You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Normal_Anomaly comments on How can people be actually converted? - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: yttrium 05 February 2012 10:13PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (94)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Desrtopa 06 February 2012 03:48:42AM 4 points [-]

I'm pretty sure I believed instead of belief in belief, but since my beliefs didn't match those of any organized religion, I didn't have a community of other believers around me.

I've encountered a lot of theists whose beliefs didn't match those of any organized religion. They tend to assume their religious outlook is exceptional or unusual (when I first started seriously investigating people's religious beliefs, it astonished me how little real communication most people have about their beliefs with people outside a very small circle,) but they tend to form fairly similar beliefs. I would definitely not say that they're any less prone to belief in belief than theists in organized sects; if anything, I think they're more so, because they tend to let go of those beliefs that are most falsifiable.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 07 February 2012 02:11:59AM 4 points [-]

My beliefs were cobbled together from SF and fantasy novels; they were Scientology-style weird. They were also falsifiable and falsified themselves, and the atheist videos made me stop suppressing the cognitive dissonance.