I’m watching Apocalypse in the Tropics documentary on Netflix about evangelicals and politics in Brazil and it’s mind boggling. Why do the religious people just blindly do whatever the pastors tell them?
There is also a selection bias at play here. I suspect that people who are more susceptible to manipulation are more likely to be religious.
Religion also includes a pretty horrific indoctrination program in children, ensuring that most of them remain uneducated and pliable enough to be manipulated for the rest of their lives by the church.
Their entire worldview depends on blindly believing things that don’t make sense and are unverifiable
They are trained from a very young age to accept anything an authority tells them.
This is how I look at it mostly. I also think, and statistics show as well, that religious folks are less intelligent on average… partly because they are taught a bunch of nonsense.
Because the premise of religion involves having full faith in someone/something without question or evidence. So the more a person believes in it, the easier they are to manipulate, and it tends to have the same effect on other things. So if you are able to tickle that specific part of their brain and make them fully believe in something, you can have them do almost anything you want them to do.
It’s because their religion has taught them to trust religious leaders without question. They have faith that the church knows what is best for them and their community. They tend to not use critical thinking when it comes to religious matters.
People often have a similar faith in their parents judgement. If Mom or Dad asks them to do something that seems foolish, many people will still do it simply because of the unquestioning trust they have for their parents.
I think it’s because religions, cults, sports teams or whatever have community. Community comes with shared identities and beliefs. Nobody wants to be outcasted or shunned. So you follow along. Your friends are there, your family is there … they all believe the same thing.
Yes, and groupthinks incorporating spirituality and a doctrine that threatens damnation for violations of the rules (including questioning them, sometimes) have just proven very persistent and effective.
I’d add conspiracy communities to the list, including some prominent on Lemmy.
People in general are easily manipulated, and those who manipulate use the beliefs of the people they’re manipulating to do so.
Religion certainly is a something used for that, but it’s hardly the only one.
Complex topic, but this is a starting point: https://www.conspirituality.net/cult-dynamics-101
They were conditioned to growing up. Their parents taught them to, they saw how the ingroup and the outgroups work and settled on the ingroup. Not much more to it than that i’m afraid.
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I think you have it backwards, it’s no wonder people who are easy to manipulate get drawn into religion.
Watch documentaries on chimpanzees, watch what they do individually and as tribes and then you’ll understand. We are not far removed from those great apes, and it shows.
Pretty simple. They are groomed from birth and often until death, to blindly trust the “leaders” of their community. At some point they develop critical thinking skills, but they are so deeply manipulated to trust the cult that they face an internal conflict: Break away from your core values, family, friends, community, comfort of purpose and greater value, etc. Or don’t apply critical thinking to certain topics in your life.
Faced with what is essentially a social and moral death they ofteb choose the simpler option, just don’t let logic into that part of their life.
Honestly, hard to balme them, I myself have faced similar issues in my life and sadly didn’t always have to courage and strength to go with logic and instead kept with social norms that I know are wrong. To be fair, I think that 90% of people are blind to their own illogical (and often harmful) beliefs, but they easily identify it in others.
Another related question: Why are people seemingly more inclined to become more religious as they age?
fear of death?
I know people actually become slightly less conservative as they age, on average, but society in most Western places has moved socially left over time, so they seem conservative now. I’m guessing some of that is also true of religiousness.
Having to stare down your mortality and insignificance might be part of it. Young people tend to just avoid big picture questions because it’s easy to pretend they can. Now, of course there’s atheist answers to those big picture questions, but as far as I know committed atheists are always outnumbered by agnostics.
In a word: gullible. Full stop.
People with a highly metaphysical worldview are easier to deceive and manipulate because their normal logic barriers have already been broken down - ie, if you already believe that the earth and everything on it was created by an omnipotent superbeing in six days, it’s not much of a further leap to believe that demons are making you horny.
Stupid, sexy demons!
aka: you gotta be dumb to be religious in the first place
Religion isn’t the only arena that has charlatans, manipulators and con artists.
No, but it’s certainly a big draw. People looking to the collection plate to buy absolution, buy better health, a better life, whatever…that already believe in magic are far more easily manipulated. Religion has always been attractive to charlatans, grifters, and even warmongers and hatreds. You an far more easily get people to hand you power and money with religion.
