God and Pyschology

[psychdave]

I'm a pyschologist (though not my day job currently). As a pyschologist I struggle to come to terms with the modern church/christianity.

1) Church worship is akin to softening experience that can be achieved by ANY soft music that stirs emotion such as love songs. To be most effective music needs to be around 45 - 72 BPM. Given this, emotionally stirring worship songs, do lead people to a different brain state (beta to alpha) where they are in a more suggestible state. Some love songs may actually stir an emotional event because of a happy event that's anchored to the song so every time one hears it, one's subconscious associates with a wedding/engagement etc.

2) As a result of point 1, individuals are in a much more suggestible state so in the same way that a time share salesman may "warm somebody up" via rapport techniques so they can persuade a previously unwilling "victim" to buy something, worship can "warm somebody up" to be suggestible to what the leader/speaker is saying. These techniques ARE used by charlatan TV evangelists who use techniques to boost their finances.....

3) Healing - I'm NOT saying God has never healed anyone, however, the vast majority of healings are NOT healings... As per the points above when somebody is in a suggestible state and particularly if the preacher in question has thrown in "convincers" of their "special" relationship with God, then people who want to believe they have been healed will believe it. In the same way you may forget about a back ache if you won the lottery (as your brain would not be focussed on the back ache), the brain no longer focusses on your pain if you believe you're healed. The same effect can be produced via hypnosis. Unfortunately this is NOT a long term affect (with the exception of some psychosomatic illnesses) and the same or next day, that bad back will be back..... Charlatan TV evangelists use these "healings" to further their following and increase their finances with shopping channel style testimonies of back pain etc relieved. In reality no medical evidence backing up the healings is produced.