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Deconstructing Landmark Forum: Prologue: Recently I was introduced to the Landmark Education organization by a girlfriend, she was effusive about the many lessons she learned and the "breakthroughs" she had while taking their "forum" and other self help and improvement seminar programs. I was immediately credulous, as a student of science I often find myself playing the advocate of reason when discussion emerges over any particular topic. Often the subjects that provide the most fuel for application of this reason based approach to information analysis are seemingly difficult to quantify without descending into machine gun fire ejaculation of "ideas" with little but anecdotal support behind them. The books of experience that people in various areas serve as the guide for their views a priori of new evidence, this bias against the future by correlation with the past often serves to hold people back from changing their views to suit new observations...

I was too inculcated into the ways of religion to seriously give it thought as being *unreal* until about the age of 9. My parents (read: my mother, my father was religiously apathetic) did a good job of taking us around to various prayer services with her evangelist friend who happened to be married to a pastor. Tangentially, I found out much later that he used to physically beat her in accordance with the scriptures he preached at the pulpit, now he's suffering from severe dementia induced by Alzheimer's disease. Karma? No...just bad luck. During those times I was forced to endure 3 hour long services that consisted of grown adults and their kids sat on white sheets in hot living rooms (many times our own) with their kids forced to pay attention (some how) to the constant singing, talking or Bible reading in Haitian Creole and French. I was partially curious about the various stories I'd read and wondered if they could be real, I was an avid comic book fan from an early a...

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2560,My-daughter-deserved-to-die-for-falling-in-love,Guardian,page1#comments If you ever wanted a reason to know why any belief not based on empirical data should be thrown out of consideration, this is it. So sad , so pathetic. I have no more words. We (those of reason) can not let this poison continue to infect our planet, for all our sakes.