The other week we had a public talk by a brother who surprised me and piqued my interest by describing the origin of religion as resulting from a desire for power, and from fear and superstition. He was running with the ball so well, but he tripped and landed on his face before he got to the 20 yard line.
I'm not entirely sure what his thought process was. If I didn't happen to know him, I'd think he was trying to drop a TTATT bomb, but he's way too, well, er, simple-minded to be duplicitous like that. So here was how he started his talk:
'A long time ago, men could not understand the natural world and they sometimes assumed intention where there were just random acts of nature (a drought during the rainy season, etc.). They imagined there were fickle spirits governing the clouds and rivers and their own illnesses. There were certain men who claimed to have answers to how to communicate with and appease these spirits, and sometimes they seemed to be right (he gave an example here of how a certain tribal practice was medically sound even though they didn't understand why it worked). The ones who made a sufficient number of good guesses or had experimented enough using trial and error became witch doctors, shamans, etc.'
Basically, he explained beautifully the idea that the concept of a spirit world actively interfering with our own is based in superstition and ignorance. So, guess what he said next? "Do these false beliefs mean that there actually isn't a spirit world? Not at all. Let's turn to the Bible..." *massive internal facepalm* The logic stopped here so I won't bother to reiterate what came next, and anyway we've all heard it a million times. Suffice to say that he made sure to warn us about those awful fortune cookies. You just know the deemunz are waiting to jump out at you when you crack one of those things open.
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A lot of you already know this, but cognitive dissonance is when a person holds two contradictory sets of beliefs, or, one could say, two partial belief systems which contradict each other. Knowing that most of mankind's beliefs about the spirit world are based in a combination of fear, ignorance and guesswork, and yet believing that one's own knowledge about the spirit world is somehow an exception to this rule -- that's cogdis in a nutshell.
Another example would be doubling down on your beliefs after a disappointing event that ought to have weakened your faith. I'm shamelessly copying from the WP article here, but:
"[When Prophecy Fails] gives an account of the deepening of cult members' faith following the failure of a cult's prophecy that a UFO landing was imminent. The believers met at a pre-determined place and time, believing they alone would survive the Earth's destruction. The appointed time came and passed without incident. They faced acute cognitive dissonance: had they been the victim of a hoax? Had they donated their worldly possessions in vain? Most members chose to believe something less dissonant to resolve reality not meeting their expectations: they believed that the aliens had given Earth a second chance, and the group was now empowered to spread the word that earth-spoiling must stop. The group dramatically increased their proselytism despite the failed prophecy."
Sound familiar? Unfortunately, experiences like this one, and to a lesser degree, my example of the public talk, demonstrate that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. People believe what they want to believe for a combination of reasons owing to their personality and their circumstances at the time. I suppose the point here, if there is one, is that we need to accept this quirk of human nature. What chance do we have of forcing someone to accept TTATT when our brains can perform such amazing feats of rationalization? That being said, I support the idea of planting seeds that can help someone later to doubt their beliefs if they become predisposed to do so. Anything we can do to help a mind free itself from the Watchtower is worth doing.
