I was thinking about a conversation I had recently with a woman who had been sucked into joining a church a few years back. We were good friends at the time and she was married to a guy who had a massive stroke and was left paralyzed and with the mind of a mean three year old. She is much younger than him and they had met online. She was from China and had come over here to marry him. There marriage seemed to be going well, they were active, hiking and bicycling around the area, he was in a band so their weekends were going to gigs. A much better life than she had had in China. With the stroke, all that ended and she became a servant to his needs. She was getting very depressed and lonely and met some other Chinese people who talked her into coming to their Chinese church services. After she started going and joined, got baptized, she no longer was the person I had known before and we stopped talking until recently when she needed my help with something. So one evening after her husband went to bed we were talking a bit and she told me that she had seen the "spirit" of Jesus, that convinced her to join the church. Given her situation, I can fully understand why she would need the fellowship and support that churches offer, especially one with people she could talk to in her own language, and the idea that something happy waited for her if she just did the right thing and stayed with her invalid husband. But I questioned where exactly all these spirits that she said we turn into when we die hang out? Are they in our house, are they ghosts? There is no one that can show where these billions of spirits, assuming everyone has one as she believes, are. And I vaguely tried to explain to her that the mind can be tricked into believing it is seeing something that is not there. Anyway, tonight I considered that idea that religion is actually a form of mass hypnotism. That would explain a lot of the hold it has on people. The leaders, besides the ones that are just con men, are essentially hypnotists, getting the very young as well as the very old be believe the unbelievable, to sacrifice happiness for a make believe reward at a later time after they are dead. And those of us that can avoid that are just like the many people who can not be hypnotized, resistant to mind control. Any thoughts? Sorry it went so long.
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I suspect it's an emotional need and she's going to go wherever she thinks she'll find someone that can accommodate that. By attending a sympathetic gathering of people who can communicate with her in a language she can most easily understand, you're outgunned. You can do and say all the right things, but you can't rise to that volume of support. You've already said that she sought you out when she needed you. Continue to be there for her.
chalupacabre
Level 8
July 19, 2018
1
I always am. Just ask my ex-wives! ?
When my first wife's mother developed bone-marrow cancer my wife left Germany to be with her mother in Bakersfield (ugh). Her lover went with her and she filed for divorce. I went to Bakersfield (again, ugh) and asked the mother (a strict Christian) how she could allow her daughter to be there when she was having an affair. The mother told me she fretted over this and prayed and one night she heard a voice telling her to let her stay. She said she was awake and the voice was loud and clear. Problem was, that a minister she was working with and whom I went to for help told me she told him the voice came to her in a dream. These people have a problem with reality and seeing/hearing things that are not really there. The mind is a powerful thing. Ever hear of Stigmata's? [en.wikipedia.org] The problem with these thigs is that they are wrong. There should be not signs in the hands. They should be in the wrists since that is where the nails are put in cruxifictions.
JackPedigo
Level 9
July 19, 2018
0
I would point to the many Trump supporters on this site to refute the notion that atheists are immune from mass delusion. All you have to do is appeal to a persons primal fears and they will follow anywhere they are led. I believe that the original idea of the Christ Spirit as taught by Yeshua the Nazarite, was actually freedom from these primal fears through higher thought or higher consciousness. Sadly this idea was forgotten and a mythical savior was created (Jesus the Nazarene). This allowed the church that was formed in his name to defeat his teachings through the use of the same primal fears he sought to deliver us from. We all still have the pre-frontal cortex (Christ Spirit) within us. Sadly it is still under employed. When everyone utilizes it to its fullest capacity this is the actual "Second Coming". So there is literally nothing to fear but fear itself, but fear leads to hate and that is frightening. This theory is proven at every Trump rally and Fundy Church service.
Seminarian
Level 7
July 19, 2018
2
If you cannot offer this woman the help & support she desperately needs in the life she has, why are you trying to rip it away from her? Do you pull rugs out from under people too?
AnneWimsey
Level 9
July 19, 2018
2
If you read, I am not trying to rip anything away from her. It affected our relationship, and that was fine, the group could support her more than I could, and it provides cultural as well as social cohesion. And as long as she is not trying to drag me into the belief, we can and will be friends. When she chose to present her reason for the belief, I felt entitled to present my reason for not believing. And, as is the case for most people of faith, it didn’t change her belief and I was in no way trying to convert her to mine. If you read anything else into my story, I perhaps didn’t express myself right. Do you make assumptions about everyone?
People can imagine anything they believe.
The Native Americans didn't imagine Jesus, but spirit guide animals, etc.
birdingnut
Level 8
July 19, 2018
1
As reasonable a hypothesis as any other I have heard
JenBeberstein
Level 8
July 19, 2018
1
Thank you! ?
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