Student steals Communion wafer and receives death threats

[Kanastrous]

There is also Mother Teresa's real care from the sick and dying under her care which might be usable......

Remember, Mother Teresa lost her faith a long time before her death, but kept it quiet. Reading her diary post-moretm, she sounds like an atheist (but not a very happy one).

[FSTargetDrone]

It's madness. Don't try to understand it.

Second rule of warfare: know your enemy.

I doubt I will ever be able to bellyfeel the crapola that the religious buy into, but I think it's necessary to understand it as well as possible, in order to combat it more effectively.

Heh, I just meant don't try to understand the "workings" or "logic" of something like transubstantiation. Believe me, I understand Catholicism well enough (12 years of parochial school!) and what they believe. Just not why. Or how.

[sketerpot]

I've just had an insight into how belief in transubstantiation works. I created a thread about this on another board, and a Catholic turned up and gave a typical defense of their doctrine. Here's how it goes:

Is it contradictory? Absolutely not.

If you are Catholic, you are eating Christ’s Divine Flesh and Blood. The Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Risen, Glorified Jesus in His Risen and Glorified State.

The justification is to restate the belief in question. When pressed, this person started citing nigh-random Bible verses and then just asserting that the part about "this is my body" is supposed to be taken literally.

It's a special case in the Jesus-bot programming. They don't actually understand what they believe, because it has no real meaning; they just believe it.

[Darth Wong]

I think you need some grasp of a concept in order to believe in it. In this case, I think that it's not so much a matter of conscious belief as it is a matter of simple ritual and repetition.

In other word, they don't really believe in it. They just know that they should say a certain sequence of words, no matter how nonsensical it is.

[Shroom Man 777]

They've been taught all there lives that that is that. It's emotional conditioning. Their parents believe it, their cousins and brothers and sisters believe it, the man in the big church believe it. They must believe it.

Screw Orwell, man. Jesus is the shit.

[Darth Wong]

It's a lot like the fundamental concept of their religion: that Jesus died for your sins. Too many conversations look like this:

"Jesus died for your sins."
"What does that mean?"
"It means he sacrificed himself on the cross for your sins."
"And how does that work? Why should my sins be washed away by him getting crucified?"
"It means God loves you so much that he sent his only Son to Earth to die for you."
"OK, you don't seem to be listening. How does this work? WHY should my sins be affected by Jesus getting crucified?"
"Because Jesus is the lamb, who went to the slaughter for mankind."

(repeat ad nauseum)

You can tell they don't know what to say, so they just mindlessly repeat all the catch phrases they've been taught, like an Amway salesman who keeps going back to his programmed presentation when you try to pull him off the track.

[Buddha]

It's a lot like the fundamental concept of their religion: that Jesus died for your sins. Too many conversations look like this:

"Jesus died for your sins."
"What does that mean?"
"It means he sacrificed himself on the cross for your sins."
"And how does that work? Why should my sins be washed away by him getting crucified?"
"It means God loves you so much that he sent his only Son to Earth to die for you."
"OK, you don't seem to be listening. How does this work? WHY should my sins be affected by Jesus getting crucified?"
"Because Jesus is the lamb, who went to the slaughter for mankind."
(repeat ad nauseum)
.

There is a way to describe this. The phenomenon is known as "Pure Land" syndrome, this is where belief gets one into a "pure land" or heaven. Christianity is not alone in having this phenomenon as it can be found in some strange forms in many cultures. Islam and all the other Abrahamic faiths are usually all about somthing else. In Hinduism and Buddhism you have somthing called moshka or phowa. Phowa is different only because it is the most like death. Long story short is that you will be ejected from your body (like a airplane ejector seat in a spy flick), flung into a series of halucinations, and then arrive in a nice place (the pure land). People will hold onto somthing that gives them a glittering of hope, even if that hope is very faint. The will to believe is very strong in desperate people.

[PeZook]

Screw Orwell, man. Jesus is the shit.

Religious conditioning is actually a blueprint for mass propaganda techniques used sucessfully to this day ; Just like many other things, it's a result of thousands of years of keen observation of human behavior.

The priests of old didn't actually understand how the human brain worked, but they were smart enough to notice patterns and exploit them to gain power. They had literally thousands of years to practice their tricks.

Scary as it sounds, repetition works. You can do a lot by simply repeating a idea and isolating the subject from outside influence.