It's so funny to see people like this guy, who were infected with the God virus, educated themselves out of it, then returned to live among the infected. I'm so glad this speech was preserved and electronically disseminated. Darrel is erudite but in a down-home way that is never boring. Thank you ten times!
I had Jehovah Witnesses come to my door once............I welcomed them in for a lengthy conversation about their faith.............when I told them I was an ex Christian with seminar study and now a scientific rationalist they couldn't wait to get the hell out of my place after about an hour of conversations about biblical history and cosmology/quantum mechanics of reality......and never showed up again..........hehe.
If none of you have read Darrel Ray's books I highly recommend them. "The God Virus" and more recently "Sex And God". Very Insightful, very informative, very easy to read. Great to hear him do a talk. Happy reading.
Beautifully eloquent analogy nearly bursting with examples of the deluded nature of religious belief. It's very telling that you see a lot of Christians commenting on other Scepticon video's - but none here.
... Wonderful lecture. And it scared the heck outta me, because it prompted me to connect the terrifying significance of two particular clinical psychology experiments I ran across on the way to my master's level in social psychology. *Buckle up.* The first terrifying experiment proved that raising young in a dull environment can cause permanent brain damage to bright offspring. The experiment was performed using "bright rats" and "dull rats", which are bred to be guaranteed to be equally dull, or equally bright, and are sold to psych labs as such. The idea here is to keep all things quantifiably equal when you start running 'em through mazes & etc., observing their behaviour for whatever experimental reason you have in mind. The experiment was terrifyingly simple: in a nutshell, two very different living environments were designed: one was "very dull" in the sensorial sense: a cage with just the bare necessities, meaning bedding, food and water, and cage bottom litter. The other environment was sensorially "rich", in the sense that it had toys, a little peek-a-boo playground, you get the idea. Here were the terrifying results: a dull rat pup (baby rat) raised in a dull environment became a dull adult, no surprise there. And a dull rat pup raised in a rich environment also stayed dull, no surprise either, really. A bright rat pup raised in the rich environment stayed bright as an adult, no surprise again ... *but a bright rat pup raised in the dull environment became, and stayed dull as an adult.* *THAT* caught my attention. Big time. The other clinical psychology experiment I studied which scared the Hell outta me discovered something so terrifying, and damaging about basic Human behaviour, that it resulted in the clinical psychology institution of your school psych professor board review, which you and your proposed clinical psychology experiment(s) had to pass before you perform 'em. The #1 across the board Major Caution was regarding "human experimentation", and you'll understand why in a minute. *"Why"* was the now (in)famous "Zimbardo/Stanford Experiment", wherein student volunteers were recruited to be placed into a quite realistic prison environment. The student volunteers were assigned one of two prison "roles": prisoner, or prison guard. The experiment was run, all Hell broke loose, students playing both roles became seriously traumatised, and all this resulted in a major professional scandal still hotly debated to this day. And that's why your school's psych professors had to "pass" any human experimentation psychology experiments you, as a student, might have in mind, like, oh, say, "The Effect Of Gravity On Evangelical Christians" wherein you evaluated the results of dropping them off the top of the Empire State building. The terrifying result of this now-legendary experiment were, basically, that the "student guards" became viciously sadistic, and the "student prisoners" became meekly submissive (that 'learned helplessness' & etc. thing). As I said earlier, some of the students playing either role became severely freaked out, and required therapy. Dr. Ray's lecture connected these two terrifying experiments in my mind like the Hadron Collider: born-bright Human children being permanently dulled down by a repressive-suppressive religious upbringing, while being programmed to act as "guards" over the society which they hold as "prisoner". Observable psychosocial patterns indicate that the analogy holds. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) once said that "An ethical man is a Christian holding four aces", a comment which fascinated me for years because I had the definite feeling I wasn't quite "getting" his actual meaning. Now I think I do. Sincerest Thanks for your time and interest re: getting through my comment. I *REALLY* needed to kick these ideas into play.
If the god of the bible had been portrayed as a king instead of a God , he would be remembered as the most evil, mass murdering, tyrannical dictator of all time! Christians give the bible god a free pass because, they say, he is god the creator. I don't see the difference whether man or god. If his actions were evil or immoral, as the bible states, then he'd be just as guilty of being evil as any human committing the same deeds.
