A Plea for Thinking!

[The Atheist]

This has the potential to be contentious, so let's try to keep it really seemly and we'll be fine.

I see lots of students in here who are clearly able to display critical skills when discussing literature, and I'd like to put forward a plea for those same students to use those same critical skills in everyday life.

I see far too many people sucked into obvious frauds, urban legends and general silliness that could easily be avoided if a few simple thinking skills were operated first. There are some really simple ones to start off with:

"Too good to be true." Says it all. Once every thousand years or so, someone does give away money, just because they like you! The rest of the time, they don't. Nobody in Nigeria actually wants to give you $US10,000,000 and that pyramid game your friend made $30k from is illegal.

"Is this real?" This is best applied to things like e mails, news from friends, anything where something is unusual. I couldn't count the number of urban legends I've had passed to me during my life, but it would be thousands by now. Some of them are highly cunning and some have been around for centuries. These can be all sorts of things - from means of contracting AIDS to treatments for cancer and impotence, to pleas for help by allegedly sick children. Most of these are so old and boring that I've seen them several times. Even ones which seem to do no harm - one I received last week, from my boy's rugby club - can be dangerous. The club forwarded an official e mail to all parents, warning of the dangers of drug dealers giving away crystal methamphetamine-laced lollies to kids and asking parents and kids to be on guard.

Now, how can that be harmful, you ask? Surely that e mail raises awareness of drug abuse, which is good?

Alas, that would be completely incorrect.

The e mail contained information that both NZ Police and hospitals were aware of this process and that "several children" had been hospitalised.

Fortunately, I knew that the police had no knowledge of such things happening and I knew that crystal methamphetamine is virtually harmless if taken orally and I quickly found out that no kids has been treated at NZ hospitals for crystal methamphetamine ingestion. I also knew that drug dealers just don't work like that. I obtained evidence to confirm what I said and explained all this to the chairman of the club, whose decision it was to forward the misinformation.

To understand why this sort of thing is dangerous, I drew an example for him.

Imagine you're a father and you want to discuss drugs with your child.

You start off by pointing out the dangers of drug abuse.

You show pictures of people with teeth rotting from meth smoking.

You tell them to watch out for drug dealers in the playground and that lollies could really be drugs.

You tell them that marijuana is a gateway drug.

At a later stage, your child meets up with someone who is an actual drug user. That person has a job and uses drugs recreationally, has no rotting teeth and generally appears quite normal. All of a sudden, lots of what you've told your child has been blown away as cheap rhetoric.

The child wonders, "If all those things I've been told aren't true, then maybe the whole drugs are bad thing is over-rated and I should give it a try!"

Kids are best off when given the truth at all times. There is no upside in telling them lies and no downside in telling them the truth.

Take homeopathy. Lots of people swear by it. Those people are clearly unaware of the "placebo effect", a well-known and well-documented medical process where people think they feel better, simply because they expect to. Now, without causing too much argument, I'd like people to realise that homeopathy isn't just a lie, it's an absurd lie. The premise is absurd - that water somehow "remembers" a molecular formula and "copies" it so that the water carries the same benefit as the original medicine. Anyone with even the most basic cheistry knowledge is able to tell you that water can only be broken down into two things - oxygen and hydrogen. Those atoms can't change and they most certainly cannot remember anything.

I'm not going to mention religion too much, because that's a very much personal choice kind of thing, but if you choose to join a religion, don't join one which blatantly lies to you. For instance, religions which state that the earth is 6000 years old are just plain wrong. There is no evidence at all to back that up, while there are literally thousands of different means of ageing the earth at ~4.5 billion years of age.

Many of the christians I converse with are a lot smarter than me and not one of them even begins to consider the possibility of the known age of the planet being out by 99.999%, which is what would be needed for the earth to be 6000 years old. To avoid that is to avoid thinking. Note that the age of the earth is neither an argument for god nor evolution, just a simple fact. It is certainly possible to use logic to arrive at the conclusion that god exists, but it's illogical to arrive at conclusions which are unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.

"New Age" practices. Astrology, psychics, crystal energy, auras and the like.

