by Mum 6 Replies latest social relationships
The scientific mind can hone in on some great, but sometimes obvious facts. I love this one:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply to painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. - Carl Sagan
'nuff said.
Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
I took it back!
It wasn't easy, but I did it.
It had a great cost, but I still did it. I'd do it again, everytime.
I took it back!
Too true.
Sounds a little like (spiritual) Stockholm Syndrome, where abductees and captives of the apostate Watchtower Organisation will defend it with their life.
Excellent find.
This one is even better. This topic has come here numerous times in the past but I couldn't quickly find the posts. Anyway, here it is:
Alan Feuerbacher
A few years after the complete collapse of everything C. T. Russell had predicted, J. F. Rutherford began a process of replacing Russell's unfulfilled predictions with a series of invisible and spiritual events associated with the years 1914 and 1918. By the early 1930s the process was complete.
An interesting comment on this transformation was made by Carl Sagan in his book Broca's Brain (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979, pp. 332-333):
Doctrines that make no predictions are less compelling than those which make correct predictions; they are in turn more successful than doctrines that make false predictions.
But not always. One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and -- while the events of that year were certainly of some importance -- the world does not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, "Oh, did we say '1914'? So sorry, we meant '2014.' A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren't inconvenienced in any way." But they did not. They could have said, "Well, the world would have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth." But they did not. Instead, they did something much more ingenious.
They announced that the world had in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout. It is astonishing in the face of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.
"We are made of star stuff."
I'm there right with you Oubliette, I'm holding on to mine like the prized pair of gonads between my legs (I'm making sure I don't squeeze to tight though;)
Phats.