I suspect there is a subsect of the population that is immune to most religious tactics. I say this because I was raised Catholic and hated everything about the church. Some of my early memories were full of resentment toward the nuns who taught me (whose order is something of the feminine version of the Jesuits). It wasn't an intellectual reaction- I was 5 when this started- but an instinctive knee jerk backlash that never went away. To this day I feel uncomfortable inside a church and Catholic pious art gives me nightmares. I flashback to mandatory confessions at age 9 and the horror they entailed.
This was a very interesting talk. I did hate how badly he timed it. He kept saying I'll talk about this later and show you that later. Then he was rushed towards the end...never getting around to a lot of his earlier points.
My rapture has ruptured - how sad, Didn't happen today - makes me mad - I gave all my money, and my house - not so funny - Now I have nothing - that's bad!
Darrel Ray's "The God Virus" does work well as a metaphor. It's also a huge relief to listen to a whole lecture by this chap in which he doesn't describe his sex-life in any great detail. Not that I resent his sex life: far from it. It's just that one can't help picturing Mr Ray in action as he discloses his sexual adventures and, given that he's not exactly God's gift to gays, this can be a little off-putting.
Enlightening! Some good ideas... Somehow I always knew that the witnesses try to sneeze at me. That's why I have always kept them in front of my garden door, some 12 meters away from me...
I didn't know I was. But I guess you know that I am because . . . how do you know? Well, you don't. Your anger at me is called displaced anger do to lack of self awareness.of its real cause. I can see why the virus analogy is painful to you, and you lash out at me because you don't understand your own feelings.
It's so funny to see people like this guy, who were infected with the God virus, educated themselves out of it, then returned to live among the infected. I'm so glad this speech was preserved and electronically disseminated. Darrel is erudite but in a down-home way that is never boring. Thank you ten times!
I had Jehovah Witnesses come to my door once............I welcomed them in for a lengthy conversation about their faith.............when I told them I was an ex Christian with seminar study and now a scientific rationalist they couldn't wait to get the hell out of my place after about an hour of conversations about biblical history and cosmology/quantum mechanics of reality......and never showed up again..........hehe.
If none of you have read Darrel Ray's books I highly recommend them. "The God Virus" and more recently "Sex And God". Very Insightful, very informative, very easy to read. Great to hear him do a talk. Happy reading.
"Amazing Grace" always pissed me off more than I can express. Thank you for articulating why.
I think the music is beautiful byt the words suck. Tho the writer of the song was a slave trader I believe
Uhhh. Next time the JWs or the Mormons knock on my door, I'm donning a respirator!
Beautifully eloquent analogy nearly bursting with examples of the deluded nature of religious belief. It's very telling that you see a lot of Christians commenting on other Scepticon video's - but none here.
Great observation.
... Wonderful lecture. And it scared the heck outta me, because it prompted me to connect the terrifying significance of two particular clinical psychology experiments I ran across on the way to my master's level in social psychology. *Buckle up.*
The first terrifying experiment proved that raising young in a dull environment can cause permanent brain damage to bright offspring. The experiment was performed using "bright rats" and "dull rats", which are bred to be guaranteed to be equally dull, or equally bright, and are sold to psych labs as such. The idea here is to keep all things quantifiably equal when you start running 'em through mazes & etc., observing their behaviour for whatever experimental reason you have in mind.
The experiment was terrifyingly simple: in a nutshell, two very different living environments were designed: one was "very dull" in the sensorial sense: a cage with just the bare necessities, meaning bedding, food and water, and cage bottom litter. The other environment was sensorially "rich", in the sense that it had toys, a little peek-a-boo playground, you get the idea.
Here were the terrifying results: a dull rat pup (baby rat) raised in a dull environment became a dull adult, no surprise there. And a dull rat pup raised in a rich environment also stayed dull, no surprise either, really. A bright rat pup raised in the rich environment stayed bright as an adult, no surprise again ... *but a bright rat pup raised in the dull environment became, and stayed dull as an adult.*
*THAT* caught my attention. Big time.
The other clinical psychology experiment I studied which scared the Hell outta me discovered something so terrifying, and damaging about basic Human behaviour, that it resulted in the clinical psychology institution of your school psych professor board review, which you and your proposed clinical psychology experiment(s) had to pass before you perform 'em. The #1 across the board Major Caution was regarding "human experimentation", and you'll understand why in a minute.