Well, the first giveaway should be in the attempt to label these practices as anything new. They have all been around for centuries, and most of them far longer than christianity. That they need to be constantly "renewed" is a direct guide to their effectiveness: zero. If anyone were truly psychic, or astrology really predicted events, practitioners of it would be feted worldwide as Messiahs. Instead, they appeal to a small sector of society, for whom mysticism is an essential part of life. There are a multitude of "challenges" worldwide for psychics or astrologers to complete which would earn them millions of dollars and worldwide acclaim. None have managed it so far and I strongly doubt that anyone ever will - people have claimed all sorts of mind-power over the centuries, but none have ever worked.

Politics is an area where thinking is more than a little helpful. I don't care which side you're on, vote for whoever is best for you, but don't take politicians at their words, check their history. If they've consistently supported a policy, it's fairly likely that that is their honest view. If a politician chops and changes his policies with public opinion, it's a good bet that he is going to be telling you what he thinks you want to hear, rather than what he really intends.

I'm a recruiter and I hear plenty of baloney in my line of work. Some employers will tell me of grand expansion plans, while actually doing no more than building castles in the sky, and candidates tell me of achievements which, in reality, they've sat on the sidelines and watched.

Remember, anyone can make an assertion, but only those in possession of facts can back it up with evidence.

[CdnReader]

While I agree that critical thinking is always the first step to clarification, and while I support your initial statements about fake emails and money-grabbing scams, and about telling your children the truth, I find two troublesome assumptions within the continuation of your line of thinking.

Firstly, that science and logic can be trusted for all of the answers. Science is a cultural construct of man, very little different from religion in many respects. Science can be flawed and misdirected, manipulated to create desired results, or skewed to avoid coming to unwanted conclusions. Science is subject to political, economic, social, and yes - even religious constraints. Science, mysticism, and religion are all products of human culture. Different societies rely on them in different ways for different reasons. Clearly, your cultural background has brought you to rely on science, but that has no relationship to the overriding value of science as a universal truth.

Secondly, assuming that your culture depends on science, your comments above imply that science never changes, that what science "knows" today is the same thing that science will "know" in the future. This is patently untrue. I'm sure you will agree that science is in an ever-changing state of flux and change; new discoveries are made every day in multitudes of areas. At one time, science "knew" that the world was flat. Should we have accepted that as the final truth about the shape of the world? Your comments (to choose one topic) on homeopathy rely on the argument that "water can only be broken down into two things - oxygen and hydrogen. Those atoms can't change and they most certainly cannot remember anything." Shall we assume then, that science will never change its position on this fact? Perhaps all scientists investigating these phenomena should stop their investigations, as we now "know" everything there is to know, and we already "know" the final truth?

To extrapolate further, if we are to believe that science has all the answers, let us look back to the ages of the hunter/gatherers, before science - as we know it today - even existed. Perhaps they should never have wondered about the "reality" of the world. They didn't know about quantum dynamics or atomic theory. As far as they knew, these things didn't exist. Hmmm......

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks, Atheist, for this caring post.

And thank you, Cdn, for calling into question what you feel is Atheist's (and my) perhaps unthinking trust in science.

[The Atheist]

While I agree that critical thinking is always the first step to clarification, and while I support your initial statements about fake emails and money-grabbing scams, and about telling your children the truth, I find two troublesome assumptions within the continuation of your line of thinking.

Firstly, that science and logic can be trusted for all of the answers. ...

Secondly, assuming that your culture depends on science, your comments above imply that science never changes, that what science "knows" today is the same thing that science will "know" in the future.....

That's quite a leap of logic you've made yourself here, considering I didn't mention science in my entire post and I said that logic can be used to show the existence of god. I'm a bit disturbed that you may have seen what you wanted to see rather than what I said. I made one absolute statement - that hydrogen and oxygen can't change. That is a fact. Say you remove the elctron from a hydrogen atom. What you are then left with is a nucleus and an electron, not a hydrogen atom with no electron. Hydrogen is defined by its properties - helium isn't a hydrogen atom with two electrons, it is a helium atom.

I suspect that you may have been further misled because I didn't note science as an area to apply critical thinking. I missed it out along with hundreds of other subjects, only because I didn't want the post to be any longer than it is and because science is largely self-regulatory in that regard. Science contains an important element - "peer review" - which means that all scientific work is open to review, testing, analysis and criticism by other scientists. No, that doesn't mean it's always right, but it does work in keeping the vast majority of pseudoscience at bay and ensuring that developments and discoveries are real.

