People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened
Now, if people can be convinced in just a few short hours that something happened which they do not want to have happened, how much easier would it be to convince someone - or to convince yourself - of the truth of something you want to believe happened?
This is the fallacy which lies at the heart of religion, and especially of Evangelical Christianity. People are encouraged to "testify," and to trust their own memory and emotions, elevating what you "know" above any actual empirical evidence to the contrary.
I cannot count how many times i heard things like "I know that I know," or "you have to trust the confirmation of the Spirit," or similar ideas. Christians who are experiencing doubts are encouraged to think back over 'all the things God has done in your life,' as evidence that the faith is true.
But those memories, feelings, hopes and desires cannot be trusted. Empirical evidence trumps memory and conviction, every time.
Quote:Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn’t actually commit. New research provides lab-based evidence for this phenomenon, showing that innocent adult participants can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that they had perpetrated crimes as serious as assault with a weapon in their teenage years.
The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that the participants came to internalize the stories they were told, providing rich and detailed descriptions of events that never actually took place.
Now, if people can be convinced in just a few short hours that something happened which they do not want to have happened, how much easier would it be to convince someone - or to convince yourself - of the truth of something you want to believe happened?
This is the fallacy which lies at the heart of religion, and especially of Evangelical Christianity. People are encouraged to "testify," and to trust their own memory and emotions, elevating what you "know" above any actual empirical evidence to the contrary.
I cannot count how many times i heard things like "I know that I know," or "you have to trust the confirmation of the Spirit," or similar ideas. Christians who are experiencing doubts are encouraged to think back over 'all the things God has done in your life,' as evidence that the faith is true.
But those memories, feelings, hopes and desires cannot be trusted. Empirical evidence trumps memory and conviction, every time.
