My faith has been shaken! - Help!

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Just today my faith was shaken. I’ve always known about this guy Derren Brown but until today never realised what dangers he posed to belief/theism. Then I discover one television show he created in the USA.

Derren Brown is a psychological illusionist and has demonstrated on multiple occasions the power of suggestion to unsuspectingly cause smeone to do and think something they otherwise would never have thought or done.

The following is a link to a show where he seemingly converts atheists to believing in God simply by using suggestion. Some atheists are disturbed by the conversions and leave. Those who stay end up believing in God. At the end he deconverts theser people back to their original beliefs:

Part 1: youtube.com/watch?v=2Sq-YUdq1OI

Part 2: youtube.com/watch?v=-DylNVUN_3I&NR

This guy is well known in Britain for his many tricks involving mind control and mind trickery. He claims to have once been a believer in God but has since come to realise that all belief is mere suggestion as shown in part 1. I can’t explain it and I’m hoping someone can but doesn’t this prove how religion can be the result of manipulation of the consciousness. I am confused and wonder can anything at all truly be believed.

Lord I believe. Help my Unbelief.

AP Quinn
 
I’ve never heard of that fellow. I have, however, come across atheists who try and convince me that God doesn’t exist.
You can’t prove God’s existence. You also can’t prove that God doesn’t exist either.
Think of it this way: why are we here on this earth? How did it all start?
I look around at the world and discovered that God must exist because we have to have a reason for living. If we have no reason for living, why obey laws and conform to society? We’d have complete anarchy if God didn’t exist.
Does that make sense and/or help you? :o
 
No one can make another believe anything by “suggestion.” People can put themselves into a concentrated state of mind that allows them to appear to be influenced by another. But, what is really happening is the person is letting himself be directed by another.

What atheists who suddenly become believers have really experienced is their own minds coming to a conclusion they already had, but had fought against. C. S. Lewis tells us that when he was an atheist, he still believed in God because he was angry with God for not existing. True atheism isn’t as common as some would have us think. Most people believe in God/Higher Power whether they wish to acknowledge the fact or not.
 
No one has the power to do anything of that sort.
Especially the “spiritual pull” or whatever the hell that thing was.
This is obviously staged, and don’t think another second on it.
 
ocuinn said:
Just today my faith was shaken. I’ve always known about this guy Derren Brown but until today never realised what dangers he posed to belief/theism. Then I discover one television show he created in the USA.

Derren Brown is a psychological illusionist and has demonstrated on multiple occasions the power of suggestion to unsuspectingly cause smeone to do and think something they otherwise would never have thought or done.

The following is a link to a show where he seemingly converts atheists to believing in God simply by using suggestion. Some atheists are disturbed by the conversions and leave. Those who stay end up believing in God. At the end he deconverts theser people back to their original beliefs:

Part 1: youtube.com/watch?v=2Sq-YUdq1OI

Part 2: youtube.com/watch?v=-DylNVUN_3I&NR

This guy is well known in Britain for his many tricks involving mind control and mind trickery. He claims to have once been a believer in God but has since come to realise that all belief is mere suggestion as shown in part 1. I can’t explain it and I’m hoping someone can but doesn’t this prove how religion can be the result of manipulation of the consciousness. I am confused and wonder can anything at all truly be believed.

Lord I believe. Help my Unbelief.

AP Quinn
Click to expand...
if some yahoo on TV is shaking your faith, maybe you need to examine what your faith is founded on.
 
First, I am currious that you have always known of this guy. How have you known about him? Where are you going to meet people like this? I suggest there are better places to go.

First of all, what is your faith built upon? Maybe you have not reflected upon this in the past and this guy is prompting you to do so. Should you find a rock to cling to, your faith is then that much the stronger for it.

Why has virtually every civilization believed in a supreme being of some kind? Could it be that God has spoken to others beside Abram? Maybe some did not listen as well as Abram. Abram had to pass a test first.

Why does God cause the death of a 3 year old to lukemia? Maybe so that we might learn compassion for the sick and dying. Why did God send his Son to die on the cross? Maybe so that we could understand the love God has for us.

Why do people believe that there is no God? Maybe they lack the courage. Maybe they have too much pride. Maybe they can’t be obediant to any authority. Most likely, they don’t know what Love is.
 
