What Does Religious Martyrdom Really Prove?

A Christian Fundamentalist asked me this today:

"would you endure (your perceptions) over long periods of torture?"
--
My reply:

That's a question for scientists who study the way our minds work.

But sure.
It's is possible to use torture as a means of brainwashing.
And some minds would prove more resilient than others, to that method of brainwashing.

So?
-------------------------------------------

He then asked:

"Or would your mind be swayed? "
--
My reply:

No one knows how well their mind would stand up to any given form of cognition-manipulation
until they've experienced it.

However, ...
any such torturer would have an especially difficult time using such a method on me.

Why?

Because I would immediately say whatever they want me to say. So then they wouldn't have the necessary resistance to break.

It's hard to break a stick that bends easily.

So I'd keep thinking whatever I thought before, while saying whatever they want to hear.

My perceptions are also unusually-well constructed.

Thus, they'd need to use convincing arguments instead.
Otherwise, they would, very likely, need years of time and a different method;
- to have a good chance of succeeding at changing my perceptions of reality.

I wouldn't be an easy-sell on anything; not like those gullible saps who were talked into "martyring" themselves for other people's agendas.

-----------------------------------
He then added:

"Because the real Martyrs endured it all for their belief."
--
My reply to that:

Some did.
Not nearly as many as you were told did.
And not the specific people you were told did.
But some did.
Sure.

And yet, ...

those "martyrs" were TRICKED into volunteering for torture and death, ...
by clever religious predators;
who, by the way, weren't volunteering themselves for that.

Criminal entrepreneurs,
cloaking themselves in religious pretense,
were talking people into horrific deaths;
the same way Islamic leaders/teachers do to their disposable converts too.

Related to this, there are a LOT of people in our world
who don't know how to feel value, until they can be validated by parent or peers as "good".

Generally, the easiest path for such people to feeling that way
 is to create a narrative (or plug-in to a narrative someone else created)
where their state of being "righteous" (or, at least, comparatively good) is established by a contrasting "bad person" who victimizes them.

  From there, so long as they have parent or peers who will validate that narrative, it becomes "true".

At this point, they become loyal that narrative, because they've housed their sense of identity and worth inside of it. 

Taking that to extremes, 
talking such vulnerable people into violent martyrdom was a way for religious leaders publicize their religion as a "truth" that "obviously must be true" because of all the people willing to suffer and die for it.

"Go taunt that solider over there.
And then throw yourself on that soldier's sword, to prove how oppressed and now noble we are.
I'll just stand safely over here, while you go do that."

This is primarily what Michael Sherlock was referring to, when he said this:

As gullible and desperate sheep threw themselves onto those swords, 
they became actively complicit in the violence which they willingly subjected themselves to. 

It was the Iron Age equivalent to being manipulated by cult leaders
into committing "suicided by *cop"
(*any form of governmental policing officer).  

 In this way, Christian leaders used violence as a way to recruit and galvanize. 

Religious "shepherds" threw their sheep to political-wolves;
wolves who weren't even hunting those sheep, until those wolves felt sufficiently taunted and lured. 

It's the same thing the Jehovah's Witness leaders did to their sheep during the holocaust. 
And yet, good luck finding any non-JW Christians who think that martyrdom proved how true the JW beliefs are. 
 
[A whole other discussion really needs to be had about all the forms of emotional violence that are core to Christian teachings. 
And yet another conversation is due
for all the other ways Christian teachings foster every form of violence in our shared world. 
 I'll save all that for another time]

I've also noticed that no one ever speaks of the intense suffering caused to the loved ones 
who those righteously self-victimizing victims left behind.

In any event, 
those gullible converts were easily tricked.

And WHY were they so easily tricked into sacrificing themselves?

It's because they weren't merely gullible.
They were also desperate to escape this "awful" life;
a disposition which was very Un-Stoic.

Those weren't people whom would qualify for Physician Assisted Suicide today.

They could have lived a life worth living.
They just didn't know how.
And religious charlatans took advantage of that ignorance.
 
They were talked into believing and wanting death-by-torture as an instant and guaranteed ticket into eternal, "spiritually" hedonistic bliss;

-in a hidden, floating magic sky castle, ...

where they would be TRANSFORMED ...
into spirit-people
(technically, replaced by more useful clones; but this fact apparently never occured to them)
who would never even be CAPABLE of having an unapproved thought, feeling, action, or inaction, for the rest of time.

Once theoretically-there,
their ENTIRE reason for existing
would be to cater to the insatiable desires of a super-parent to be served and flattered by obedient children;
- child-minds
who would never even RISK outgrowing their need to be perpetually parented and validated; 
the core "moral lesson" of the Genesis myth.

All of that
was based on various versions of a religious narrative
which are NOT reasonably entertained as true.

Nor are those ideals born from a healthy mind.

Nor do those narratives foster mental health, nor do they protect us from any other form of harm. 

Those poor saps literally threw their lives away for nothing; except how it benefitted the conmen who talked them into it. 

You can call all of that "beautiful" and "righteous", if you want to. 

I only want you to understand  
why I don't.