Quote:Other sources of the phenomenon can be autosuggestion, peer pressure, or a desire to experience what others have experienced.I recall seeing a show or a segment on a show where they explained that the first couple of people who get miraculously healed are part of the preacher's entourage and they get "healed" at every show. And I think it's for the reason in the quote above: it gives everyone else an expectation of how they are supposed to feel and act, and your typical person is both so caught up in the moment (lots of loud music and clapping and shouting and celebration) and subconsciously driven to do what is expected of them that they follow the lead of those first couple of people.
No one wants to be the person that stops the whole show by claiming that they didn't experience anything. Ever notice how many people here blame humans for "making the choice" to reject god or "not doing it right" when they claim not to have found god? If the person being "healed" doesn't admit to feeling the holy spirit and seeing the hand of god (or whatever they're expected to experience) then it's their fault. And they wouldn't want to ruin the show and piss off Jesus!
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