Interesting videos. I wish I could determine if they were staged.
 
Allow me to make a suggestion,

The moon is inhabited by men and women who live to a greater age than we do – that they to about the age of 1000 years. They are about six feet in height, about 200 lbs, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style.

Do you believe me? :confused:

challengemin.org/moon.html
 
I used to know a hypnotist but he always said that you can’t make someone do something that they wouldn’t do. You can strip away natural inhibitions but if what you are requesting really goes against the nature of the person in question it won’t work.
 
I’ve watched some of his videos now and he’s quiet talented. I think though that while he himself isn’t a believer his intention wasn’t to shake people’s faith as much as make them aware.

He, stated that he wanted the endorsement by the pastor. The reason for that I think was to point out that a charlatan can be quiet affective in insinuating himself into a Church. I don’t think he was trying to say “see its all fake” rather I think he was stating “see it can be faked”.
 
He claims to have once been a believer in God but has since come to realise that all belief is mere suggestion as shown in part 1. I can’t explain it and I’m hoping someone can but doesn’t this prove how religion can be the result of manipulation of the consciousness. I am confused and wonder can anything at all truly be believed.
Click to expand...
It is a fact that we often assume we created something that actually originated with someone else.

But how do you explain real tangible meetings with God, in mystical encounters which many people [myself included] have witnessed.

My friend, I cannot prove to you that God exists, but I am more sure of God’s existence than I am your existence. Therefore this guy may be able to convince an athiest that God exists but he cannot convince me that God does not exist. I would doubt his and my own existence before I doubt the reality of God’s existence.

He really is as fantastic as our wildest dreams imagine Him to be. He really is an all loving all powerful God. His power makes all the armies of the entire planet and their technology appear less convincing than a piece of paper on an elastic band;) .
 
In regard to guys like this, I would go with the old saying, believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see. He has an agenda here to undermine belief by suggesting that believe because others have made us believe that way. Yet at the same time how do we know that anything about those videos was real? Perhaps everyone in the audience was in fact hired by him to do and say what they said. Its a common stage trick to plant people in the audience that you can rely on to do and say things to convince the rest of the audience. In this case, his audience may have been hired to convince the video audience.

I do believe that some people can be effected by suggestion, but nothing so quick and dramatic as what was demonstrated in that video. If it could be done so quickly, it would make things alot easier on cults.

–
Bill
 
Libertas said:
No one has the power to do anything of that sort.
Especially the “spiritual pull” or whatever the hell that thing was.
This is obviously staged, and don’t think another second on it.
Click to expand...
a word of caution: Don’t Underestimate the power of the devil and/or Demons
 
This guy practices neuro linguistic programming. It is a psychological practice which has as yet not been scientifically verified. I am currently reading about it. I can’t find any Catholic sites that have mentioned this practice to find out what people think of it but I have read it has links with the New Age era.

AP Quinn
 
In short, NLP is not considered to be serious science.

tektonics.org/scim/sciencemony.htm
The methods on which NLP draws are not new. For example, the “anchoring” Tom did comes from hypnotherapy. Some practitioners are accused of overestimating both the effects and the utility of these exercises. Purveyors who have a superficial outlook tout NLP as a panacea for all kinds of problems. NLP’s respected proponents are more selective, of course, but even they have little scientific explanation for why the techniques supposedly work. In contrast to long-standing, proved approaches, such as behavioral or talk therapy, just a few isolated peer-reviewed studies have explored NLP’s effectiveness, and these have found evidence only of very limited effects.
Click to expand...
sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D1C1D-6401-128A-A3C683414B7F0000&pageNumber=2

google.com/search?hl=en&q=catholic+apologetics+neuro+linguistic+programming+science+peer+review

google.com/search?hl=en&q=catholic+neuro+linguistic+programming+science+peer+review

google.com/search?q=neuro+linguistic+programming+science+peer+review&hl=en&start=10&sa=N
 
ocuinn said:
Just today my faith was shaken. I’ve always known about this guy Derren Brown but until today never realised what dangers he posed to belief/theism. Then I discover one television show he created in the USA.

Derren Brown is a psychological illusionist and has demonstrated on multiple occasions the power of suggestion to unsuspectingly cause smeone to do and think something they otherwise would never have thought or done.

