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Illusion of Truth

Entry 549, on 2007-06-06 at 21:36:11 (Rating 4, Skepticism)

I was so intrigued by the Derren Brown program I blogged about yesterday that I have done some further research and watched some YouTube video material of other skeptical paranormal work he has done. Maybe his most famous demonstration was in converting non-believers to Christianity simply through touching them. Brown isn't a Christian and doesn't think he has special powers allowing him to do this. He just uses similar tricks to the ones he uses to convince people that seances, and other supernatural phenomena are true, mainly through using the suggestibility of his subjects.

The video I watched started with the statement that it wasn't about criticising anyone's beliefs, but after watching how easily people can be fooled my conclusion would be that there is an implied criticism of religious belief in what he did. For example he says that religions invoke a suggestible state through hyperactivity or monotony. That sounds quite critical to me, and that's good because those nasty little tricks that religions use should be criticised.

Brown visited the US and pretended to have the ability to convert people with one touch. People responded to an ad he placed for a meeting on spirituality. Most of the respondents were atheists, but the fact that they responded to an ad like that indicates to me that they might have been looking for a spiritual aspect to their life. Of course, that's the same sort of person who is evangelised by the churches, so that is perfectly reasonable.

After setting the scene Brown did convert non-believers with a single touch. It was an amazing and worrying demonstration of how easy it really is to manipulate people into believing something which clearly has no merit. There seems to be a genuine predisposition in most people to accept spiritual phenomena even though they clearly contradict what they would believe if they were really thinking rationally about what was happening to them.

One of the reasons people often use to justify their religious belief is the total conviction they have that the experience is true. If they watched this video they would see that religious conviction is easy to induce by simple manipulation by a person skilled in psychological control techniques. The question then becomes, do the religious leaders who use the same techniques know they are doing this, or do they genuinely believe they have supernatural abilities while using these techniques subconsciously.

Either way, it shows how strong conviction of the truth of a belief is not good indication that the belief really is true. I suspect that, given the right circumstances, a person with a strong belief in one faith could easily be convinced that another contradictory belief system was true. Its not the belief which contains the truth, its the mistaken belief of the believer themself which creates the illusion of truth.

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