As a Mormon (Latter-Day Saint), the continuous barrage of media articles and news reports on my religious beliefs have been popping up more then before. Whenever I go to the comments section of each article or news report that appears in the media, these comments consist of ignorance and a total disregard for ones personal beliefs. "Mormonism is a cult;" "They are brainwashed;" "How many wives did Joe Smith have again?" Certainly I am not naive enough to believe that my religion does not have the ability to come off strange to the lay bystander, yet has anyone really sat down to think about what they are saying? Many of these individuals saying such things are avid believers in the Bible, the book that speaks of incest and also polygamy, the exact thing they make jokes about with Mormons (the polygamy part, not the incest part). If they were truly interested in understanding further, they would see that, like the runner or biker, there are plenty of similarities to have an intellectual conversation and try to gain a better perspective.
I guess the better question to ask pertaining to this issue is: Aren't we all brainwashed to a certain extent? As much as you may not like it, we are for the most part molded into our thoughts or beliefs through constant learning of a topic. Whether you are Muslim, Catholic, Atheist or Mormon, we are swayed by others words and eventually take this on as our method of thinking. If we would just stop with the ego and start listening up, we might realize that we can learn a bit from everyone. That doesn't mean you have to think the way that they do, yet it means that you are willing to accept the fact that they might understand something you don't. In the end, the only thing we really experience are the workings of a neural system to the brain that tells us that we hear or see something in particular. I don't wanna take my opinion too seriously because for all I know, I could just be a schizophrenic.
I graduated!!
