Mass Atheist Conversion

[owen652]

apologies if this has been posted before. one of my favourite derren brown stunts ever.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NiBNnHVesY&feature=related

[Akheia]

Oh my gosh, this was wild. Is this serious? He seriously talked to a room full of atheists who weren't in on the joke?

 

In college I learned to identify that sense of wrongness that comes of humans making up spiritual bullshit. That prickly weirdness and unsettled agitation that fluttered across my chest when I heard someone speaking in tongues and someone "interpreting" it; when my Evil Ex decided to exorcise my house of demons; when hearing people wail and groan in prayer in the back church rooms--it all feels exactly like how I felt watching this video. The problem I can foresee is that Christians will very easily sidestep the real implications of his stunts and just say he's got demons in him or something.

[FeelHappy]

This reminds me of all those times I was 'slain in the spirit', I'm looking forward to lunch to watch more of this stuff.

[Thought2Much]

I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I did see made me... uncomfortable. I'll have to watch the rest when I get home.

[Vigile]

I've always thought this was a put on. It might work on the occasional person, but it can't work as cleanly and as radically as it did in such a small sample size with such a perfect result. I like Browne, but I suspect a lot of his shows are smoke and mirrors for the audience.

[YellowJacket]

I can't find the next part

[Paine]

i'm glad you posted it! I'm new to this stuff, so I devour it all...Everything thats old is new again!

 

Will watch when I can be alone with the screen.

[owen652]

I've always thought this was a put on. It might work on the occasional person, but it can't work as cleanly and as radically as it did in such a small sample size with such a perfect result. I like Browne, but I suspect a lot of his shows are smoke and mirrors for the audience.

 

They're not actors, but i've no doubt that he screened those people beforehand, because only about 30% of the population are highly suggestible in that way. however, it doesn't detract from the general principle. If someone can get a roomful of ATHEISTS to be slain in the spirit, imagine how easy it would be to do the same to an auditorium full of willing, hyped-up believers. The mind is such a malleable thing.

[FeelHappy]

Back in my WoF days, I went to a benny hinn crusade, I flew 400 miles to get there and went two services a day for three days. I remember he stayed backstage for the first few songs, and then he appeared on stage in his white fancy rich suit and when he walked out, I could feel the holy spirit moving over me. He spoke a few words and a large group of us were slain in the spirit. I remember about halfway through the second day, I looked across the room and in the far corner I noticed a sick person confined to a what appeared to be a hospital bed. I don't have a clue what he/she had, but I remember after I noticed him/her, I started praying in the spirit for him. I prayed for the rest of that night and the entire next day in the spirit for god to heal just the person who was on his death bed. Then comes the end of day three and nothing happened, I couldn't figure out why god had ignored the prayer.....That was one of the first times I let the thought enter my head that perhaps faith healing is all fake. Of course I quickly fought that thought, the devil was trying to attack me and I wasn't about to let him get a hold.

 

It would be almost 8 years later before I fully left the faith movement. Great video though, it reminded me of my old fundi days.

[LivingLife]

Virgile, this stuff is real. I was in Praise and Worship and saw first hand how the music we played lulled folk into what we thought was the anointing or holy of holies. It is mass hypnotism or group think or the power of suggestion.

 

I was very skilled at this and thought it was the hs working but it was just folk seeing what others were doing and learning and then making it real for themselves.

 

We had a preacher from Singapore visit us and his ministry was about finances. After being invited, there was dissension in the ranks and he never got to talk about anything that day and had to wing it. No one told him he was not allowed to preach his shit.

 

The P&W service I led that day had folk falling in the spirit and all sorts of prophesy and crazy stuff. this was so powerful he asked me after the service if I had CD's He had not experienced such a "move of god" before.

 

As P&W leader, you have to watch what folk are doing and respond taking the band in a direction that "allows the holey spook" to move.

 

It was all smoke and mirrors and this YouTube actually showed me what I was doing w/o really being aware. We had been trained in this technique and accepted it as solid doctrine called psalmadry.

 

Still under the group anointing, he came up on stage to lay hands on us, everyone fell but I did not go down, in the end they kinda pushed me to the floor but it was fake.

 

Of course with the congregants all in the spirit, he could pretty much do anything that day and it worked.

 

Good P&W + foreign preacher = expectation

 

The weird thing was that my son at the music desk, said he looked like Ozzy Osbourne from Black Sabbath

 

Weird shit also happens here in lil' ole SA

 

We had another dude from Scotland that preached and his ministry was being drunk in the spirit. His medium was plain bottled water which he drank and got drunker and drunker the more he drank and preached even with the slurring of speech. Everyone got some water and hey presto, everyone was pissed, except me.