[Logos]

The Atheist, I hope you don't mind, I've moved this from General Chat to the Philosophy section where I think it is more appropo :)

[Neo_Sephiroth]

Too good to be true? Pheesh! No way!!! The countless surveys on the internet is soooo not fake!:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :banana: :banana:

[The Atheist]

The Atheist, I hope you don't mind, I've moved this from General Chat to the Philosophy section where I think it is more appropo :)

Good thinking, should have started it there myself.

Cheers

[MaryLupin]

Science is a cultural construct of man, very little different from religion in many respects. Science can be flawed and misdirected, manipulated to create desired results, or skewed to avoid coming to unwanted conclusions. Science is subject to political, economic, social, and yes - even religious constraints.

A good deal is made of the "constructed" nature of science and yet (as Atheist pointed out below) people often forget that there is a fail-safe built into the procedures of science. This is empirical testing. Religion (and other cultural pursuits) often heavily resist such worldly rigor. But yes you are quite correct that science is prey to all the human foibles. It is, after all, practiced by human beings. The difference is best seen in a comparison of examples, using one you gave us. Yes it used to be believed that the earth was flat and many learned men scoffed at the idea that the earth was round because it was "common sense" that if it were round and moving we would fall off. Now, due to science and hundreds of years of general education, most people trust science to be correct about the reasons why the earth is round and spinning and we don't fly off. On the other hand, many people still believe that there was a single flood that killed everyone (all animals and all humans) and that the survivors all were kept on a boat and that the entire population was reseeded by those 2by2s. This despite all the empirical evidence to the contrary. This is a difference that matters and what separates science and religion as 2 completely different kinds of human cultural pursuits.

[andave_ya]

Thank you for the caring thread, the Atheist. Thinking helps! :lol:

[Derringer]

At a later stage, your child meets up with someone who is an actual drug user. That person has a job and uses drugs recreationally, has no rotting teeth and generally appears quite normal. All of a sudden, lots of what you've told your child has been blown away as cheap rhetoric.
.

People who do meth don't have jobs. You need to meet a meth addict asap, because they are completely out of it, and in no way would you consider them normal, because they would be shaking and stuttering long after they quite. Meth is sick. Meth actually is a problem in NZ, largely because it is difficult and expensive to find other drugs, except for party pills which they sell at cornerstores, and really result in a terrible hangover. Great night on the town though.

Good for you for figuring out the proper way to think. Possibly you should write an expensive book? Contentious? How 'bout pretentious?

[NikolaiI]

I thought that was a good argument: if they see you have embellished or told them outright lies, they will question your other assertions. It's better to tell the truth about drugs and their effects.

I do find it presumptuous to say that no meth addicts have jobs. The ones I have known have had, but if they pinched a nerve they were out of work for a week instead of a day. A common job for meth users is construction. And meth is just one drug. Certainly lots and lots of other drugs can go unnoticed: just look at the restaurant business. For sure, the deteriorating effects take many years usually.

[The Atheist]

People who do meth don't have jobs. You need to meet a meth addict asap, because they are completely out of it, and in no way would you consider them normal, because they would be shaking and stuttering long after they quite. Meth is sick. Meth actually is a problem in NZ, largely because it is difficult and expensive to find other drugs, except for party pills which they sell at cornerstores, and really result in a terrible hangover. Great night on the town though.

I can [but obviously won't] give you the names and addresses of six crystal meth addicts, all of whom have good jobs. I am assured by these and other people that there are many other people I know of who are also hooked on it and who have jobs. Because I only have hearsay evidence of those, I'm willing to discount them and work with six I know for certain qualify under both.

I think you may be watching too much tv and not getting enough realism. Crikey, the mere statistics should tell you that - have a look at the number of addicts in NZ, work out the price of the stuff, then ask yourself where they all manage to get the money to buy it. Not all methamphetamine addicts are raging nutcases who go around robbing banks, shooting people and beating their kids to death. Not by a long chalk.

Please don't be using anecdotal evidence obtained through mass-media on this subject to argue with me, because it is one of my expert subjects. Please also be aware that I am 100% opposed to it because it is a highly destructive drug.


Good for you for figuring out the proper way to think. Possibly you should write an expensive book? Contentious? How 'bout pretentious?

