Religious Experiences And The Power Of Suggestion

The question that comes to my mind about this is how strongly do many people hold their beliefs in the first place? I don't mean you folks on here necessarily, but the average person in the street. My guess is not very strongly. For instance there are a lot of nominal Christians who are quite fuzzy about what they believe if you ask them. I have actually met some Christians who seemed to know less about the belief system to which they ascribe than I do.

There are also millions who probably never give much thought to deeper questions but just kind of bumble along through this existence.

So what it comes down to is the quality of the mind of the person on whom the hypnotism is being attempted. Those with strong views, or even with a habit of keeping an open mind probably wouldn't be that susceptible. The unthinking mass of humanity are pretty easily manipulated.

 

Primed to be deceived? We may be deceived. Any one who thinks they cannot be mistaken is a fool. How about hard wired toward coming to know? To find patterns or create order. Certainly we do not exist lacking in organization but our perceptions are limited by a variety of definite factors that can be overcome.

 

Given the op, it should be obvious the type of emotional comfort I am referring to. I probably could have added the word 'existential' or something in front of emotional comfort for blatant clarification about it but really with the topic laid out in front of us, I think this is about you wanting to conflate the issue, by generalizing all types of emotional comfort, which lead me to "putting words in your mouth."

The type of emotional comfort sought by a nun or monk who devotes their entire lives to a church or temple is clearly of a different nature than that of the standard person who finds emotional comfort in their parents or significant other, if that is how you are generalizing the phrase. I think the same sort of discrepancy could be made in regards to differing emotional comfort for a the standard person's relationship to God and that for their family and friends, as you seem too as well, but as I mentioned I do not relate to the experience of emotional comfort in God.

In comparing it with DMT, it's pretty obvious not everyone needs to seek out emotional comfort from DMT, nor do I even suspect most people who smoke DMT do so for emotional comfort, just as not everyone seeks emotional comfort from a Supernatural Deity.

This type of conflation is akin to saying A serial killer has an insatiable hunger and responding with "Well everyone has hunger."

 

I'll watch it later, for this reason:

 

I do mean to conflate the topic, in my eyes it can't be accurately discussed if the issue is limited to God. Why?

1. As Writer pointed out, there are many different arbitrary conceptions describing the same creative force.
2. As I think you'll agree, there is very little chance of these concepts being brought into physical reality, meaning there is NO solid evidence to proceed with to either prove or disprove the ideas.

However, the space they occupy within the mind, and the effect they have on the mind, most definitely do exist. This fact can be measured, and there is evidence to support this.

So, my method in topics like this is to essentially determine what could be considered a common denominator. In regards to your serial killer example, replace "hunger" with "desire" and then we're on the same page.

 

If that is your prerogative, for the sake of integrity on both our parts in the discussion, I think you should put that intention forth from the outset or perhaps utilize your own phrases/terminology.

 

That is to be determined by how vigorously they are allowed to be questioned or even examined. We are absolutely committed to what we are convinced of. We may have and display much uncertainty at the same time.

 

He used a form of hypnosis mingled with word magick--very cleaver--It was a very entertaining video.

 

Have to agree a con man from top to bottom who picked his marks. It is entertainment programming replete with favorable editing and conclusions come to merely by suggestion.

 

addiction to being entertained exposes those who have it, to an unlimited potential for being "hypnotised" is as good a name for it as any.
whatever you want to call it, their perceptions of the world around them, and even their own priorities manipulated. that much certainly.

people can become 'hypnotised' by the immediate concerns of their own lives too. but this bennifits no one who would manipulate them.
popular entertainment, and especially 'infotainment' provides a way to coordinate this on a massive scale.
widely popular religions and ideological beliefs have this effect also.

yes a lot of people, too many people, go through life neither knowing nor seeming to care, how what is important to them, and how they act because of it,
affects everyone else, and even what they experience themselves as a result of it.

 

I just LMAO at the mint experiment. I had my sound all cranked up and ready for this frequency to cause me to smell mint and then nothing. Maybe some of you smelled COCK!

I've certainly experienced moments of overwhelming sensations of spiritual presence or guardianship. I just understand they are chemical, all our experiences and feelings are neural chemical interactions in our physical analogue brains. That's just what we are. Consciousness is an interpolative mosaic of trillions of interactions where the total experience is something far greater than the sum of its parts.

 

Is it your understanding that you and/or other atheists like you are largely immune to such influences, and that you've formed your worldview entirely on the basis of logic and evidence? Might the video give food for thought about the "real" reasons why people choose to "non-believe"?

 

Did you actually read the post you quoted or watch the video? His audience is almost entirely atheists and agnostics, and I count myself and other atheists in the group called "humans".


The point is that all humans are hardwired to be deceived by certain styles of propositions, namely those that invoke a presence or seek to explain the sensation of presence or emotional comfort and awe.

Atheism is the non-belief in the most popular of those propositions and the reasoning they employ (theres only so many arguments for the existence of god, and every single one has been offered a refutation historically).

 

This is all way above my head at the moment.I'm thinking more like Donald Duck right now.

 

Trust me, I understand all of this and Donald duck had the right idea.

Thats why he was always lighting cigars.

 

I'm amused you are that gullible being so hard headed that you are soundly oriented. But the fact is you were dispositioned to be convinced by his arguments by your vested interest in demonstrating that the religious are deluded.


It is simplistic to say we are just chemical reactions as our choices influence the mix of chemicals present as in the case of arousal through thinking.

That is your conclusion. Hard wired to be deceived would be an endemic deceit of nature. Don't think that is an evolutionary requirement. We are apt to learn well no matter the lesson. we can learn well a bad lesson as a good one. We are hard wired to organize in a pro active fashion, that is we always choose with a guide. Innate devotion allows for teaching and learning as in a mother duck who attends the nest and the ducklings that are imprinted by the first moving object they see. We are not programmed to be deceived but can be deceived if you are not familiar with the effects of your own thinking and how that relates to emotional regard.

Deception is not assured but is a matter of education or lack of it.

 

So's mkay if I keep on with my American Spirit tobacco rollies then...

 

Put it this way.

If you were on the titanic, would you rather be polishing the brass or Smoking a cigar?

Most people will be eager to answer "Cigar" but neither is the superior answer. I don't doubt some people love and appreciate polished brass.

It would appear that Donald Duck loved cigars.

 

Well, I thought that was the case, but the conclusion that you emphasize is " how trivially easy is it to get people to join a religion?" Yes the folks in the audience are atheists, or at least that's what we're told. The purpose of the experiment is said to be to demonstrate that religious belief "could be nothing but an illusion" (and I happen to agree that it could"). But so could atheism. You present us with a video intended to discredit religion. The video is of a well-known illusionist described in wikipeia as "an English illusionist, mentalist, trickster, hypnotist, painter, writer, and sceptic." Several times during his performance he resorts to deception (i.e., lies) to set up his audience. One title not given to Mr. Brown is "psychologist". A professional psychologist would be in danger of losing his license by engaging in experiments that had the potential of doing real psychological harm to human subjects, and would probably never have obtained IRB approval. As we are getting ready to watch the experiments, are we aware we're being subjected to a powerful suggestion: that we're going to see how religion is going to be explained by such methods? Toward the end, we are told that the will to believe is grounded in a desire for happiness.How crass! But nothing Was done to explore why people disbelieve in god. Some have suggested that that too is rooted in a need for comfort--the comfort of thinking that the non-believes aren't accountable.
http://nirmukta.com/2011/11/07/derren-brown%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98crowd-experiment%E2%80%99-a-response-from-two-social-psychologists/

 

I should explain that the link provided in the post above does not relate to the same experiment Mr. Writer provided but to another by Brown, which includes responses from two psychologists that I think are relevant to Writer's post. Among other things, they explain why the performance is really not an experiment, since there are no controls of key variable.(As is also true of the OP's video) And they explain that the theory he is purporting to be guided by is faulty and the results don't prove what he says they prove. Also, to get an idea of Brown's ethical depth and versatility, you might check out http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/oct/08/broadcasting.channel41. How do you tell when the con man is conning you?

BTW, I happen to agree that religion could be explained by psychological processes, although for a full explanation we'd also have to bring in some sociological and political ones.My point is that the same goes for every human set of beliefs or conscious disbeliefs. I doubt that civilization could have advanced to the point that we're able to share our "deep thoughts" on Hip Forums without the high degree of non-rationality that makes us do civic-minded things involving lots of sacrifice. So many of our precious rights were won by the heroic efforts of people like Medger Evans and Martin Luther King, who could also be dismissed as dupes of social conditioning reflexively responding to the symbols, rhetoric and mass demonstrations for peace and justice.