 

People can be coerced to do silly things and that is exactly how this fucked up religion works. Ergo a mind virus or a mind fuck.

[Chikirin]

 

 

In college I learned to identify that sense of wrongness that comes of humans making up spiritual bullshit. That prickly weirdness and unsettled agitation that fluttered across my chest when I heard someone speaking in tongues and someone "interpreting" it; w

 

I know the feeling, but I interpreted it the opposite, I figured that feeling of discomfort was my own sinfulness trying to get me to wriggle away from the holy spirit

[Paine]

LOL!

 

I can honestly say...I was NEVER, EVER into charismatic religion, and despised all that hysterical P&W shit.

 

I was a hymnal, piano, and organ kinda Christian.

 

But can I just say this>>>>>>>>>

 

THAT GRAY HAIRED KURT IDIOT WAS THE BIGGEST MEALY MOUTHED SIMPLETON I HAVE SEEN IN A LONG TIME. HE EMBARRASSES ME TO BE HUMAN.

[Vigile]

Virgile, this stuff is real. I was in Praise and Worship and saw first hand how the music we played lulled folk into what we thought was the anointing or holy of holies. It is mass hypnotism or group think or the power of suggestion.

 

I've been to those as well when I still believed and I was unphased. This is likely a trait in me that eventually led to my deconversion. I suspect a lot/most atheists are more of the thinking kind as opposed to the feeling kind, which should theoretically make them invulnerable to this type of mass hypnosis.

 

I think Owen is right, Browne's team screened the audience first, finding those with the right personality traits that make them vulnerable.

 

Logically, if this stuff was as powerful as it is portrayed in his show, teachers and politicians would simply hypnotize and indoctrinate society and mold our minds completely. Certainly this happens to a degree (advertising e.g.) not not on the massive level that Browne suggests in this and other shows he produces.

[LivingLife]

When I said real, I should have qualified that as meaning it really happens.

 

Whenever I was on the receiving end of the P&W, I was always unphased compared to the rest of the folk.

 

It is these experiences that many attribute to being the real deal and the "evidence" of god. I had a reputation in my town and never spent more than two weeks in the pews when I changed churches before being incorporated into the P&W team. Most P&W team musicians suck. I would get compliments playing bass or when I led playing guitar. To them I was gifted of the holy spook.

 

I have a friend in the US that experienced the exact same thing.

[JoeCoastie]

There's a lot of power in a little hocus pocus and abracadabra. Priests and preachers are a lot like magicians.

[Akheia]

Or like tarot hucksters or mediums. I don't see a lot of difference between techniques used by the average Pentecostal evangelist and Miss Cleo.

[2Honest]

Wow this is uncomfortable to watch, makes me cringe. I experienced all the warm fuzzies and stuff as a believer, too. We had church services where for 2-3 hours all we did was worship, prophesy, pray for each other, laugh, fall down, etc. I felt warmth, peace, etc but I was never "slain in the spirit". (Although others were when I prayed for them.)

 

I attended a conference once where, on the last night, they had all 500 or so people make a huge circle and line the walls of the auditorium. Then the "ministry team" went around the room and prayed for each and every person and "imparted" the spirit to them. There were people screaming, crying, laughing, falling down. I was really moved by the experience but when they got to me I didn't feel anything. I remember at one point sort of removing myself from the situation in my mind and thinking how, if an unbeliever walked in the room they'd think this was some kind of crazy shit! But I quickly put that thought out of my mind.

 

What finally got to me was the fact that these experiences never produced anything tangible. I realized that almost all religions can produce some sort of experience. But, at least in my "stream" of Christianity, there were a lot of things being promised (based on the Bible, of course). We were supposed to also be experiencing healing, financial provision, etc. Those times of "feeling god" were supposed to be proof of his interaction with us. So when nothing ever materialized it became clear that the experiences were just that...experiences.

 

It's so clear to me now how it is just group-think. It all relies on having just the right atmosphere, music, and dynamic leadership - and a core group of people who are impressionable. I can remember wanting to have the same feelings when I was at home "alone with god" and could never duplicate it...just one of the many things that led to my deconversion.

[Thought2Much]

What finally got to me was the fact that these experiences never produced anything tangible. I realized that almost all religions can produce some sort of experience. But, at least in my "stream" of Christianity, there were a lot of things being promised (based on the Bible, of course). We were supposed to also be experiencing healing, financial provision, etc. Those times of "feeling god" were supposed to be proof of his interaction with us. So when nothing ever materialized it became clear that the experiences were just that...experiences.

