Confused

I have been to a church b4 and is there some specific guidlines when people go to the front of the church, experience god by being slapped in the face and then they faint? Are there specific steps to follow to get "healed"? Why do they pretend to faint? Everyone kows its fake, why waste two hours a week doing it?

GenesisNemesis

http://skepdic.com/selfdeception.html

Abracadabra to Zombies.

OldYgg

I haven't looked at your link GenesisNemesis and I will, but I agree with Confused - I've never understood this kind of behavior.

Old Ygg

GenesisNemesis

Oh, I forgot. It wasn't really self deception....

It was something where a group forcing you to do something and you don't care if you do it... sort of like peer-pressure :huh:

Valdemar

Reminds me of the time when I was a christian, went to a pentacostal church with my girlfriend. You know the kind: waving arms, speaking in tongues, healings (all alleged, of course). It was a very freaky experience. Felt like I had walked into an insane asylum.

Well, on this particular morning, it was speaking in tongues. Stupidest thing I had ever heard. It was almost impossible for me to not start laughing (and I was a Christian)! I turned to my girlfriend and said that I was going to head up to the front of the church and start speaking Swedish (which I am fluent in), and she said "don't you dare!" I told her that at least I would be saying something that makes sense!

Anyone who has any sort of language skills would recognize what these people were doing was utter tripe.

EthnAlln

Sort of like that, only slightly more positive. People want to believe there is some real power "out there" that they can tap into. They could fall down at home, in private, but then their natural sanity would assert itself, and they'd know that the whole thing was coming from their own mind. The people who really can "talk to Jesus" at home in private (and I fear George Bush is among them) are the really dangerous psychopaths.

By doing it in public, with a crowd around, they get perhaps a slight rationalization—God is more likely to notice and intervene where there are many people engaged in the same supplication. Mainly, however, it's the presence of other people doing the same thing that distracts the mind enough to make the self-deception possible.

It's the "madness of crowds" phenomenon, and it's what makes crowds into vicious mobs sometimes. As long as other people are there to reinforce a motivation or behavior, one's own conscience and sanity can be drained off, like a grounded battery.

EthnAlln

Add to those in the link the fact that the overwhelming majority of people think they are better-than-average drivers.

Similarly, my idealistic university colleagues always eagerly looked forward to the arrival of the book buyer, the guy who came by professors' offices and paid them nice, untraceable CASH for the examination copies that publishers sent them. They rationalized that they were doing a public service by allowing this guy and the company behind him to sell these books to students below the publishers' prices. Ain't it wonderful when you can do such a noble thing and still make a small profit for yourself? (I wonder how many of them ever declared this money as income on their tax returns. Oh, wait! I think I can guess. Never mind.)

Not to derail this into a thread that belongs under politics, but (he says, derailing this into a thread that belongs under politics), this is the same phenomenon that can make a Rumsfeld or McNamara look at a disaster they created and see a noble effort that is just on the brink of a brilliant success.

Valdemar

The overwhelming majority of people ARE better than average drivers. Here are all the rest:

EthnAlln

Good point. It is in fact possible for the majority of people to be above average. It just isn't possible for the majority of people to be above the median. If there are a few truly atrocious drivers (and there are), they can drive (no pun intended) the average way down below nearly everybody, just as three or four people scoring zero on a test can put 90% of a class above the average score.

But I think that most people don't understand "average" in its technical sense. When they say they are better than average, what they really mean is that they are better than the majority of other drivers, in other words, they mean they are above the median.

ModernHeretic

With all due respect, I think it's a tad more than self-deception. More like subliminal suggestion. The preacher first gets the crowd really worked up and emotional, and people believe that he really has power to heal them, so they fall down. I think it's kind of the same thing that happens with shamans and witch-doctors. Some of the faith healers may even believe that people are really healed, although of course some are complete frauds.