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...