*"Why"* was the now (in)famous "Zimbardo/Stanford Experiment", wherein student volunteers were recruited to be placed into a quite realistic prison environment. The student volunteers were assigned one of two prison "roles": prisoner, or prison guard. The experiment was run, all Hell broke loose, students playing both roles became seriously traumatised, and all this resulted in a major professional scandal still hotly debated to this day. And that's why your school's psych professors had to "pass" any human experimentation psychology experiments you, as a student, might have in mind, like, oh, say, "The Effect Of Gravity On Evangelical Christians" wherein you evaluated the results of dropping them off the top of the Empire State building.
The terrifying result of this now-legendary experiment were, basically, that the "student guards" became viciously sadistic, and the "student prisoners" became meekly submissive (that 'learned helplessness' & etc. thing). As I said earlier, some of the students playing either role became severely freaked out, and required therapy.
Dr. Ray's lecture connected these two terrifying experiments in my mind like the Hadron Collider: born-bright Human children being permanently dulled down by a repressive-suppressive religious upbringing, while being programmed to act as "guards" over the society which they hold as "prisoner". Observable psychosocial patterns indicate that the analogy holds.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) once said that "An ethical man is a Christian holding four aces", a comment which fascinated me for years because I had the definite feeling I wasn't quite "getting" his actual meaning.
Now I think I do.
Sincerest Thanks for your time and interest re: getting through my comment. I *REALLY* needed to kick these ideas into play.
Thomas Cervasio I needed to hear this lecture, but I needed to see your comment just as much.
❤️
If the god of the bible had been portrayed as a king instead of a God , he would be remembered as the most evil, mass murdering, tyrannical dictator of all time! Christians give the bible god a free pass because, they say, he is god the creator. I don't see the difference whether man or god. If his actions were evil or immoral, as the bible states, then he'd be just as guilty of being evil as any human committing the same deeds.
I suspect there is a subsect of the population that is immune to most religious tactics. I say this because I was raised Catholic and hated everything about the church. Some of my early memories were full of resentment toward the nuns who taught me (whose order is something of the feminine version of the Jesuits).
It wasn't an intellectual reaction- I was 5 when this started- but an instinctive knee jerk backlash that never went away.
To this day I feel uncomfortable inside a church and Catholic pious art gives me nightmares. I flashback to mandatory confessions at age 9 and the horror they entailed.
This was a very interesting talk. I did hate how badly he timed it. He kept saying I'll talk about this later and show you that later. Then he was rushed towards the end...never getting around to a lot of his earlier points.
My rapture has ruptured - how sad,
Didn't happen today - makes me mad -
I gave all my money, and my house - not so funny -
Now I have nothing - that's bad!
Darrel Ray's "The God Virus" does work well as a metaphor. It's also a huge relief to listen to a whole lecture by this chap in which he doesn't describe his sex-life in any great detail. Not that I resent his sex life: far from it. It's just that one can't help picturing Mr Ray in action as he discloses his sexual adventures and, given that he's not exactly God's gift to gays, this can be a little off-putting.
I want Mormons to come to my door, but they never do. :( I wrote my MA Thesis partially on them. It would be fun. :D
Enlightening! Some good ideas...
Somehow I always knew that the witnesses try to sneeze at me. That's why I have always kept them in front of my garden door, some 12 meters away from me...
Someday we will finally figure out if religion is the cause...or the result...of insanity. Then perhaps we will find a wa to cure both.
he is good reminds me of my time at living waters
Cognitive dissonance makes people crazy!
What is the psychology behind the casting out of demons? Is it also a type of hypnosis? Could you replicate it on anyone?
Fucking brilliant!
One day I'm going to go to Wichita!
I wonder if they all just woke up on the next day like "Awww, shit. I'm gonna hear about this at work."
Mawslums
His infection and virus analogy was becoming very tiresome towards the end. Shoo, shoo, retarded flu.
The religions that they describe are tiresome in their similarities also, which could be viewed as one of the points he makes.
DarwinsHamster It could be viewed as one of the points he makes by the insane.
It's possible to be wrong without being insane. Why are you so angry?
DarwinsHamster Why are you hurting inside, emotionally, mentally, spiritually?
I didn't know I was. But I guess you know that I am because . . . how do you know? Well, you don't. Your anger at me is called displaced anger do to lack of self awareness.of its real cause. I can see why the virus analogy is painful to you, and you lash out at me because you don't understand your own feelings.
Unless you see it, smell it, feel it, taste it or hear it..it ain't there. Zero. Zilch.
There are these little devices called microscopes. They allow you to "see" things you can't see, smell, feel, taste or hear.