"The Search - Manufacturing Beliefs"

[jbseth]

Hi All,

I came across something really interesting today and so I thought I share the following information on it. On occasion, I check out Bart Erhman's blog. Bart is a New Testament professor at the University of North Carolina. For those of you who may not know him,
Bart's not a minister, a preacher or a theologian. Instead he's an agnostic / atheist, who's involved in critical / historical New Testament research.

On his blog on July 6, 2020, he talks about an interesting interview that he's been involved in. He says that it's one of the most interesting interviews he's done. This interview was for a feature length documentary, called "The Search – Manufacturing Beliefs", which was created by a man named Patrick Payne.

This documentary has to do with various topics having to do with religious and spiritual experiences. However, along with this, it also takes a look at science, neuroscience, mind control and many other topics.

This documentary starts out by discussing Patrick's experiences in the 1970's when he was a teenager during a 3 day religious retreat, which was based upon "cursillo movement". Patrick then talks to people like Bart, ministers, psychologists, scientists, and neuroscientists about this experience as well related topics like "mind control", the experience of "awe" and "consciousness".

On Bart's Blog, of July 6, 2020, Bart lets Patrick talk about his documentary. I found that what Patrick had to say about this documentary to be really interesting. I also found that the Q&A session at the end of Bart's blog, where people asked Patrick some questions about his documentary to be quite interesting as well.


Here's the website for this blog:

https://ehrmanblog.org/an-intriguing-new-documentary-the-search-manufacturing-belief/


In addition to this, I found the following youtube trailer (2 minutes and 16 seconds in length) for this documentary.




Patrick says that this documentary is available on Amazon Prime. If I can find it, and it's not too expensive, I think I'll give it a look.

-jbseth

[jbseth]

Hi All,

I just watched this video today and found it to be pretty interesting. Here's the details, for anyone who's interested. You can watch it on Amazon Prime for $3.99, and it's an hour and 20 minutes in duration.

Basically this documentary is somewhat of an autobiographical account of Patrick Payne, the creator and director.   Patrick attended a 3 day Catholic Church religious retreat when he was in high school in the 1970's. This religious retreat was called, "The Search" and as a result of this retreat, it was supposed to give you a real encounter with the "Holy Spirit". This retreat was based upon a similar type of training in the Catholic Church called "cursillo". Prior to today, I've never heard of either one of these 2 things.

This documentary explores how mind control techniques (Isolation, Control, Uncertainty, Repetition, Emotion and Group Dynamics) are often used in these types of retreats in order to bring on some type of "religious" / "awe" experience. They also explain how these techniques can be dangerous for people with mental health issues.

Along with this, they also discuss the more natural human "awe" types of experience as well as "consciousness" itself. In regards to the natural human "awe" experience, Professor Keltner talked about a study where that discovered that a person can be "awed" by any one of four separate ways. One, a person can be awed by another person, such as someone that they look up to as a hero, or such as what happens sometimes when a new baby is born. Along with this a person can also be awed by: 2) nature, 3) a spiritual experience or 4) art and music.

Some of the participants interviewed on the various topics discussed in this documentary include the following people:

Zoltain Dienes, Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex.
Brian Janssen, a Presbyterian Minister
Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist
Sam Harris, a Neuroscientist and Philosopher
Daniel Dennett, Professor of Philosophy, Cognitive Scientist
Sam Harris, Philosophy,
Anil Seth, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Sussex (interesting last name – Seth). 
Bart Ehrman, Professor of New Testament, University of North Carolina
Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley


Sometimes in documentaries like this, the speakers can get long winded and / or the documentary itself can become rather boring. However, it's obvious that Patrick Payne really knew what he was doing here when he made this documentary. I never sensed any long winded parts in this documentary and the hour and 20 minutes seemed to go by really fast. It wasn't boring in the least.


-jbseth

[Deb]

"as a result of this retreat, it was supposed to give you a real encounter with the "Holy Spirit".

The trailer does look interesting, kind of how I've viewed religious indoctrination, thanks for sharing and reviewing this documentary. I suppose the mind control technique would work for a variety of purposes, beyond religion and cults, such as gangs or other groups that hold themselves out of ordinary society. Or re-education camps, such as in China. Forced rehab, such as in Clockwork Orange. 

I'll probably watch it this weekend.

[jbseth]

I suppose the mind control technique would work for a variety of purposes, beyond religion and cults, such as gangs or other groups that hold themselves out of ordinary society.

Hi Deb,

Your correct. When I joined the Air Force in 1972, they used a variation of this in basic training. At that time, they kept us very busy, never told us what to expect next and yelled at us all the time for everything.

By the end of the first couple of days, we were all exhausted, which makes you much more easy to manipulate.

- jbseth