Gullibility of Believers

[arthwollipot]

I'd like to relate a story to the community at large about my experience with certain churchgoers. This was originally posted on the CreationTalk (http://www.creationtalk.com/message-board-forum/about486.html) board, and I have subsequently reposted it in my LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/users/arthwollipot/173735.html). I don't want to imply that I think all religious people are like this. Most Christians I know are very reasonable about their religion, and I respect them for it.

This actually happened to me. I was the protagonist. This is not some second-hand report.

Many years ago I had some friends who happened to attend an Assemblies of God church. One night, just for a lark, I told them that I was an agent of the Illuminati. (Important Note: this was a lie. I have never been any such thing.) I thought that we would all have a good laugh about it and move on.

Ho-ho, you think. That's pretty good. But no. They swallowed the whole thing - hook, line and sinker. I talked to them for over two hours about the goals and structure of the Illuminati and the reasons why I 'joined up'. They completely failed to question even a single word. The whole thing was made up. They believed everything.

This level of gullibility stunned me, then and now. The following day I owned up to my little deception, and to this day I'm certain that they thought I had been 'told off' by my superiors and instructed to claim that it was a hoax. They did not believe me when I told them I had lied, such was the strength of their belief in my previous words.

The sad chapter in this story is that I did exactly the same thing when I accepted their word and joined their church. While there I believed every word that they told me. The one I particularly remember now is that they told me that the band Queen was a satanic band. This had been revealed by people who had left the band (as far as I know only one person has left Queen and that was because he died), and was demonstrated by the line in Bohemian Rhapsody - 'Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me'. They obviously hadn't listened to the whole song.

I particularly remember this one line because it was the one that made me start questioning what they were telling me. When I started thinking about this for myself I realised how disgustingly gullible I had been (and they were still being). So I stopped going to their church and started taking responsibility for my own actions.

The moral of the story: Someone who is gullible enough to believe that the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate will believe anything. You CAN recover if you start thinking for yourself.

[RandFan]

Originally posted by arthwollipot
This had been revealed by people who had left the band (as far as I know only one person has left Queen and that was because he died), and was demonstrated by the line in Bohemian Rhapsody - 'Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me'. They obviously hadn't listened to the whole song.

I particularly remember this one line because it was the one that made me start questioning what they were telling me. When I started thinking about this for myself I realised how disgustingly gullible I had been (and they were still being). So I stopped going to their church and started taking responsibility for my own actions. My conversion away from religion was paved with many small events. I had one such event that also involved, in part, Bohemian Rhapsody.

I was a Mormon and I attended a conference on Rock and Roll. The moderator got everyone into an anti-rock frenzy and after the conference folks were going out to their cars to destroy their tapes.

Logical Arguments from the conference:

Argument: Bohemian Rhapsody is a story about a man who sells his sould to the devil.

My Response So is Faust and the message is that there are very bad consequences to selling ones soul.

Argument: The song by Kansas, Dust in the Wind, trivializes life.

My Response AIU, Dust in the Wind was inspired by a line in the Bible, "For dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return". The song says "all your money won't another minute buy". A sentiment often repeated by Christians. I believe the person who wrote the sone was in fact a christian. The song is about redemption and salvation. Hardly an evil song.

Argument: AC/DC stands for Anti Christ Devils Child.

My Response Not according to Angus Young who said in an interview I read that the name came from his sister's record player which had a label on the back that said AC/DC.

Argument: Songs like Puff the Magic Dragon and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds are about drug use.

My Response Such a lame argument it is pathetic. These songs were a generation old when the conference was held and NO they were not about drug use.

It went on and on with lots of fallacious argument.

[Ladyhawk]

It was George Carlin whose question:

Is God powerful enough to move a rock so big that even he can't move it?

jumpstarted the critical thinking part of my brain and led me down the path of so many unanswered questions that I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that everything the Catholic religion had taught me had to be held suspect. After familiarizing myself with Shermer, Randi and others, I made the painful decision to abandon myth and legend and to start considering that maybe I was the person primarily responsible for events in my life and for my actions.

