[MD] False Messiah

[Ant McWatt]

David Morey in his seventh (!) post of March 29th stated:

"For me there is plenty of scope for religious thinking and experience in 
the
MOQ.  In fact I think we can improve the quality of both in such a 
context..."

"Modern religious thought is about our human relationship to the dominant 
Dynamic Quality of experience and existence. Its a vast sea change from the 
old religious thinking about what is permanent and beyond the reality of 
experience in some rather dull transcendental realm."

Ant McWatt comments:

David,

I take it in your e-mail that when you mention "modern religious thinking" 
you are referring to mysticism?

I'd agree that there is scope in the MOQ for this type of religious thinking 
and is no doubt why lthere are elements of Zen Buddhism and Taoism in 
Pirsig's system.  However, there isn't any scope in the MOQ for supernatural 
beliefs (including Buddhist and Taoist ones) or institutions with hypnotic 
elements (such as the Christian mass - as pointed out by the hypnotist 
Derren Brown in his TV documentary "Messiah"), conditioning (often from an 
early age) or anything else which might disrupt individual critical 
free-thinking.  I don't see many traditional religions fulfilling these  
requirements and, as such, I think they are best avoided altogether.

This is not to say people shouldn't read the Bible or the Koran or any other 
religious text and make their own minds up about the messages being 
portrayed in such texts in comparison to other systems of ethics (such as 
humanism or the MOQ).  This is also why I would recommend that all churches 
are turned into philosophy schools and colleges as soon as possible.  
Considering the increasing number of empty (or near empty) churches in the 
UK it’s a pity that a more enlightened humanist politician has taken hold of 
this idea yet.

Best wishes,

Anthony.


For more details of Derren Brown's "Messiah" documentary, read the following 
(especially if you don't like French students!!!) :

Derren Brown, mind-manipulator extraordinaire...  sets out once again to 
show us, not that our beliefs are wrong, but just how easy it is to dupe 
people into believing 10 impossible things before breakfast.

Seal of approval

The five experiments he sets up vary from standard tests for psychic ability 
to physical methods of religious conversion. They cover all areas of belief, 
organised religion and purchasable salvation. In each case his stated aim is 
to get a reputable authority to endorse the results of the experiments in 
order to demonstrate the validity of people's experiences in the confusing 
world of belief. By securing this validation, he aims show how little such 
endorsements mean, even if they are genuinely motivated. After all, we know 
that he’s not a Messiah – he’s just very good as pretending to be one.

But there is another agenda in the programme: to encourage people to 
investigate what they believe more rigorously. Derren himself used to be an 
evangelical Christian until his mid-20s. Then he started to realise that his 
faith was just as vulnerable to suggestion as any of the New Age theories 
that annoyed him so much. His faith was rocked and he abandoned it. That 
could certainly be one response to this programme since, while we know that 
his amazing acts are done by suggestion, they are immediately endorsed by 
almost all the 'authority' figures he approaches.

Good questions

Derren Brown causes a lot of anger (and complaint!) through his experiments 
because he causes a lot of fear. Fear that your whole life has been based on 
a lie, that you have been manipulated, that there is no comfortable higher 
authority making sense of your world – or that there is. This is powerful 
stuff. But what, after all, is wrong with his questioning of people's 
beliefs? If you haven’t investigated what you believe independently and 
looked at the arguments standing against you, your beliefs have little 
validity. Investigation doesn’t have to mean the end of your world view, it 
can be a very constructive process, providing confirmation of what you 
already thought, or showing you new avenues for development.

Derren Brown is right. Many people are being duped, innocently maybe, and 
this programme exposes how easy it is to do that. However, it doesn’t 
necessarily follow that all the belief systems he investigates are 
fraudulent – just that a fraudster [such as a politician] could use them. It 
is up to us to ensure that we approach our beliefs with an open mind; that 
we allow them to be challenged and perhaps through that, learn more about 
what real truth is.

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/derrenbrown.html

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