I’m watching Apocalypse in the Tropics documentary on Netflix about evangelicals and politics in Brazil and it’s mind boggling. Why do the religious people just blindly do whatever the pastors tell them?
I think maybe you have it backwards people who are easily swayed/trusting of authority/gullible are going to be naturally drawn toward religion. Skeptics/those who don’t take things at face value are going to be naturally skeptical of it.
Religion doesn’t make you stupid but it’s very attractive to the sort
The flip side of that is manipulators are going to gravitate toward religion as a easy way to get what they want from the suckers.
Their entire worldview depends on blindly believing things that don’t make sense and are unverifiable
They are trained from a very young age to accept anything an authority tells them.
This is how I look at it mostly. I also think, and statistics show as well, that religious folks are less intelligent on average… partly because they are taught a bunch of nonsense.
In a word: gullible. Full stop.
For the abrahamitic religions, I’d say that the problem is the age of their texts. Their metaphors and the societies they were created in are so outdated that in order to live by the texts, which have to be followed since they are the only cornerstone everything is built upon, you need specialists that are authority figures like priests who you have to trust as a laiman in order to learn what the texts meaning is. Because not everyone can devote themselves to theology.
I think you have it backwards, it’s no wonder people who are easy to manipulate get drawn into religion.
Imo, because they expect God/Source/whatever to be a cosmic vending machine, without doing any internal work on themselves, or external work to make manifest the world they envision, with a large Side-Order of blame, shame, and guilt, scattered, smothered, and covered with greed, vengeance, and distraction (addictions included).
A lot of churches are cults. The Jehovah’s Witnesses put their religion before their own kids and shun them. They’ll pass on a blood transfusion for their religion. So yeah, mind control is a real thing.
South Park sang it best.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm3mDatFpNE
Joseph Smith was called a prophet (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) He started the Mormon religion (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb). (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) Joseph Smith was called a prophet-
(Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) Many people believed Joseph (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) And that night he-ee saw an angel (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
(Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
Joseph Smith was called a prophet (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
(Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
He found the stones and golden plates (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) Even though nobody else ever saw them (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
(Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
(Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
And that’s how the Book of Mormon was written (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) (Dumb dadumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) (Dumb dadumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) (Dahumb dahumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) (Dumb dumb dumb dumb duuumb, duuumb.)
Martin went home to his wife (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb) And showed her pages from the Book of Mormon (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
Lucy Harris smart smart smart (Smart smart smart smart smart)
Martin Harris dumb dadumb-
Lucy Harris smart smart smart Martin Harris dumb. So Martin went on back to Smith Said the pages had gone away Smith got mad and told Martin He needed to go pray (Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
(Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb)
Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.
Because they have been taught, from childhood, to just believe whatever the guy up front tells them to.
when you believe one outlandish thing, it’s easy to be convinced of others. On top of that one of the main tools religions have is fear. Make people believe in some horrible fate, then convince them the only way to avoid that fate is through doing exactly as you say.
It’s why religions make such a BIG DEAL about “faith”.
Faith is simply a commitment to believe things that otherwise contradict obvious reality (but which invariably work to some “leader’s” advantage).
Yourlve got the cause and effect backwards there big shoots.
I don’t know about across the pond, but to me that always seemed to be a loud minority of charismatic leaders gathering big flocks. Which the rest of The Church tries to distance itself from.
I think this isn’t specifically tied to religion. It’s just it’s noticeable when it is. People are manipulated by governments and the media all of the time. It even happens in largely secular states as well.
You say evangelicals, but there’s also the likes of Mormons, Seventh day Adventists (not really a big cult now as it used to be), Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are Sunni extremists and Shia extremists in Islamic countries. China had weird cults as well such as the Falun Gong. But that also had an atheistic movement in the cultural revolution. Nazi Germany’s movement was borderline pagan in nature.
Why are most
religiouspeople so easy to manipulate?Targeted Propaganda creates an online echo-chamber where everyone thinks that they’re correct for obvious -to them- reasons (Selective reporting, lying by omission, no one reads the retraction etc.). Add to that the addictive and isolating nature of smart technology, the sense of community they find in their personal traits/hobbies/beliefs/interests and the fact that the rich are actively trying to destroy the middle and working class. That’s how you get someone from group X, who believes they are wholly correct and smart enough to not be manipulated by media, asking why group Y is so easy to manipulate. It’s not about characteristics of faith, or anything like that. It’s the people at the top, telling you it’s other members of your class dragging you down. Through the global media monopolies that they control. We’re all part of it.
They were conditioned to growing up. Their parents taught them to, they saw how the ingroup and the outgroups work and settled on the ingroup. Not much more to it than that i’m afraid.