Which brings me to my point. Arth, you said, "you can recover if you start thinking for yourself" and you're absolutely right. But, your post seems to indicate that you lean toward the idea that believers are mostly gullible people. To some extent, this may be true. But, 98% of my immediate friends and family are religious people (primarily Catholic). At least 85% of them are folks I would consider intelligent =====>very intelligent; hardly gullible.

IMHO, believers believe because it's easier to do so than to accept and face personal accountability for one's actions. It's more comforting to embrace the idea of eternal bliss in heaven as opposed to the idea that death may be no more than an eternal dirt nap. It's more inspiring to believe that heaven will reign righteous retribution upon one's enemies than to accept the fact that there may be no ultimate justice in the world. Better to believe in the golden palace in the clouds where our most dearly departed wait with shining, smiling faces to greet us upon our arrival and welcome us "home" rather than accept the possibility that there is no promise of resurrection or some phoenix-like existence.

My awakening was painful for me for these very same reasons. It was some time before I recognized that my abandonment of these myths had actually empowered me to do something I hadn't done before; to be able to carve and form my personality and values based on my own criteria ...not some invisible deity's.

But each of us sees freedom in a different way and I think most people see freedom as being able to delegate their future, their potential and their fate to the whim of "divine providence" or divine intervention rather than to their own decisions and actions.

So, they will continue to defend the faith and the myths and the stories, simply because to abandon them would mean confronting reality and living life without a heavenly safety-net....

[DangerousBeliefs]

Originally posted by RandFan
Argument: Songs like Puff the Magic Dragon and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds are about drug use.


http://www.snopes.com/music/hidden/lucysky.htm

http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/puff.htm

I always thought Lucy was about LSD too... but Puff is easily a song about an imaginary friend.

There is just a great deal of myth around songs... here's another one I've heard as true:

http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/someair.htm

[c4ts]

I don't understand. There are plenty of REAL songs out there that criticize and actively reject Christian beliefs, but they go for a bunch of pop music that has nothing to do with them!

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by RandFan
Argument: Songs like Puff the Magic Dragon and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds are about drug use.

John Lennon has told about how he got the idea to the song: His son, Julian, had brought home a drawing he had made in school. Lennon asked him what it was and the reply was: "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which Lennon immediately saw as a great title.

After the song was recorded, people came up to him and said "Right, I get it...L.S.D.", which amused Lennon. I'm fairly certain that he explains this in the Jann Wenner 1971 interview.

There is no reason to doubt the story. At the time, Lennon was keen on shocking people, and he could easily have used this as yet another way of surprising people. But he didn't.

[sackett]

arthwollipot:

Your narrative is particularly interesting because it has two parts, the first about your credulous friends and the second about your sojourn on the Assembly Line of God.

The first part is illuminating (no pun intended unless it gets a laugh, then I want full credit) because it suggests how much fun it is when people submerge themselves in fantasies. Wow, a real live agent of the Illuminati! He knows the inside stuff! Maybe he'll show us his secret decoder ring!

The second part is especially useful, and you're to be commended for relating it; I hope you don't feel too much embarrassment about it. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and I know that because of something that happened in my life.

My girl friend, an extremely intelligent woman, was once overwhelmed by some christianist zealots. She was at the time working on her PhD, and as we know, graduate school is a dark, dank, hostile place. I think she craved a community. The proselytizers probably picked up on that, and they literally surrounded her as often as they could, hounding and badgering and finding her weak places. They were good at it; they knew what they were doing; I think they'd taken classes.