Just because you personally don't like it, hardly calls for that kind of comment, I imagine that I learnt to think long before your birth. Some people enjoy my commentaries and you don't. Fortunately, I write for those who still have things to learn. I'm pleased that you've already passed that milestone.

[The Atheist]

I thought that was a good argument: if they see you have embellished or told them outright lies, they will question your other assertions. It's better to tell the truth about drugs and their effects.

I do find it presumptuous to say that no meth addicts have jobs. The ones I have known have had, but if they pinched a nerve they were out of work for a week instead of a day. A common job for meth users is construction. And meth is just one drug. Certainly lots and lots of other drugs can go unnoticed: just look at the restaurant business. For sure, the deteriorating effects take many years usually.

Cheers.

Actually, the biggest user base down here, among the employed, is probably long-distance truck drivers. The money is huge at the moment and worth the expenditure of the money to keep it going, but they mess themselves up eventually.

Scary usage.

[The Atheist]

Thank you for the caring thread, the Atheist. Thinking helps! :lol:

Thanks!

[Barlo]

"New Age" practices. Astrology, psychics, crystal energy, auras and the like.

Well, the first giveaway should be in the attempt to label these practices as anything new. They have all been around for centuries, and most of them far longer than christianity. That they need to be constantly "renewed" is a direct guide to their effectiveness: zero. If anyone were truly psychic, or astrology really predicted events, practitioners of it would be feted worldwide as Messiahs. Instead, they appeal to a small sector of society, for whom mysticism is an essential part of life. There are a multitude of "challenges" worldwide for psychics or astrologers to complete which would earn them millions of dollars and worldwide acclaim. None have managed it so far and I strongly doubt that anyone ever will - people have claimed all sorts of mind-power over the centuries, but none have ever worked.

Politics is an area where thinking is more than a little helpful. I don't care which side you're on, vote for whoever is best for you, but don't take politicians at their words, check their history. If they've consistently supported a policy, it's fairly likely that that is their honest view. If a politician chops and changes his policies with public opinion, it's a good bet that he is going to be telling you what he thinks you want to hear, rather than what he really intends.



These things are hard to see through because man(a high percentage of his kind) is still a extremely superstitious. About 800 hundred years ago people were forced to jump in a river in order to be cleared of guilt (in which case if they drowned they were inocent). Even though humanity made a lot of progress technologically this primitive side is still present in the minds of most people. And most people don't have the basic understanding of chemistry or other sciences. Some people on the other hand need to hear the things that some psychics can tell them. There will always be fraudsters that will "rob" people of their money, and that is fine with me. I think its good that all of these things exist, because they can tell us much about a person who believes in that kind of crap.

But I disagree on your view of politicians. You say that if a politician changes his policies with public opinion there is a great chance that he is lying to you. But isn't a politician who never changes his view of the world and his political agenda even worse then the first one? It is sad if a man in his whole life changes his political views. It is then when he will be lying to you. He be destined to (formaly)support some ideas that he no longer believes in, and that will in the end lead to even greater lies. Take Winston Churchill for example, he first began as a conservative, then switched sides to be a member of the liberal party... Im not trying to give you a history lesson, I'm just trying to say that I would personaly be more cautios of a politician who never changes his mind then a one who does.

And by the way I really like your post, it has a very clear outline.

[The Atheist]

But I disagree on your view of politicians. You say that if a politician changes his policies with public opinion there is a great chance that he is lying to you. But isn't a politician who never changes his view of the world and his political agenda even worse then the first one?

No, good point, I should have made that clearer. You're quite right, change is part of life and inflexibility is another form of not thinking. I'm meaning the type of politician who changes his stance purely for political expediency.


And by the way I really like your post, it has a very clear outline.

Thanks!

(Although I clearly wasn't quite clear enough with the pollies - hopefully that's all sorted now.)

[Brit Junkie]

Atheist:

I, for one, appreciate your post here. I think that your points are the basis for one of the greatest underlying problems this world faces today. In teaching, I see kids all the time who are content to just take whatever we (teachers or parents) say as doctrine, no pun intended, and let that be their only method of obtaining knowledge. They have a hatred for reading, thinking, analyzing, creating, or otherwise flexing their intellectual muscles. While I can only speak for American children, I'm sure that it's not a localized phenomenon.