The following is a link to a show where he seemingly converts atheists to believing in God simply by using suggestion. Some atheists are disturbed by the conversions and leave. Those who stay end up believing in God. At the end he deconverts theser people back to their original beliefs:

Part 1: youtube.com/watch?v=2Sq-YUdq1OI

Part 2: youtube.com/watch?v=-DylNVUN_3I&NR

This guy is well known in Britain for his many tricks involving mind control and mind trickery. He claims to have once been a believer in God but has since come to realise that all belief is mere suggestion as shown in part 1. I can’t explain it and I’m hoping someone can but doesn’t this prove how religion can be the result of manipulation of the consciousness. I am confused and wonder can anything at all truly be believed.

Lord I believe. Help my Unbelief.

AP Quinn
Click to expand...

Even if people can be manipulated like this, such manipulation is no argument against the reality of faith.​

The outward manifestations of faith can be manipulated - faith itself cannot. The reason being that the grace of a living & saving faith is from God & not from us; God cannot be manipulated, even though we, & our behaviours & personalities, can. It is possible to mimic the behaviour of a a believer - & utterly beyond all created power, to give or take away faith that God has given by His Almighty Power & Mercy. The manipulation is at our “end”, not God’s.

Belief in Christ can be faked - it cannot be given, if God witholds it. It is not a mere assent in the intellect alone, but a transforming gift which affects the entirety of our nature. Whatever he was doing, Mr. Brown was not making anyone a Christian - at most, he was providing them with some of the features of a Christian. He was no more making them live by faith in Christ, than a sculptor makes a statue breathe by giving marble a human form. Michelangelo’s “David” is a sculpture - not a living man; Brown’s “Christians” were no more alive by faith; they were artificial, not real.

Faith in Christ is not religion (whatever that means); it’s faith in Christ, not assent to some other god, because there is none but the Blessed Trinity. The Aztecs had a religion - they were “religious” in some sense, but that does not make human sacrifice a good thing. “Religion” can be as much of a danger to faith in Christ as “spirituality” - neither word seems to mean anything very definite, so they can both be ways to hide from Christ. Faith anchors & binds us to Him - it guarantees that we cannot hide from Him 🙂 ##
 
rtconstant said:
I’ve watched some of his videos now and he’s quiet talented. I think though that while he himself isn’t a believer his intention wasn’t to shake people’s faith as much as make them aware.

He, stated that he wanted the endorsement by the pastor. The reason for that I think was to point out that a charlatan can be quiet affective in insinuating himself into a Church. I don’t think he was trying to say “see its all fake” rather I think he was stating “see it can be faked”.
Click to expand...
But some might find it troubling that they can have faith because of some person’s “fake” actions.
 
ocuinn said:
Just today my faith was shaken. I’ve always known about this guy Derren Brown but until today never realised what dangers he posed to belief/theism. Then I discover one television show he created in the USA.

Derren Brown is a psychological illusionist and has demonstrated on multiple occasions the power of suggestion to unsuspectingly cause smeone to do and think something they otherwise would never have thought or done.
Click to expand...
if your faith has been shaken by the antics of someone who practices the art of illusion to make a living, like any other stage “magician” or performer, then you do, indeed, need help.

our Faith is founded on the Person of Jesus Christ, Son of God the Father, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who became man, suffered, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit to guide and protect the Church He founded. Please spend your time contemplating the mysteries summarized in the Nicene Creed, with the assistance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and if you seek MSM entertainment, do it with vehicles that are enlightening and entertaining until such time as you are mature enough to view more challengin material that presents such temptation to you.

while you are surfing for on-line videos, check out utube with hundreds of staged performances all trying to prove one thing or another. they are entertainment folks, not reality, come down out of the trees and evolve into thinking reasoning human beings, please, not just gaping fools watching puppet shows.
 
ROFL Daniel Marsh… was it Joseph Smith or Brigham Young who said that?

To the OP,
Faith is not a “feeling”. It isn’t something that can be shaken by a charletan. It is a Grace given to us by God. If you’re looking for a feeling, then yes, you will be shaken. God gave you a brain to use. Use it.

in Christ
Steph
 
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