How And Why Authority-Systems Install Alternate Realities

My initial response:

Young children with a religious background are less able to distinguish between fantasy and reality compared with their secular counterparts. This effect often persists into adulthood. See: Judgments About Fact and Fiction by Children From Religious and Nonreligious Backgrounds Kathleen H. Corriveaua , Eva E. Chenb , Paul L. Harrisc School of Education, Boston University Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Graduate School of Education, Harvard University ------ In reply to me, someone offered this:

"Ive had the opposite result.

It's the major reason why I'm so good at critical thinking." ----------------- In reply to that, I offer this: Scientific studies aren't saying what always happens. They are merely observing statistically significant causal correlations. Evangelical faith systems pose a significant risk to psychological development. They don't guarantee how every child turns out. For anyone fortunate enough to realize their religion has been lying to them, ... Their logical abilities will probably increase after the resulting permissions they give themselves to begin critically evaluating the system that lied to them. However, ... That just means they are *playing catch-up* with secular peers who were never stunted by any such system in the first place. It's also important to note: Many people who go through that growth spurt ... only grow just enough to put their prior manipulators behind them ... but not enough to realize that ALL personal-God-themed ideological systems are Psy-Ops. --------------------- [That other person in the comments section under the video continued] "And sussing out b s when people are telling me things. It depends, I think a lot on the particular church. Your parents and yourself and how you receive this material Did you never think about it? And just bought it hook , line and sinker? Every preacher and teacher i've ever heard told us to ponder these things and think about them and read the bible for ourselves. If you pondered and thought about what they said and actually read the bible for yourselves , if it was evangelical church , you probably left it. And now you're either atheist or a progressive christian. It's like being vaccinated." ------------------- My thoughts about that: Yes. It's exactly like being vaccinated against a mind-altering virus. [more specifically, a complex viral memetic] However, merely attempting to read and reason for ourselves ... only works for people who are emotionally, psychosocially, and intellectually equipped to succeed. They would otherwise fail, but imagine they succeeded. ----------------- [That other person in the comments section under the video continued] "People try to tell you some crazy conspiracy or b.S , and you're just like nah , I can figure out that you believe what you're saying , but what you're saying is still untrue. After all , I grew up with the church and they believed what they said even though it's not true." ------------------- My thoughts about that: Same here. ------------------- [That other person in the comments section under the video continued] "It is funny that I have not heard progressive churches hammer so hard the importance of going home and studying the bible for yourself. That is funny because I think if you read the bible , then you probably would still agree with the progressive theology." ------------------- My thoughts about that: I think progressive church leaders are keenly aware that the only safe way to read a bible is through a humanist lens. That lens is exclusively provided by being responsibly engaged with life. -Which can only happen with ample ongoing exposure to a secular-progressive social environment. The problem is: Bibles have nothing to offer that adds to that maturity. Once someone has the lens they need, they will automatically not have any need for a Bible. Progressive churches would rather you didn't realize that NONE of your virtues (character, concepts, or actions) are being generated by bibles, nor being generated (nor confirmed) by a personal relationship with a literal "God". If you realize that, you'll no longer need a progressive church for anything more than social needs. Some people will stick around and donate for that good-enough reason. But some won't. -Which then threatens to collapse the easy street (and well-enough paying) careers of the people running those organizations. They are also hoping that progressive church members won't realize the very toxic concepts buried within the substrates of their ideological bedrock. So it all works out best if you don't dig too deep. ------------------- [That other person in the comments section under the video continued] "But it's the evangelicals that hammer so hard and tell you over and over. Don't take my word for it. Read your Bible, study your Bible." That is curious, because that is the fastest way to get out of evangelical theology, you simply read the Bible, because you find out that they're wrong." ------------------- In reply, I offer this: The reason Evangelical pastors, parents, and apologists feel like it's safe and smart to tell kids and congregants "go study this for yourself, and see for yourself that I'm telling you the truth": First, if the advice says "go study your bible", this is pretty safe. Because that advice assumes Bibles internally validate Bibles. Anyone who agrees that any truth **about a Bible** will be found inside a Bible ... will likely end up confirming that bias. In large part, the mistake being made there is a common yet powerful misunderstanding about the science of how language generates concepts within the mind. Bible scholar Dan McClellan has many short-form and long-form videos about this. -All of which 100% echo what professional linguists teach about how language generates concepts within the mind.

Language does not function the way personal-God religions think it does. Even Randal's version of Christianity is wrong about this.

"The Bible" has no inherent meaning.

