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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Question about belief in the Bible
Message-ID: <159@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Oct-84 11:05:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.159
Posted: Tue Oct  2 11:05:34 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 04:59:38 EDT
References: <1607@zehntel.UUCP> <359@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 50


> > [Steve Nelson]
> > I have a simple, perhaps naive, but utterly fundamental question:
> > 
> >     What is it that leads a person from any other state of mind
> >     to the state of believing that the Bible is totally true
> >     and inspired by the God described therein?
> > 
> > Answers from those in either state of mind will be appreciated, thank you.
> 
> [Paul DuBois]
> Not "what", "who".  God.

Positive feedback.  The same kinds of positive feedback that cause people to
become confirmed conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Moslems, Hindus, agnostics,
sociobiologists, etc.  Christianity can provide superficially consistent answers
to a variety of commonly asked questions.  Consistency of explanation is very
convincing to people, and explanations that rule out accepting other kinds of
explanation are the positive feedback that lock people into Christianity and
other cults.

A simplified example (taken from the Krishnas, but applicable to Christianity
as well) is the "you can't trust anything a demon says; they are trying to lead
you astray; anyone not a Krishna is a demon; so only listen to Krishnas'
arguments and ignore everyone else's" paradigm.  The Christian analogy is
temptation by Satan.  The friend trying to dissuade you is actually being
mislead by Satan, so he is wrong.

Another reason the positive feedback works, is that it is mechanically simple
even for the feebleminded to use these sorts of rationales, rather than have
to understand a logical argument.  The ability to recite a formula which
requires significant intellectual horsepower to refute must give the reciter
a feeling of power, since he can easily use the formula to dismiss the
refutation (in his own mind at least) as well.

One example of that sort of formula is "There's no proof that Gawd doesn't
exist" statement.  It's meaningless, since there's no proof that cosmic pink
elephants don't exist as well.  Yet I just read that one today, right here.
But explanations of logical meaninglessness of statements get shrugged off
with another formula: "Gawd is above our puny /logic/intellects/understanding/
etc./"

In summary, the reason people can be converted is by the positive feedback from
being able to formulaically answer questions.  Like this:

> [Paul DuBois]
> Not "what", "who".  God.
-- 

Mike Huybensz				...mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh