You Cannot Trust What You Believe

[Davka]

People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened

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.

[vorlon13]

Lenin was a mushroom.

[robvalue]

I can quite believe it. Religion quite clearly uses brainwashing techniques and is damn good at it. If it works on adults, think of the poor children subjected to it endlessly at home before their critical thinking has developed. No wonder they can become lost causes when they turn adults The whole thing is disgusting.

[Nope]

Little kids trust their parents more than college students trust researchers. It is no wonder some of these kids grow up to believe ethics and compassion can't exist without god or that they are worthless sinners.

[Godscreated]

The more you post the less I believe your first posting, now to the OP. Didn't you find it relevant to show the process these people went through. Ever see a police interrogation that pressures people to the extreme not allowing them to sleep, not allowing smokers to have a cig and denying them other things needed to keep their thoughts straight. Brainwashed. I've never seen this type of treatment of Christians, I've seen things that are questionable but, nothing like high pressure interrogation.

GC

[Chad32]

Most christian brainwashing takes places when the victim is a child, or when they're on drugs, or facing death.

The brain is capable of many things. Self delusion is one of them.

[Minimalist]

G-C is walking proof of that.

[Faith No More]

The more you post the less I believe your first posting, now to the OP. Didn't you find it relevant to show the process these people went through. Ever see a police interrogation that pressures people to the extreme not allowing them to sleep, not allowing smokers to have a cig and denying them other things needed to keep their thoughts straight. Brainwashed. I've never seen this type of treatment of Christians, I've seen things that are questionable but, nothing like high pressure interrogation.

GC

Your ability to extrapolate and apply information from one concept to another is amazing, GC.

The point of the OP isn't saying that Christians are purposefully brainwashing people into believing in god. It's saying that our minds are fallible and malleable, and that causes us to form memories and ideas that aren't actually true. The point is that we have to be wary about what we accept as truth, and that there needs to be some sort of method to evaluate what is real and what isn't.

[downbeatplumb]

The more you post the less I believe your first posting, now to the OP. Didn't you find it relevant to show the process these people went through. Ever see a police interrogation that pressures people to the extreme not allowing them to sleep, not allowing smokers to have a cig and denying them other things needed to keep their thoughts straight. Brainwashed. I've never seen this type of treatment of Christians, I've seen things that are questionable but, nothing like high pressure interrogation.

GC

You seem to think that false memories are just during interogations they are not.

There was a terrorist bombing in Paris when my wife and I were on honeymoon there.
My wife is convinced that she heard it when we where at a Metro station.
If fact we had no idea it had a happened till we got home and watched the news. She has inserted in to her memory all by herself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus

In 1973 Loftus accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Washington and used the new position to begin a new line of research into how memory works in real-world settings,[3][7][10] beginning the empirical study of eyewitness testimony.[8] One of the first studies she conducted was the reconstruction of automobile destruction study,[10] in which she found that the way in which questions were worded altered the memories subjects reported.[5][10] Loftus’ next step was to investigate whether asking leading questions, or providing misleading information in other forms, might also affect people’s memory for the original event.[5] To answer this question she developed the misinformation effect paradigm, which demonstrated that the memories of eyewitnesses are altered after being exposed to incorrect information about an event and that memory is highly malleable and open to suggestion.[5][8][11] The misinformation effect became one of the most influential and widely known effects in psychology,[5] and Loftus’ early work on the effect generated hundreds of follow-up studies examining factors that improve or worsen the accuracy of memories, and to explored the cognitive mechanisms underlying the effect.[5][8]

[strawdawg]

Bible contradictions? In the medical field doctors can't agree on how to treat certain illnesses. They prescribe drugs that are poison to one symptom while they create a host of other even more serious problems.

Nothing is perfect.