I'll never grow tired of the science versus religion debate. There are so many intricate facets working for both sides, and yet, I find myself stumbling over the idea that either is 100% absolute. I completely agree with your analogy to water molecules and their molecular breakdowns, but, then again, I agree with the idea stated many times in this thread that science is continually evolving as man grasps on to greater concepts.

I'm also a big fan of logic. It makes life boring, sometimes, but it also makes life interesting. Unfortunately for me, I teach in what we Americans like to call the "Bible Belt" in the South. It's a stretch composed of super-conservative thinkers, or rather, followers. Not that there's, per se, anything wrong with that lifestyle choice, it's just not for me. If people want to live that way because, as they say, ignorance is bliss, then so be it. However, I would rather question, as you question, the facts and what we know of them instead. It seems to be a more fruitful venture.

I guess the greatest wish I have for the future of the children of all nations is that they will one day wake up and look themselves in the mirror and ask the question so many of us have asked, "Isn't there something more to all of this than instant messaging and iPods?" That's what I hope my students will question as they leave my room at the end of the year. I love my subject, but I'm certainly more interested in creating thinkers, not British Literature experts.

[The Atheist]

Atheist:

I, for one, appreciate your post here.

Cheers! I'm happy it's [generally] well received.

Excellent points all the way through. I'm very familiar with the US bible belt, but fortunately, it's not a phenomenon we see here. [yet, anyway]

[earthboar]

Atheist:

I, for one, appreciate your post here. I think that your points are the basis for one of the greatest underlying problems this world faces today.Interesting topic. While the religious life necessarily means morality, and a religious morality can have devastating consequences to the direction of scientific inquiry (stem cell research, LSD research, abortion or even blood transfusion, use your imagination), that does not necessarily apply to the humans' capacity to have a spiritual life. I've reconciled being both a spiritual creature and a scientific creature by accepting that a spiritual reality, i.e., being in communion with divine intelligence, is essentially internal. It was never an objective of science to prove or disprove a divine reality, only to perfect our understanding of the objective universe.

I watched a documentary last night on people who have visions of Mary, mother of Jesus. In every case, it seemed, these people would lapse into a trance-like state. Often, the prophecies revealed by the Mary visions did not pan out in their expected time frame. Sometimes, the prophecies seemed positively demonic, and I had to wonder just what intelligence it was that young people were communicating with.

There were some external phenomena, unconvincing illusions of photography or sunlight; but these seemed more or less contrived.

In any case, the visionaries were in a trance-like state, and the people around them were unable to see anything. This tells me a great deal. I think this is the way prophecy has always worked, since the very beginning. Someone said they talked to God, and a whole bunch of other people believed them.

That people the world over continue to communicate with non-objective reality, even in the present age, is something I accept. In other words, religion has a psychological reality, just like art. Phenomenology and miracles (rising back to life from a state of deadness; turning water into wine; bad-tempered gods providing humans with tablets with writing on them, etc.) is something I have eventually come to reject as objective reality, and at best as metaphoric and poetic constructs.

[blazeofglory]

While I agree that critical thinking is always the first step to clarification, and while I support your initial statements about fake emails and money-grabbing scams, and about telling your children the truth, I find two troublesome assumptions within the continuation of your line of thinking.

Firstly, that science and logic can be trusted for all of the answers. Science is a cultural construct of man, very little different from religion in many respects. Science can be flawed and misdirected, manipulated to create desired results, or skewed to avoid coming to unwanted conclusions. Science is subject to political, economic, social, and yes - even religious constraints. Science, mysticism, and religion are all products of human culture. Different societies rely on them in different ways for different reasons. Clearly, your cultural background has brought you to rely on science, but that has no relationship to the overriding value of science as a universal truth.

Secondly, assuming that your culture depends on science, your comments above imply that science never changes, that what science "knows" today is the same thing that science will "know" in the future. This is patently untrue. I'm sure you will agree that science is in an ever-changing state of flux and change; new discoveries are made every day in multitudes of areas. At one time, science "knew" that the world was flat. Should we have accepted that as the final truth about the shape of the world? Your comments (to choose one topic) on homeopathy rely on the argument that "water can only be broken down into two things - oxygen and hydrogen. Those atoms can't change and they most certainly cannot remember anything." Shall we assume then, that science will never change its position on this fact? Perhaps all scientists investigating these phenomena should stop their investigations, as we now "know" everything there is to know, and we already "know" the final truth?