 

Maybe if you had just prayed a little harder, or taken one more step towards God, then you could have gone to the next level, and that's when things would actually start to happen, and the real miracles would occur.

 

Okay, I tried, but I couldn't type that with a straight face. Sorry.

[2Honest]

What finally got to me was the fact that these experiences never produced anything tangible. I realized that almost all religions can produce some sort of experience. But, at least in my "stream" of Christianity, there were a lot of things being promised (based on the Bible, of course). We were supposed to also be experiencing healing, financial provision, etc. Those times of "feeling god" were supposed to be proof of his interaction with us. So when nothing ever materialized it became clear that the experiences were just that...experiences.

Maybe if you had just prayed a little harder, or taken one more step towards God, then you could have gone to the next level, and that's when things would actually start to happen, and the real miracles would occur.

 

Okay, I tried, but I couldn't type that with a straight face. Sorry.

 

Haha! Yeah, that is how it sucks you in, though! God is perfect so it can't be HIS fault that nothing is happening, so it must be MY fault....or no wait...there IS stuff happening, I just have to perceive it and see things "in the spirit"! Aghhh!!!!

[Inqui]

What finally got to me was the fact that these experiences never produced anything tangible. I realized that almost all religions can produce some sort of experience. But, at least in my "stream" of Christianity, there were a lot of things being promised (based on the Bible, of course). We were supposed to also be experiencing healing, financial provision, etc. Those times of "feeling god" were supposed to be proof of his interaction with us. So when nothing ever materialized it became clear that the experiences were just that...experiences.

 

Maybe if you had just prayed a little harder, or taken one more step towards God, then you could have gone to the next level, and that's when things would actually start to happen, and the real miracles would occur.

 

Okay, I tried, but I couldn't type that with a straight face. Sorry.

You mean that she should have given the church more money.

[Sybaris]

"The bias of the mind is to seek what it wants to confirm or what is of interest to the user at the time."

 

I was on the fence about xtianity many years ago and during the same period I had begun a relationship with a woman from Japan. I realized that I had started attributing the good (albeit common) things happening to me towards my new found faith and also noticed that I was becoming obsessed with anything Japanese. I would even notice Japanese names more than any other while the credits rolled at the end of a movie. One day it just hit me that the "good" things happening to me were no more uncommon than anything Japanese that had been around me the whole time. I had just become more attuned to my interest at the time which was otherwise unremarkable.

[2Honest]

"The bias of the mind is to seek what it wants to confirm or what is of interest to the user at the time."

 

One day it just hit me that the "good" things happening to me were no more uncommon than anything Japanese that had been around me the whole time. I had just become more attuned to my interest at the time which was otherwise unremarkable.

 

That's your Reticular Activating System at work! It's simply a group of nerves in our brains who's job it is to filter information. Once something becomes of interest to us, the brain begins to notice that particular thing more than it did before. For instance, you never noticed a particular make/model of car until you purchase one. Now you see them everywhere. Christians feel like they see/feel god everywhere b/c their brains have been trained to interpret and notice certain things as being from god.

 

http://www.i-change.biz/blog/?p=96

[FirstInTheDance]

Human beings emit energy that can be physically felt. Whether you believe it is evidence of a soul, or merely the byproduct of the electrical impulses and physical functioning of our bodies, is irrelevant. The point is, it is a natural part of being human. I'm not surprised that guy felt something when Darren reached toward him. Haven't you ever felt someone staring at you? Most kids are aware of this phenomenon - didn't you ever play the game where you pretend to crack an egg on someone's head or when you pull an invisible string out of someone's palm? Or you can try this with a friend: Close your eyes and have someone hold their finger over your bare arm or back, an inch or two away from your skin. Tell them to visualize their finger shooting a beam of light onto your skin and have them draw imaginary circles or lines. Concentrate on feeling them. Within a minute or two, you'll probably be able to feel exactly where your friend is pointing. My ex and I tried it, and we could always feel where we were almost touching the other one. As for the "group conversion" where they all fell back in their chairs - that was nothing but a guided meditation. And you could tell it didn't work on everyone - a few of the people who "fell" into their chairs didn't do it very convincingly. I think they were faking it because everyone else seemed to feel something, and they didn't want to be the weird one who was obviously rejected by "God". It is amazing how gullible people are. I'd think most "atheists" would be a little more skeptical and consider other explanations before immediately jumping to the God conclusion after a "touch".