How I Got Over

[Minimalist]

Sssh.


You'll spoil my image.

[Rhondazvous]

And the thing is, this preacher (you may have heard of him, Fred Price) seemed to be speaking to my mind. I was 15 and had always been kind of cynical toward church folks. Old, greedy, over-dressed hypocrites they were in my eyes. Did I mention stupid, unapproachable, judgmental? But Price made the Bible accessible. I found acceptance in the church because everybody thought they would see god's healing power through me. so we had logos and pathos at work here. They give you so many memory verses in Sunday school, you can go your whole life thinking you know what's in the Bible. Price focused on certain scriptures and used logic to make it seem like it made sense. If I look back with honesty it didn't all make sense. But when the music is playing and everybody is encouraging me and the serotonin is flowing through my brain it's easy to ignore the questions.

---

Sssh.


You'll spoil my image.

Yeah, Min has a rep to keep up.  Cussed me out when I first came here.  I've met junk yard dogs nicer than this meanie. Now, that's a compliment.

[ignoramus]

Rhondazvous, Hi from Australia. The only country where 99% of people don't give a shit about religion.
You sound quite intelligent, I believe it would've only been a matter of time before you called BS on it anyway...

[robvalue]

That is something I often wonder. If I had been indoctrinated, would I have eventually seen through it? My instinct is to say "of course" but I know that's really naive. I reckon it would depend on the severity of the indoctrination and how it was enforced. I would hope that eventually I would be able to kick out from the religious pin, but I'm all too aware how the mind can be screwed with. It would go against my inquisitive, logical and moral nature on every level, so I fear I'd go insane trying to reconcile it. But maybe I'd just have developed differently and wouldn't be that way as much.

[Rhondazvous]

Rhondazvous, Hi from Australia. The only country where 99% of people don't give a shit about religion.
You sound quite intelligent, I believe it would've only been a matter of time before you called BS on it anyway...

Your signature says it all

---

That is something I often wonder. If I had been indoctrinated, would I have eventually seen through it? My instinct is to say "of course" but I know that's really naive. I reckon it would depend on the severity of the indoctrination and how it was enforced. I would hope that eventually I would be able to kick out from the religious pin, but I'm all too aware how the mind can be screwed with. It would go against my inquisitive, logical and moral nature on every level, so I fear I'd go insane trying to reconcile it. But maybe I'd just have developed differently and wouldn't be that way as much.

I've seen Christians go insane. Experience enough cognitive dissonance and you'd get a visit from the men in the long white coats.

None of us knows what might have been—if our minds had been shaped by different circumstances.   There's something worth exploring in its own thread: the difference between consciousness and the things we are conscious of.  If we look at ourselves and wonder what the fuck we could be thinking about then it must be a disconnect between the self that is aware and the self that's acting..

[Mr.wizard]

That is something I often wonder. If I had been indoctrinated, would I have eventually seen through it? My instinct is to say "of course" but I know that's really naive. I reckon it would depend on the severity of the indoctrination and how it was enforced. I would hope that eventually I would be able to kick out from the religious pin, but I'm all too aware how the mind can be screwed with. It would go against my inquisitive, logical and moral nature on every level, so I fear I'd go insane trying to reconcile it. But maybe I'd just have developed differently and wouldn't be that way as much.

Eventually you would but it is a process when you are indoctrinated young. When you are indoctrinated young, the existence of god is not even a question, its a rock solid foundation for everything, so your reasoning and logic are tainted from the start. It took me years to shake god and it took a few more years to shake a bunch of paranormal woo stuff. The only people who break free from this indoctrination are those who actually care about the truth of what they believe.

[JuliaL]

My soul looks back and wonders how I could have believed all that craziness.

---

"Believe that you receive it and ye shall have it," the man said. It was written. so when the prophet Kenneth Hagin came to my church, I went up for prayer, fully expecting that when he laid his hands on me, the power of god would flow through his hands and my ears would pop open and I'd be able to hear a gnat piss on cotton. I expected my eye sight to be so clear I could see the boogers up an ant's nose.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened, so I made excuses.  My faith was the problem. Maybe what I thought was faith wasn't really. Maybe there'll be a delayed effect. Maybe I'm doing something to hinder my faith. Maybe I put my faith in the man instead of in god. Maybe everything except this stuff is a bunch of crap.

I was indoctrinated in the Word of Faith movement. Then I went to a Christian university with heavy Calvinist leanings. Trying to reconcile the teachings of these two divergent denominations nearly drove me insane. I became afraid of death. Not my death, but the death of those around me. I didn't trust god to keep people alive unless I prayed for them with faith.I  didn't have enough faith for a routine healing. How was I going to have enough faith to stay the hand of the Grim Reaper? Besides I didn't know what to pray for. I prayed for one uncle and another one died.

If what I experienced weren't clinical panic attacks, they might as well have been. After a while, I got tired of putting myself through so many emotional changes.  It would still be decades before I gave my  "personal relationship with Jesus" the deep six, but all this laid the foundation for me to question a religion that promised the world but delivered explanations.

---

You got colonized by an organism that has had thousands of years to hone its infective techniques.
The religions that weren't any good at this died off.
There's no reason to take personal blame for this any more than there is to apologize for bleeding after being mauled by a bear.

I was fortunate to be raised in a protected environment and largely emerged immune.
Studying religion is a hobby like bug collecting:  Similar to insect parasites, the creepy reproductive strategems of religions are entertaining to watch.   Just don't let one lay its eggs in your brain.
Good luck staying in remission.

[Pyrrho]

That is something I often wonder. If I had been indoctrinated, would I have eventually seen through it? My instinct is to say "of course" but I know that's really naive. I reckon it would depend on the severity of the indoctrination and how it was enforced. I would hope that eventually I would be able to kick out from the religious pin, but I'm all too aware how the mind can be screwed with. It would go against my inquisitive, logical and moral nature on every level, so I fear I'd go insane trying to reconcile it. But maybe I'd just have developed differently and wouldn't be that way as much.

There is just no telling whether you would have escaped from religious indoctrination or not.  There are far too many variables.  We can expect that if the indoctrination were done poorly, you probably would have escaped from the nonsense.  But if it were done masterfully, then it is impossible to know.

But this is the part you should remember.  For your life, it does not matter whether you would or would not have escaped from the indoctrination, because you were not so indoctrinated.  It is an issue that is irrelevant to your life.

I recommend that you focus your attention on actual problems in your life, and not worry about things that are not problems in your life. Surely, you have no need of manufacturing extra problems to worry about?