To extrapolate further, if we are to believe that science has all the answers, let us look back to the ages of the hunter/gatherers, before science - as we know it today - even existed. Perhaps they should never have wondered about the "reality" of the world. They didn't know about quantum dynamics or atomic theory. As far as they knew, these things didn't exist. Hmmm......

Science at times is proved wrong, and but here the matter is one of comparison, and comparatively scientific facts are more reason or evidence based, more logical than religions.

Science has emerged to this state through evolutionary processes, and gradually of course, yet scientists make hypothesized ideas base on what they understood through observations. But when we say science is flawed our argument will be flawed. Science is never flawed, but the one who tries to interpret physical phenomena may be wrong.

[CdnReader]

Science at times is proved wrong, and but here the matter is one of comparison, and comparatively scientific facts are more reason or evidence based, more logical than religions.

But does logic make the man, or does man make the logic?


Science has emerged to this state through evolutionary processes, and gradually of course, yet scientists make hypothesized ideas base on what they understood through observations.

I would suggest that SCIENCE does not evolve. The evolution is in man, in society. If science is the truth, the reality -- then perhaps the science is static, unchangeable. It is only our perceptions, our understandings, our "discoveries" if you will....that change.


But when we say science is flawed our argument will be flawed. Science is never flawed, but the one who tries to interpret physical phenomena may be wrong.

Very well said, Blaze. *applause*

[Jeroun]

Atheist:

I, for one, appreciate your post here. I think that your points are the basis for one of the greatest underlying problems this world faces today. In teaching, I see kids all the time who are content to just take whatever we (teachers or parents) say as doctrine, no pun intended, and let that be their only method of obtaining knowledge. They have a hatred for reading, thinking, analyzing, creating, or otherwise flexing their intellectual muscles. While I can only speak for American children, I'm sure that it's not a localized phenomenon.

I'll never grow tired of the science versus religion debate. There are so many intricate facets working for both sides, and yet, I find myself stumbling over the idea that either is 100% absolute. I completely agree with your analogy to water molecules and their molecular breakdowns, but, then again, I agree with the idea stated many times in this thread that science is continually evolving as man grasps on to greater concepts.

I'm also a big fan of logic. It makes life boring, sometimes, but it also makes life interesting. Unfortunately for me, I teach in what we Americans like to call the "Bible Belt" in the South. It's a stretch composed of super-conservative thinkers, or rather, followers. Not that there's, per se, anything wrong with that lifestyle choice, it's just not for me. If people want to live that way because, as they say, ignorance is bliss, then so be it. However, I would rather question, as you question, the facts and what we know of them instead. It seems to be a more fruitful venture.

I guess the greatest wish I have for the future of the children of all nations is that they will one day wake up and look themselves in the mirror and ask the question so many of us have asked, "Isn't there something more to all of this than instant messaging and iPods?" That's what I hope my students will question as they leave my room at the end of the year. I love my subject, but I'm certainly more interested in creating thinkers, not British Literature experts.

It's not a local phenomenon that students aren't interested in reading, thinking, etc. I think they just don't want to think about things, to try and understand things or people who are different from themselves. It is much easier to just think that what you do is right and every one else is wrong.

I now think of a situation in my own country, Belgium: the students who refuse to reason are usually the students who will vote on Vlaams Belang. (This is a nationalist, racist party in my country.) As said before, it's easier to just think what you do is right. Trying to understand the situation of the other people is much harder to do. Instead of reasoning, they take the easy way.

Not all students are this way though: there are young people who like to read, think, etc like myself. Sadly these students are a minority.


"Isn't there something more to all of this than instant messaging and iPods?"

Yes, of course there's more but it's not 'cool' to think that. I also believe that 'cool' has a lot to do with the fact that students aren't interested in books, thinking, etc. In high school everything is determined by what's 'cool'. I'm sure there are a lot of young people who like to read books and think but don't talk about it. Reading, thinking is something you don't do: it's not 'cool'. I think this is a serious part of the problem

[brainstrain]

I wouldn't dare participate in the debate here, being a sixteen year old who acknowledges how utterly ignorant he is, but I would like to say I greatly enjoyed reading this article of yours ^_^.

It's been exquisitely difficult breaking free from the bonds of my conservative upbringing over the years, but articles like this in the LitNet Forums have helped me tremendously along the way! Thanks!