>- Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself

Keep an open mind. While reading the Stoics take the trouble to read Augustine's Confessions or dip into Aquinus' Summa Theologica. Breeze through the Quran. Spend some time with the Book of Mormon. Drop into a synagog and get to know the worshipers there. Don't dismiss ideas out of hand. Contemplate them, and let your curiosity lead you where you need to be.

Excellent suggestion: religious textbooks are great sources of inspiration.

However, they are dangerous, in the fact that while 90% of the content is great, the remaining 10% may damage one's personal progression. These 10% require adequate preparation to be seen as what they are - pitfalls, which is why I suggested to "shy away" from them, at least initially.

It is far too easy to get "stuck" in religion and take the whole 100% as perfectly valid thoughts. Swallowing up the full doctrine "fills" the cup of the mind, which is no longer open to further knowledge.

The only "safe" reading might be the Dharma, because of it self-criticizing nature and the suggestion to dismiss the teachings if they conflict with reality and experience

Dogma prejudices atheists just as often as theists. For example, Darwin's Origin of Species contains a pitfall in that its readers can be persuaded to believe certain families of mankind are less evolved than others. Similarly, Marx's Capital and Manifesto of the Communist Party can lead one to believe that inequality is purely a function of material possession. A disciple of Smith's Wealth of Nations could reduce the world to merely a place to make money and which is the slave of market forces, etc. All of these works, while potentially "dangerous", stand on their own merits and should be read.

"Adequate preparation" is prejudice and should be spelled out as such. Socrates' dialogs stand as examples of the traditional Western method of exploring ideas, wherein one man questions another with the object of mutually understanding the essence of a thing, or, by being prodded toward future learning when having reached an uncomfortable ataraxy. This differs fundamentally from the critical theory taught in modern universities, wherein one is taught, rather than to seek an idea's essence, to tear it down beforehand.

Instead of fearing ideas, one should explore them.

That's an interesting point - one I mostly agree with.

But if you explore the ideas fully, how much do you keep of your initial self? And how do you do that, if you knows beforehand of the pitfalls, such as the ones you mentioned? How can you explore ideas if you already fear them??

From my limited understanding of philosophy, changing oneself too much is not desirable, since in the end the orignal opinions and self are lost - http://lesswrong.com/lw/y5/the_babyeating_aliens_18/

Analysis requires a reference, a broader frame, to detect such pitfalls - it seems pointless to experience ideas whose defaults are already too obvious to you.

>But if you explore the ideas fully, how much do you keep of your initial self?

The point of learning is to change oneself. Socrates addressed this by likening the mind to a wax block, upon which ideas are "stamped" (in his Meno (sp) Plato contradictorily claimed that all knowledge is recalled from a separate preincarnate existence, but that's another topic). In learning one seeks to move from one state of knowing to another. Ideas change oneself. The alternative is shunning ideas, and thereby shunning one's growth.

>And how do you do that, if you knows beforehand of the pitfalls, such as the ones you mentioned?

Do not assume one will be inevitably converted by what one reads.

>How can you explore ideas if you already fear them?

Stop fearing them. Be stoic, or use some other virtue to overcome one's trepidation.

>Analysis requires a reference

Correct. The reference of analysis are its fundamentals. Much of Aristotle's Organon and Metaphysics, as well as Plato's Timaeus, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Plotinus' Enneads, etc., concern the fundamentals of thought. The examination of these fundamentals, while in some sense "obvious", are in no way "pointless".

The true pitfall is fear.

Note that Smith did call out the moral failings of market failures in capitalism, and the need to address them politically.

If you're going to include the Book of Mormon, you should at least include Dianetics as well. Both are equally valid.

Seriously? The Book of Mormon? Why not the same L Ron Hubbard, or maybe some Robert Heinlein?

You can't really put the writings of the Augustine the hippo [sic] alongside the Book of Mormon.

Dear God, don't read the Book of Mormon or the Quran. I thought the Bible was soporific but those two...

Religion has the great advantage of being practiced in community. It may not have the pure wisdom of Seneca, but what good it can offer is more likely to stick.

Unfortunately, the Christian community offers more social capital than the Stoic or the atheist in the west.

Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J.[1] (d. 1616) has sometimes been called a "Christian Seneca".[2]

I had never heard of him or his major work "Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues" until 2004, when someone I met on a retreat recommended that I hunt down a copy of Joseph Rickaby's[3] masterful translation from the original Spanish.[4][5]

I had the opportunity to read through "PPCV" over the period of about a year back in 2007-2008, and I can only say that it leaves a remarkable and lasting impression. I would think his treatises on humility, examination of conscience, and mental prayer (meditation) would be of great interest even to those who aren't particularly religious -- i.e. the practical wisdom contained therein is like a toolkit for coming to "know oneself" for true.

[1] http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Alonso_Rodriguez

[2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2540029

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rickaby

[4] http://bit.ly/PPCV-1of2

[5] http://bit.ly/PPCV-2of2

Sure. If you want to be a politician in the West, you can't really avoid participating in a Christian community of one kind or another. But people who are interested in stoicism probably have other goals.

This is true only in America, or maybe in the "Anglosaxon" world in general, but certainly not in Europe.

It isn't true of Ireland, Britain, Australia or New Zealand. I don't think it's true of Canada. Among WEIRD [0] nations I think the US is the only one where being openly atheistic would abort any serious political career.

[0]Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democracies

While being an atheist won't sink you, being christian certainly helps in Australia. For example, John Howard was fond of recording video messages which would get played in christian churches during the service.

My guess is that it would be more helpful at a local than a national level, but church influence could definitely swing a few key seats.

According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 43% of Americans would not vote for a qualified atheist candidate. For comparison, the numbers for a Muslim candidate or a gay or lesbian candidate were 40% and 30%, respectively.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/Atheists-Muslims-Bias-Pres...

As a counter-example, everyone in Australia knows that our Prime Minister is at least agnostic. It might well be a point in her favor, to the very slight extent that people care.

Now if only they would stop censoring the Internet and using the same citizen monitoring that the Chinese do it might count for something.

The west is obsessed with religion, as has been pointed out, however hypocritical it might be it's a well practiced ritual in DC if you want to get elected for anything.

> Also "no man does evil knowingly" seems wrong - sorry, but a tiny minority of people really want to see the world burn.

I think the point is that those people believe the world deserves to burn, or that by burning, it would be a better place. Hence, they are not doing evil while thinking "Ha ha ha, I'm so evil", but genuinely believe they are doing good.

> Shy away from religion. Find the truth by yourself.

You can't find the truth by yourself. It's just too big and complicated. Individuals believing that they have discovered some kind of truth is at the root of a lot of suffering. Going after the truth is a good thing, but you cannot and should not do it alone.

> Hence, they are not doing evil while thinking "Ha ha ha, I'm so evil", but genuinely believe they are doing good.

This is still just as naive, in my opinion. There are plenty of people who knowingly trample others to advance their own selfish goals, who know that it's unfair, and who sincerely don't care.

In general, you can fit the motivations for evil into one of four categories: there's evil for instrumental reasons, evil for ideological reasons, evil as a result of threatened egotism, and evil as a result of pure sadism.

There are some genuinely sadistic people, but they tend to be few and far between, to the point where once we find one of them, they spawn books and movies and huge long wikipedia pages.

There are plenty of people that will trample others to advance their own selfish goals. They know that they're doing something wrong, but they feel they need to in that circumstance, or are just willing to do that.

Then there are people who are genuinely thinking that they're doing good, and that the world will be a better place after they do whatever evil thing they do. In this context it's better to think of evil as a social concept rather than a personal one, because these people don't actually think they're doing something evil in a long-term context-included sense.

I think conflation between some of the above types of evil is causing a lot of needless dispute in this thread.

(This is mostly from the Baumeister chapter in The Social Psychology of Good and Evil, which is a very well-edited collection of notable psychologists discussing this very topic, and I highly recommend it.)

Yes, but the point is they do not do evil knowingly, in the sense of comprehending how the nature of their soul came about and determining this is the best course of action under reflection over the space of all possible minds; the evolutionary process endowed them with a cognitive structure that primes them to think that way, and we should mourn the deterministic necessity of them spending time living in that mind and body, but we should never condemn them or call them evil.

Why exactly would you not want to condemn them or call them evil if they are doing things which we believe are bad for society?

Is it not a useful judgment?

I agree - it's not that they are doing good, just that they believe it. It's because of this that you can't just trust your own opinions on what's true and good. Without some kind of external moral compass, you're left with moral relativism.