yahwehyadayada

In high school, in order to avoid taking a speech class, I took a class called "Acting for Theater". (As an interesting aside, my teacher's name was Mr. Bill, & this at the height of SNL's Mr. Bill character). Anyhoo, in this class we learned about a condition that happens when a person watches a play called the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. This condition seems to be employed by people who believe in god, also.

Has anyone else ever heard of this, & if so, what do you think?

Koyaanisqatsi

Yes, he's correct, but the "willing suspension of disbelief" is only applicable to an audience's acceptance and dismissal of the absurdity of sitting in a theatre watching a play or movie.

It refers to the mind's ability to accept as true for the sake of entertainment that there is a "fourth" wall (another theatre term) and that the characters are not just actors on a stage spouting lines.

It is often broken, by the way, by bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, bad costumes, bad sets and/or bad lighting. In other words, it's not an involuntary state of self-hypnosis or anything that can't be easily turned on or off.

Cults do not operate on this surface level. They rely upon repetition (inculcation) and using your own cognitive abilities against you, so that eventually, when they say black is white, you agree because you see black as white.

It is not of your own free will nor is it simply a temporary function of something trivial. It is a reconditioning process that forces you to actually see black as white (thus, Jesus can say, "I came not to bring peace but a sword," and every single modern christian will read that as, "I came not to bring a sword, but peace.").

The technical term for it is "cognitive dissonance."

Queen of Swords

Maybe they should start calling him the Prince of Swords.

Koyaanisqatsi

And be forced to submit to his queen?

Indeed...

Ojuice5001

I think they should call him the Knight of the Swords--that would really fit his personality and style of governing the world.

(Most people wouldn't get that joke; it's based on the Eternal Champion books, which are a cult fantasy series by Michael Moorcock.)

[ June 21, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

seebs

I think your claim is sort of funny. Willing suspension of disbelief is not similar at *all* to religious faith. Willing suspension of disbelief is, so far as I can tell, roughly the same as the thing that happens when you consider hypotheticals; you briefly "push" your old state onto a stack, and operate as though something is true, without actually corrupting the rest of your mental state with these conclusions.

There's a beautiful piece on why this is important in Pratchett's _Wyrd Sisters_, where Granny Weatherwax keeps yelling at actors, saying things like "HE did it! We all seen him!"

Perchance

I think willing suspension of disbelief can be compared to at least some kinds of faith (what some people might call "weaker," what I call "more open to doubt"). I've often had the experience, at least when reading a beautifully written book or watching a movie where people actually act like heroes, of wishing that it could be true, even though I know it's not.

I think some people who doubt parts of the religion they were taught as children, while not necessarily abandoning the whole thing, or who are wistful rather than certain about the whole "pat answers" idea, can be said to willingly suspend their disbelief in faith. They're believing at least partially because they want it to be true so badly.

There's another quote from Pratchett I like, in The Colour of Magic, that goes:

"His [Twoflower's] sister had told him they [dragons] didn't really exist, and he recalled the bitter disappointment. If the world didn't contain those beautiful creatures, he'd decided, it wasn't half the world it ought to be."

I think, for some people, the idea of a world without God is so disappointing they manage to suspend their doubts and disbelief and go on believing.

-Perchance.

[ June 21, 2002: Message edited by: Perchance ]</p>

seebs

No... faith implies that you genuinely believe it could be true. WSOD implies that you are quite sure it isn't, but are temporarily *suspending* that knowledge to enjoy the experience.

WSOD implies awareness that the belief in question is specifically false, not merely dubious.

Perchance

Seebs... that's why I said "some kinds of faith." I know there are strong, certain kinds of faith. I know there are others where people hold the faith for some reason (such as wanting family approval). I think "faith," along with things like "logic" and "reason," is too variable and complex a concept to be confined by just one definition of the word. Its strength seems to vary along a spectrum, rather than be a black-and-white definition of, "This is faith. This is not."

And I've heard (for example) other Christians define faith not as "you genuinely believe it could be true," but as "you know it is true." There is more than one kind of faith, more than one kind of definition, even among theists.

-Perchance.

seebs

I was trying to get a nice safe outer boundary; if you don't actually think it, it's not faith, it's something else. WSOD seems to me to be something that can't overlap with faith.

I do agree there are lots of different kinds of faith.