Religious infomercials;Are they Harmful

[Political_Chucky]

I could not sleep all night up until like 3:00 this morning and I have been searching around television and just put it on the BET inspiration channels just for kicks. It was an infomercial about some guy named Prophet Jordan who supposable knows the secrets of life and only for a "small" sum, you can buy his book on the "Laws of Thinking."

Now if anyone has seen this piece of crap, it is fucking hilarious. If you have ever heard someone bullshit through an argument on here, or even heard someone use incorrect words and grammar, this shit just takes the cake. This guy all throughout his commercial states that the "manifestation" of the spirit is needed and in order to get that, you need to buy his book. Obviously these commercials are targeted to an African-American audience and also quite obvious the stars on here who vouch for him (Rev. Run, Russal Simmons) are complete utter bullshitters. Now obviously, someone is paying this man his money to keep this infomercial running so is bullshit T.V. such as this a threat to the movement or should we pretty much ignore this? I mean, I hope no one really takes these things seriously because it’s a damn shame that people would actually fall for this bullshit. Makes me embarressed that I actaully once believed in a lie called "god."

[Eleutherios]

Oh some people do take it seriously. The true believers. There's really not much point in trying to change the true believers' minds; most of them are so set in their theism that they will die without ever having seriously questioned the belief, out of fear of course.

You can try to tell the believers that they're wrong, and you can use impeccable logic and compelling evidence to contradict their claims, but when the day is over they're most likely still going to believe their ridiculous nonsense and we're going to still shake our heads in astonishment that people can be that gullible.

We need to target the fence-sitters, ideally. The people who aren't sure whether or not there is a God and are still trying to figure it all out. Especially young people who are just starting to form their own worldviews. These are the people who can really be affected by anti-religious propaganda if we act up, but who could just as easily be fooled into believing some religious dogma too. It is to convince them, and not to convince those who are already true believers, that we need to continue speaking out against religious nonsense.

[freakazoid]

You can try to tell the believers that they're wrong, and you can use impeccable logic and compelling evidence to contradict their claims, but when the day is over they're most likely still going to believe their ridiculous nonsense and we're going to still shake our heads in astonishment that people can be that gullible.

Of cource it could go the other way around to. :)

[MrDoom]

Huh?

[freakazoid]

It's not that hard to understand what I mean. :)

[Eleutherios]

He's trying to imply that logic and evidence could be used to uphold religious faith and contradict the claims of skeptics. Which kind of defeats the whole idea of faith, but whatever... Religious people can be so illogical that they simultaneously embrace faith (illogic) and reason (logic). I find that rather funny. It's quite an interesting psychological phenomenon.

They have this really comforting belief, and they're deathly afraid of what their lives without the belief would be like, but they realize there's just no evidence for it, so they have to deploy some kind of psychological defense mechanisms to solve the cognitive dissonance. They can't just tell themselves they believe in something there is no reason to believe in; that just sounds crazy. That's where the idea of "faith" comes in. To most people, the idea of "faith" is something like this: you can't prove the truth of religious claims through objective evidence, so you just have to take people's word on things like gods and souls, and once you do accept their word then you will see the evidence that your faith is correct. Of course this just consists of people being duped into believing things and then fitting what they sense into their new interpretation of the world. But to the faithful person, it's faith...and logic.

Logic and faith are, to the religious person, one and the same, and yet also two separate domains that cannot mix. A religious person will appeal to (bad) logic half the time, trying to convince themselves and others that their beliefs are objectively reasonable, but the other half of the time (when backed into a logical corner, or when trying to prey on emotions for proselytism) they will admit that there really is no definite logical reason to believe and will appeal to faith instead. They think having faith is a logical position to hold, but they also acknowledge that faith has nothing to do with logic. The religious are truly masters of doublethink.

[freakazoid]

I have listed a few books that give evidence. People rely on faith for many things, not just in religion.

[seraphim]

Hey guys at least you get som religious idiot to laugh at. Over here if your up till god knows what time you have to put up with shit quiz programmes with premium rate text services.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

They're not harmful, just very very annoying

[Comrade_Scott]

no they are fucking hillarious. me and my brother watch them to get laughs asking if people take this shit seriously... i mean all they want is youre money fucking televangalists the worst kind of religious preacher. i hate them more than any other religious leader lets beat them eh? :ph34r: