinking skills plummeted.  When she was presented with an easy answer or an answer that required facts and knowledge and critical thinking she resorted to the proscribed stance of her religion.  After only a few years of doing this her ability to think critically has diminished.  She now argues tooth and nails against anyone who uses science to argue their case.  Vaccinations are bad, the New World Order is pushing Vaccines, and the rest.  GMO foods too.  

The big push of religions as to why their ideas are still relevant have been that they provide morals that secular non religious families do not and the proof is in, religions do provide a unique set of morality that non religious families do not provide; they are typically more racist, more homophobic and loose with their morality in general.  Secular families tend to follow only one rule for their morality, the Golden Rule: do on to others as you would have them do to you.  As Christians will tell you, that comes from Jesus Christ and his teachings.  And they do, but they do not originate from him, they are far older.  The Golden Rule is the rule that sentient societies realized at the dawn of time as the only way to do things and still function as a social group.  Jesus taught this and he taught us that all the religion that came before was also good.  And that is the problem with Christianity.  

The teachings of Jesus were very Buddhist, but the old testament with the Ten Commandments and the laws of Leviticus fuck up his teachings.  The Old Testament says you should not kill, then in the next chapter Moses kills thousands of people.  It teaches that all rules are flexible.  It teaches that slavery is bad when it is your own people, but it is good when they are not your people.  The Bible teaches moral flexibility.

Not all religions are as bad as others.  Some teach that it is okay to lie and steal and kill people who are not part of your religion, Islam.  Some teach that the World is only 6000 years old, higher knowledge is bad and women are only doing good when they are pregnant, fundamentalist Christian.  Some treat women as untouchable unholy creatures for half of their life and that gays are less than human, Fundementalist Jews.  Some teach that certain classes of society can be used like toilet paper, raped, murdered, allowed to starve to death etcetera, believe that women most fill men's needs above their own and are second class citizens, Hinduism, Buddhism.  

When you look at any religion it is tough to see it as a force for good in the world.  When you add that they all rob people to think critically and leave them susceptible to silly ideas.  But there is hope, people who have left religion at a later date have learned to think critically and learn to embrace new ideas after thinking about them critically.

Remember if you have children and you want them to have fun reading Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings knowing that they are fun stories and not heretical true stories and want them to read the bibletoo, treat them the same, as fanciful fairy tales like the rest.