Much of it is written and read like a horoscope. Such-minded readers will make it become true ... by interpreting it to align with their *subjective perspectives about any real-world happenings. [*subjectivity shaped by ideological systems] Even the parts that, perhaps, were not meant to be read that way ... will still be read that way, if a reader is sufficiently favorable in their personal and ideological commitments. A more self-aware and honest Bible-studier will go outside of a Bible ... to seek input from highly qualified, secular historians, scientists, etc. ... for help understanding what is in a bible. But most people are not grown up enough to realize this is necessary. Before telling someone to "go see for yourself", ... Evangelical systems rely on preemptive conditioning that installs cognitive limits, skews, and filters. They make sure that dependent minds are trained to either disregard or recontextualize inconvenient data. How are they able to do this? Those systems generate so much ideological bias that the brain will spontaneously engage in *confirmation bias*. The "fact checker" will be unable to realize that's what they are doing. They get trapped in a feedback loop. "Any at-issue belief must be true because my entire theological system is true. And I know that system is true, because: My feelings, which GOD gave me to verify this system, are true.".

This can include the feeling of being validated or loved by a Super-Parent. It can also include any strong positive feelings about anything within the system. It can also include any strong negative feelings about anything outside of that system that may call that system into question. -Which cogregants are taught to think of as "demonic". Jehovah's Witnesses do the same thing. They say, "go research this for yourself". But before they say that, they pre-install emotionally powerful guardrails by saying things like "Whoever or whatever says we are wrong ... are just worldly and/or demonic forces trying to trick you out of your salvation". Many congregants will never realize they were manipulated by men to have those neurochemical-release triggers. Those types of religious systems program those emotional responses, as a way to validate the narrative, ... as a way to maintain power over others. To do this, they rely on *time-tested methods of cognitive rewiring. [*Over thousands of years. Even still today, being perpetually refined] Examples: Manipulating people to externalize their "locus of identity". This basically means that a person lacks: a.) the ability and b.) the sense of being qualified or entitled ... to explore, create, and define their own *narrative of personal identity*; - especially regarding how that narrative provides a sense of positive personal value. This is the core of dysfunction that neurologically wires some brains into Narcissistic Personality Disorder. That is why religious fundamentalism, as a *personality type*, is actually just clinical Narcissism with a fantasy theme. -Which is why religious fundamentalists habitually self-promote and gaslight in debates. That doesn't mean that everyone who holds to a fundamentalist ideology is a clinical Narcissist. Minds held captive within such systems are not all suffering from a Major Personality Disorder. However, as many Bible scholars realise, ... Bible-based faith systems were created by men with Major Personality Disorders. Those systems lure clinical Narcissists with the promise of easy ascent into positions of social power and prestige. With so many cleverly camouflaged clinical Narcissuses, sociopaths, and psychpaths *hiding in plain sight* [as church leaders, youth pastors, counselors, parents, and apologists] ... Congregants are being covertly, gradually trained to feel like that church and family leadership takes the forms that "God" intended. This applies to personality dynamics and ideological content. It also takes advantage of how abuse reprograms the human nervous system to always gravitate towards dangerous people as something ... deeply familiar and thus somehow "right". Ideological systems predicated on "moral authority" don't just lure, worsen, empower, camouflage, and create clinical Narcissists. They also program non-Narcissists to emulate that disorder when it comes to how they reason about relationships; including how they relate to: * to other people, * the concept of "God", * and to themselves. This is partly how those systems camouflage and validate actual Narcissists. When everyone is pretending this is how people are supposed to reason and behave, real narcissists don't have to behave according to the same social standards that society would normally require. Those systems function as Narcissist-factories, making entire societies a very dangerous place for anyone in need of mates, friends, business partners, political candidates, etc... Via the very same mechanisms, ... They also create people who habitually pimp themselves out as a source of "supply" for real Narcissists, ... and for an imaginary, all-powerful narcissist. who "can do no wrong". And you better agree ... or else. Those systems do so by programming parents to prevent the development of a healthy ego and self-awareness within their offspring. -Such as by telling their kids that they are "sinners", and unworthy of even the very air they breathe, ... and thus need a Super-Father to validate them, ... Which "He" will only do if those kids prove to be a sifficient UTILITY for the Super-Father's ego ("all things for His glory"). Otherwise, "He" will commit "eternal discard", along with more direct forms of violence, if sheeple fail to make "Him" feel sufficiently: * sought, * understood, and * flattered. This involves a lot of self-debased begging and cowering at "His" feet. "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling" [Until Stockholm Syndrome sets in]. However, most people who develop that dysfunctional wiring end up somewhere between a healthy relationship to their own ego **vs** Narcissism. These people end up very vulnerable to external judgments but not to the same extremes as clinical Narcisism. It's easy enough to manipulate vulnerable children into any such predatory system. However, ... When it comes to adult-aged people who are being groomed to join such a religion, ... Only those who have an external locus of identity are at risk of being emotionally manipulated to join. Such religions are the ones predicated on a Super-Paret whose loving connection (aka "personal relationship") is being withheld pending his validation [What Christians call "grace"; a word that means "undeserved kindness].
"We accept the love that we think we deserve". This is why severely neglected teens and young adults will be drawn to abusive mates. Thinking "I am nothing without GOD" is a trap that only someone with an externalized locus of identity would fall into. That way of thinking directly parallels an abused teen who crutches their identity and worth on any parental or pair-bonded abuser. Christians are literally trauma-bonded to a concepitalized parent who *seems to be* The Creator Of The Universe, but is actually: a.) the alter-egos of the men who give him voice. combined with b.) the manifestation of that *living presence* which is built partly from the hijacked and partitioned mind of the experiencer.

Realizing that, predator cult-personalities (ever since the Torah) have been creating religious systems which attempt to convince people that: * we are so beneath contempt * we need to beg for scraps of love from an emotionally distant "Father" * who can barely stand to look upon us * because of our innate inadequacies and failures (aka "sins"). This creates a deeply saturating sense of shame, as we measure ourselves against the impossible and nebulous standard of "perfection" and come up very, very short. That very sense of shame is what they want to "rescue" us from, after they create that problem in the first place. This is what the Sunscreen song meant when Baz said, "Do NOT read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ... ugly."

Bibles are Iron Age beauty magazines. They were published by predatory men ... seeking to worsen vulnerable young people's own feelings of being "not good enough", .... so those men could sell those young people **fleeting doses of relief**. The TorAh(SS-holes) were the ideological proto-Nazis. They were the OG MAGA. -Xenophobic, Nationalistic, Sexist, Ablist, Habitually "othering" men. - Whom didn't really concern themselves much with "age of consent" or really any form of consent. - "Consent" being one of those concepts that Christians don't really understand. The various Bible-authors' EGOs were being propped up by violently entitled fantasies; overcompensating for their own troubled sense of inadequacy. Those fantasies, built with "alternative facts", cast them into the role of "Righteous Warriors". That manifested in severely maladaptive and highly destructive culture wars (and often, literal wars) ... against foreigners, the sexually divergent, and wrongthinkers. The entire point was to seek out, cultivate, and exploit vulnerabilities, so that men who sit at the top of that system can selfishly extract resources from those beneath, while convincing dependent minds that those sacrifices are going up to a "God".

This is pretty easy to do with people who enlist as adults, because the only people who join as adults ... are people who already suffer from exploitable vulnerability of ego, and other forms of emotional desperation. Those ideological systems create deep and durable *identity vulnerability* and *identity dependence*. That form of dependence, often referred to as "identity politics", is a very effective means to prevent people from growing and seeing beyond the programming. This makes it *usually safe enough* for Evangelicals to say "Go research what I'm saying, to see that I'm correct". Anyone sufficiently guard-railed (sheparded)... will only see whatever they're willing to see. Anyone who accidentally discovers they were lied to ... becomes a useful enemy to stand against. Other people's de-conversion is also taken to be "proof" that there really is a spiritual war that righteous warrior-sheep need to be "protecting" themselves from. Practical Skillsets are an objective reality.

Project-specific organization of labor is often a functional necessity. But "authority"?
Authority is only ever a game people play.

--- Bonus material:  @langreeves6419  re "You (some other guy) are blaming god for what humans wrote from their imaginations?" --- I can't speak for (some other guy). But I can speak for myself about it. To be fully logical about this, we don't need to treat the Bible as if that collection of texts is inerrant, or the words of a "God". But we should be able to recognize that if any reader *realizes* how chalked full of fallible nonsense those texts are, ... it instantly becomes indefensible that such a reader thinks a "God" put SOME stuff (anything at all) in there for us. What kind of Parent would hide a sweet surprise for their kid to find ... in a toxic waste site? If we assume that an autonomously sentient, always-existing, self-aware entity literally exists ... and: * knows everything knowable. * has a mind that always thinks flawlessly, and * has unlimited power, ... That Entity is automatically responsible for every misunderstanding that happens within the minds of humans, along with every single second of involuntary suffering. If such an Entity exists, then it becomes a logically inescapable conclusion that: Every example and measure of dysfunction, misconception, and suffering that will ever happen on planet Earth ... are all things that The Entity either: A.) just simply doesn't care about or b.) actually desires to see happen. So we either have: A Sociopathic Super-Entity, who just doesn't care. A Psychopathic Super-Entity who actually wants us to suffer. or No such Entity exists. In any case, there literally can't be an Entity deserving the title" God". -Unless we have impressively low standards for what sort of boot we're willing to lick.