As a human being faced with many choices everyday, what techniques would you like to be convinced by? Looking back, do you remember times when you have changed your mind? Of course here I am speaking specifically about religious beliefs. Just successful techniques please.
Dear Shirin,
More thoughts on the topic later but just want to say right now that I wish I could steal your thought and post it as mine. :)
I have personally gone through different phases of religious beliefs and I think it happens to many people.
There are people who just take faith, believe in it without too much thought and live happy and moral lives. Nothing wrong with that. And then their are others who look at things from different perspective and start believing differently. Nothing wrong with that either.
One of the specific examples I have is polygamy in Islam. I don’t believe in it and my personal reasoning is that if it is considered for the sake of having a child then other methods like surrogation or adoption should be adopted.
As for as ‘technique’ is concerned, personally I take it if it makes sense to me. Is the applicable/inapplicable doctrine being considered in the right context? Is it important enough to be considered? What are the implications, and so forth.
These are the techniques or criterion for things that can logically be apprehensible, convincible, or provable. For things like exitence of God etc, I personally think that it can only be believed or not believed in. I don’t know if can be proved or diproved. And I think that’s how it should be looked upon. Some people believe in God, some don’t, it just simply how it is. My technique or reasoning in such a case is that it does not matter if God exists or not, what matters is if I believe (or can believe) he exists or not.
But the common thing among all cases is that beliefs do not change in a jiff. It’s a gradual process, most of the time you don’t simply hear something and get convinced overnight. Beliefs change or grow stronger as time passes and we experience life.
Dear Roman, thanks for sharing your thoughts- I also believe that it's important to think about doctrine that has been handed down. Religion is not a static process, we all grow and change. And so we are all at different stages along this path.
I wanted to share an experience that I had a few years ago. It was at my children's (islamic) sunday school that they had a talk given by a recent convert to Islam. He was a highly educated and well spoken man, about 40 years old. His talk was basically addressed to the children, explaining how and why he had become a Muslim. Here in Italy there are a lot of Moroccans (a lot of them are illegal immigrants) - and the Italian term "marocchini" is considered derogatory. This Italian, let's calll him G., used to see this Moroccan, who I'll call M, day after day selling cigarettes outside the supermarket where he did his shopping. Sometimes he had to run from the police, and he never had much money. G started talking to M, and gradually found out more and more about him. He discovered that this man was barely eking out an existence but never forgot his prayers. He was unfailingly cheerful and corteous even when people were rude and hurtful (and it happened quite a bit). From that minimal qualtity he made he would send money home. He never drank, smoked or gambled. When G asked M what his secret was he replied that it was his faith. G was curious, and asked M to take him to the mosque and introduce him to others who could explain other things to him in his own language. In a couple of years G became a muslim. He explained to the children that what really struck him was the depth of M's faith (whom he had found a job for in the meantime, but that M told us later) and the unfailing assurance that Allah would provide for the best. G said that M never pushed his faith, but that he used it everyday and all day. G's mother although a conviced Catholic is delighted that her son has become a Muslim and tells all her friends that her rude and discorteous son has finally started caring about other people.
I am sure that other people can tell us stories of this sort. And what stands out here is - example, not preaching, respect not rudeness, was responsible for the result.