Finally she caved, and declared herself a christian. She suffered grave doubts about our unsanctified relationship, which of course the christianists had repeatedly told her was a SIN! I was angry and frightened; I was ready to get in among those zombies with a pick handle and do some damage. Luckily, I complained about the situation to a friend, who advised, "Take her up into Wyoming for a long weekend. Drink champagne in the sunset, and roger both your brains out. She'll come around." I did as he suggested, that is, I got my poor girl friend away from the group and its pressures; I broke the spell. It worked fine, and turned into a really fun excursion. She never relapsed, and easily, almost casually, ended her association with that group. Now she confesses to considerable chagrin, even shame, that her reason could be overmastered like that.

My point is that anybody can be brainwashed.. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Some religionists are breathtakingly stupid, of course. But others of them are clever and subtle reasoners. Some are genuinely smart, well-read, and capable of doing well for themselves both inside and outside the church.

Some mechanism is at work here that's irrelevant to intelligence. I mentioned the fun of wallowing in the fantastic. Maybe we should pay more attention to the undoubted rewards of abject credulity.

arthwollipot, I don't want this to sound like a prying question, but your subjective experience is relevant and important: What did it feel like to belong to that church?

[arthwollipot]

Originally posted by sackett
The second part is especially useful, and you're to be commended for relating it; I hope you don't feel too much embarrassment about it. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and I know that because of something that happened in my life.

I'm not ashamed or embarrassed about it - not any more, anyway. It was quite harrowing in the beginning, but I got over that.

Originally posted by sackett
My point is that anybody can be brainwashed.. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Some religionists are breathtakingly stupid, of course. But others of them are clever and subtle reasoners. Some are genuinely smart, well-read, and capable of doing well for themselves both inside and outside the church.

You're right. I didn't want to give the impression that the gullibles I referred to were stupid. They weren't. But they were, as you say, brainwashed by the community.


Originally posted by sackett
arthwollipot, I don't want this to sound like a prying question, but your subjective experience is relevant and important: What did it feel like to belong to that church?

That's a pretty hard question to answer. What is it like to be a bat? In a way it felt very comfortable. But at the same time it felt very very strange. The sense of community did not really appear (except in the company of my already-close friends) until I was "baptised in the Holy Spirit". Coincidentally (?) at the same time I was immersion-baptised. I went under the water, and came up babbling in tongues.

That same day I was taken out to lunch by complete strangers who had one of those vans - I'm sure you've seen them - the ones with bible passages painted all over them. We sat in a cafe and said "hallelujah" and "amen" to one another.

From that day they did everything they could to make me feel at home. Unfortunately for them, their bull just didn't wash. It was a traumatic day when I decided that I wasn't going to go back. But I got over it. I've seen my previous friends very little since then.

Here's another thing which I have just reminded myself about. When I started to go to the church, I hardly saw any of my other (non-religious) friends. I had a whole bunch of new friends to see instead. But after I left, those old friends started drifting back. I still have two friends who are very close to me, who came back after I left the church. I don't think the churchgoers ever actively discouraged me from seeing them, but they did subtly encourage me to the belief that my true friends were all in the church.

[RandFan]

Originally posted by CFLarsen
There is no reason to doubt the story. At the time, Lennon was keen on shocking people, and he could easily have used this as yet another way of surprising people. But he didn't. He was also a sober and honest person. If he had written a song about drug use I think it very likely that he would have admitted it.

[arthwollipot]

Especially since he did admit in interviews that "I Am The Walrus" for example was written on an acid trip.

[Riddick]

The moral of the story: Someone who is gullible enough to believe that the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate will believe anything. You CAN recover if you start thinking for yourself.
riddick chants "we're not worthy!!! we're not worthy!!! oh ye wise sage!!!"

:bs:

[TheFeds]

Originally posted by Riddick
riddick chants "we're not worthy!!! we're not worthy!!! oh ye wise sage!!!"

:bs: After you're done chanting, how about making clear whether you do, in fact "believe that the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate", then justifying why you aren't as gullible as arthwollipot suggests.

[arthwollipot]

Indeed. I wasn't sure whether riddick was being serious, given the bullship meter icon, so I decided just to accept it as a compliment and bask in my own glory.

:rolleyes: