Post No.: 0690
Furrywisepuppy says:
Faith is like a perfect scam because any scepticism towards it is directly silenced because you’ll be accused of lacking enough of it! In other words, as soon as you question faith itself then it’ll be that doubt, that questioning, that will be said to be the reason why what you wanted to come true hasn’t or didn’t come true.
So if you fail, it will be claimed that it was because you lacked enough faith rather than because faith or positive thinking, alone, doesn’t work. And often, there will be no greater show of your faith than by donating to the church more than what you can afford; which is a perfect scam for certain churches that promote the power of positive thinking and faith healing. Giving more than you can sensibly afford is also a CRED (credibility enhancing display), which helps to demonstrate one’s certainty in a church, which in turn may act as a social proof that convinces others to also follow it, persist with it and give more money to it.
And if what you want still doesn’t come true despite your unshakeable convictions then the pastor will suggest that you must have committed some kind of ‘secret sin’ in the past.
So whatever happens, the church – or the fraudsters who hijack religion to espouse absolute self-belief, like televangelists – gets the money and faith gets the credit if your wishes come true, whilst you cannot question that church or faith itself otherwise this scepticism will be blamed for your failures, hence you will always be blamed if your wishes don’t come true. You will then end up blaming yourself for the inevitable failures (unless pure statistical chance, rather than divine intervention, makes your wish come true) and feel worse in mental health than ever before. Alternatively, you might manically defend your self-belief and positive thinking, devoid of all sensible reason, and aggressively attempt to silence or shut out any naysayers.
Imagine if you were sold a kettle that was said to work only if you believed in it working enough, and then when it doesn’t work and you want your money back, the manufacturer refused to do so and instead blamed you for why it doesn’t work because, ‘evidently’, by virtue of you questioning the manufacturer and the kettle, you’ve demonstrated that you lack enough belief(!)
Faith is therefore an example of something that is scientifically unfalsifiable – which doesn’t mean that it must be true but that there is no known or current methodology that can prove it to be false because the goalposts for its proof keep shifting (you’ll always be accused of lacking enough of it no matter how much of it you do have) rather than because it actually directly works to affect outcomes in the real world. Other ways that followers may rationalise away the consistent failures include claiming that ‘it’s a test’ or ‘God works in mysterious ways’.
This is why faith healing, pseudoscientific medicines or zealous beliefs in positive thinking can be highly dangerous. This is one part of the self-help industry that’s full of BS. The desperate, vulnerable and poor get poorer too, whilst the televangelists live in mega luxury – but for them they’ll claim that this wealth is a sign that ‘ God rewards the faithful’! Wherever possible, they’ll claim that their organisation is a religious institution so that most of their income is tax-exempt too. Like I say – it’s a perfect scam; unless people and laws wise up.
The ‘collective effervescence’ that proliferates from the crowd during a faith healing event will release a ton of adrenaline and painkilling endorphins within the participants. This is, in most part for most participants, a euphoric experience. We can also get this feeling when a crowd is all joining in with singing a song in a regular secular music concert or sports game. But this precise effect is directly exploited in faith healing events – where those who’ve come to be healed from their pains will feel like the faith is working to treat their cancers because their pain has suddenly lessened. But their cancers are still really there. Moreover, those who’ve come to grow new limbs and the like will of course find no difference and will be selectively ignored rather than brought onto the stage to highlight their ‘miracles’(!)
So as a way to achieve a temporary sense of pain relief, such events can work. But when this temporary sense of pain relief is extrapolated to mean that a person has been cured of a disease like cancer – it’s incredibly dangerous because then the person might subsequently give up on doctor-prescribed medications and therapies. We’d like to listen to the stories of those who died as a result of giving up on their meds and operations, but unfortunately they’ve got no voice anymore (the ‘survivorship bias’).
Fraudsters also often play psychological tricks like saying, “Only clever people will understand.” And of course most people (especially when they’re not clever) believe they’re clever so they’ll more likely claim to understand some pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo.
When it comes to praying for divine interventions – praying can give us a psychological sense of control over things we cannot physically control, which can improve our mental well-being. Well actually praying can help our mental well-being in one of two opposing ways – it can make us feel like, through our prayers, we have influence over things that are really beyond our control; or it can offload our stresses in a ‘I’ve prayed so whatever happens now is out of my paws and is up to the will of the cosmos’ way.
Regarding the former, if the outcome we didn’t want transpires then it can again make it seem like it was one’s own fuzzy fault because one didn’t pray hard enough. We can stress over or beat ourselves up for things we really have or had no sufficient control of – in which case it’s better for our well-being to learn to accept the situation. (It can be trickier regarding things we don’t have sole control of but can contribute to a collective effort to affect, like environmental causes – in such cases, we should do the part we can control and perhaps try to rally others towards the same cause; but if others still don’t wish to do their part and the ultimate outcome is not as desired, then we need to learn to accept that. How hard to push is the tougher question? Whether we have sole control of a situation or not, if we push until it starts to harm our immediate health then it might not be enough to prevent a greater harm to our, and our children’s, health in the long term. What does ‘do your best’ mean in practice – until it begins to hurt or until one’s dying breath? Simple-sounding advice that fits a terse and trite social media post, self-help manual or motivational speech, and appeals to cognitive ease, is seldom simple in practice!)
Regarding the latter, it’s maladaptive if we’re praying about something we do have some physical influence over but instead of, for instance, physically helping a person in need or donating to a relevant charity, we merely ‘prayed for them’ and thought our contribution was done(!)
Praying only appears to work if we get coincidentally lucky, in that the prayed-for outcome was going to happen regardless of whether we prayed for it or not. But we might claim undue credit for any upturn in the fortunes of those we prayed for. Praying can be completely well-meaning and in most cases it’s innocent and is frequently done in conjunction with offering practical assistance to others – but the benefits are that praying helps to ease the mind of the person who prays rather than lessens the distress of or helps a recipient of a prayer; unless they know about it, believe that praying works themselves, and that the problem that’s seeking a solution through prayer is purely inside their own mind – for instance if they’re worrying about nothing rather than their house is currently on fire.
So some people like to pray for the things they cannot control to make themselves feel better, and this is perhaps fine. But we shouldn’t expect our prayers to come true. And for the things we can control or help out with, we should physically help out with rather than think that praying is all we need to do. Woof.
It’s also nice to hear phrases like ‘nothing is impossible’, ‘just believe in something and it’ll come true’, ‘you can do absolutely anything you put your mind to’ or ‘your destiny is in your own paws and in no one and nothing else’s’ and the like. Yet – if taken literally (which people with zealous faith do) – they’re a load of codswallop because there are clearly things that are impossible because they break the laws of physics, faith alone won’t make something come true, and independence isn’t how the interconnected universe works. It’s divorced from reality. Such phrases can be motivating, but they can also place the blame on the unfortunate if they remain unfortunate.
The same people who believe that they have the power to do whatever they desire can also incongruently believe in things like their zodiac symbol setting their fates too(!) So do you have control of your own fate or does the cosmos or whatever (in a limited-to-twelve-permutations way)? Here, if your horoscope doesn’t come true then the vague prediction won’t be blamed but your own error in interpreting it or your own lack of patience. You could then, if inclined, re-interpret it with the benefit of hindsight to make something fit, which is relatively easy because the readings are ambiguous. Post No.: 0591 covered so-called psychics, mediums, fortune tellers and astrologers in more detail.
The various zodiac systems around the world aren’t quite the factual explanation of how the interconnected universe works. (And like religion – how would you know which zodiac system is the correct one to follow?) Plus just because everything in the world and universe is intrinsically interconnected due to the laws of physics (like the saying that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one place could trigger (or more accurately help contribute as part of the initial conditions in a complexly interconnected web towards the triggering of) a tornado on the other side of the planet) – it doesn’t mean we’re connected in a ‘my mere thoughts or prayers will affect people in another place’ or ‘crossing my fingers here will mean they’ll score a goal there’ kind of way. These latter concepts do not accord to the workings of the empirical laws of nature.
…Whether or not we get what we pray for will always wrestle with what fortune or luck will bring. So – especially when it comes to praying for great prosperity or something like that – it helps to align our expectations with reality rather than bathe in wishful hopes or fantasies.
Woof! Contentment also requires letting go of who you want to be or what you want to have, and being who you are and wanting what you have.
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