Its all in your head people...
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Dirty District
Members Posts: 75 ✭✭
So I recently watched this documentary about Marjoe Gortner, who as a traveling child preacher in the 40's and 50's raked in an estimated $3Million all before the age of 14. He was also an atheist. In the film, we see an adult Marjoe reviving his career as a traveling Pentecostal minister. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1972.
As demonstrated throughout the movie, Marjoe knew exactly how to elicit physical and emotional reactions from people under the guise of religious experience, and had been trained to do since he was a small child. He followed a very specific game plan every time he took the pulpit, and made a lot of money in the process.
Again, the things these people experienced - speaking in strange tongues, being moved to tears, suddenly losing physical control of their bodies, etc. - were predictable responses to a well rehearsed act, duplicated night in and night out. There was nothing supernatural occurring here at all. But to the faithful, these were very real experiences of ? and the holy spirit. Anyone who's been to a certain kind of church has witnessed this sort of thing first hand - faith healing, people being moved to convulsions. So which is it? Does the fact the minister didn't believe a word coming out of his own mouth and could forecast reactions negate what those people claimed to have felt? - and even if Marjoe believed what he was preaching does it really make a difference?
Heres the vid btw:
As demonstrated throughout the movie, Marjoe knew exactly how to elicit physical and emotional reactions from people under the guise of religious experience, and had been trained to do since he was a small child. He followed a very specific game plan every time he took the pulpit, and made a lot of money in the process.
Again, the things these people experienced - speaking in strange tongues, being moved to tears, suddenly losing physical control of their bodies, etc. - were predictable responses to a well rehearsed act, duplicated night in and night out. There was nothing supernatural occurring here at all. But to the faithful, these were very real experiences of ? and the holy spirit. Anyone who's been to a certain kind of church has witnessed this sort of thing first hand - faith healing, people being moved to convulsions. So which is it? Does the fact the minister didn't believe a word coming out of his own mouth and could forecast reactions negate what those people claimed to have felt? - and even if Marjoe believed what he was preaching does it really make a difference?
Heres the vid btw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-O9aNl2XrkComments
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Reminds me of the movie " A Simple Twist of Fate" it stars Steve Martin who plays a fraud preacher and gets in over his head..
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**opened thread, tip-toes back out**
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I believe it's all in the head too, but you can't put it past believers because they bring up the "prophecies" that have come "true" and they say not even atheists can argue them.
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I believe it's all in the head too, but you can't put it past believers because they bring up the "prophecies" that have come "true" and they say not even atheists can argue them.
Right, and I expect arguments about Biblical warnings against false prophets and the like and thats all well and good. But we see him preaching and worshiping alongside true believers. Some of the other Ministers in the movie even get the same reactions out of the people without money as an underlying motive. How is this possible? Is it really the spirit if ? when the words came from a "pure" source, but something else when it was from Marjoe? Did ? simply skip over said church when he saw their were less than honest people inside? It opens up a lot of questions about these sorts of experiences
