Introducing Derren Brown

If you don't know who Derren Brown is, then what follows is going to be me playing a bit of a trick on you for I am taking the following video snips out of context. So, without any explanation, here are the clips:



The video embedding was disabled because out of context the above clip is so misleading. Here it is:
Derren Brown - Messiah - 4/8



If you didn't already know, then about halfway through the second clip you'd have realized this "conversion" business isn't what it first appears. James Lawrence is really Derren Brown, a popular mentalist in the UK with a book to sell, "Tricks of the Mind". (He may be coming to the sci-fi channel.) This isn't about converting people to Christianity, but rather about how easily people can be fooled into believing things that aren't true.

And look how easily the first person Derren "converts," the red-headed woman with the glasses, seems to take to it. What's going on here?

The first thing to note is that she took the time and made the effort to go to such an event in the first place. The second thing to note is her reason for disbelief, she lumps God in with ghosts and angels and Derren puts her at ease saying "I don't believe in those things either." However, more importantly, her first named reason for doubt is because various relatives have been Catholic, Protestant and Mormon, and she felt she had all that forced on her. Such a summary has holes in it. Catholicism, Protestantism and Mormonism aren't just belief in God, they're detailed dogmas and the fact that she brings this up as her reason is very telling about her psychological state.

The most important factors in this seeming conversion are supplied by the red-headed lady rather than by Derren, the perpetrator. In the case of all the atheists left at the end there were two levels of filtering that had happened. First, just bothering to go to the event means they were open to the possibility, and then staying after a quarter of the group left meant they were open to the possibility of Derren's method. The ones left behind are the ones who want to be convinced. These atheists were probably in an early stage of atheism and they seem young.

Such psychological trickery requires a certain kind of victim. Those who approached Derren's con game with a skeptical mindset wouldn't be impressed. The "atheists" left at Derren's event probably want to believe, try to believe, and they probably hadn't yet met someone who was dogma free and not arguing with them about their reasons for rejecting faith. Derren isn't offering faith, he's offering an experience, but it's the willing victims who create their own experience. All Derren has to do is set up the expectation.

In the case of the second "convert," the tall and dark haired male, he tells us that he can't believe in, I paraphrase, "a god or higher being who is supposed to be all loving yet lets children die." Derren doesn't even bother to argue this theological problem, he just asks the guy to go through an elaborate performance with him. After which he says; "I wouldn't be doing the right thing if I didn't consider the possibility that I might be wrong..."

There's a problem with this statement. It's not a real change in his attitude, why else would he have gone to such an event in the first place if he wasn't willing to explore? What "reason to explore" made him show up in the first place? What made him stay? There was no change, just a shift in focus, an opening up to subjective feelings we normally put aside because they're useless to us in our everyday lives.

Towards the end, when Derren tells them to stand up and then starts telling the room full of atheists to "close your eyes... there is something here... feel it like a pressure... feel that moving into you... let that feeling get stronger... just embrace it," it's a bit like a hypnotic induction. And from the Bible onward radical experiences have been promised:



Now, if some of the people who think they're plugged into God weren't such black holes of utter ignorance the absurd demonstration above might have some weight. But consider Ray Comfort who tries to argue for believing in talking snakes and who can't even comprehend the evolutionary theory he tries to argue against. Instead of being a light unto the world they're more like light absorbing shadows that carry ignorance and delusion with them where ever they go.

It would also be instructive to read up on the case of Professor René Blondlot and his N-rays.

Derren tells us a little more in this interview with Richard Dawkins:



At first consideration it may not seem that "Barnum statements," which, as noted, are attributed to P.T. Barnum, would have much to do with the conversion of atheists in Derren Brown's little con, but if you pay attention to the things Derren says to the atheists you'll note that he tries to say as little as possible about the god they'll experience. He sticks to purely physiological symptoms and lets people fill in the meaning for themselves. He tells them to feel vague, physical things.

Pop music often uses Barnum statements. For example, Matthew Sweet's "Dark Secret," which is linked in my previous post under the words "heralding SOMETHING EVEN DARKER THAN OURSELVES." The lyrics are:

You are sickened by the weakness
Of a heart that's filled with fear
And if the world won't understand you
You can make it disappear

'Cause there's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you

And deep inside, the way you hate them
On the outside, doesn't show
And oh, they think that they defy you
They are slaved to what you know

It's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you

And it's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you
And it's a dark secret
Carry with you
Carry with you

It's a dark secret
Carry with you
It's a dark secret
Carry with you
It's a dark secret
Carry with you (dark secret)

Who isn't at least a little sickened by the weaknesses that are our fears? And often those fears are themselves our dark secrets. Some atheist bravado is a bit like whistling past a graveyard in the dark just to convince yourself that you're not afraid. While there is plenty of evidence that all these religions are frauds and delusions that evidence alone can never be one hundred percent convincing.

But who is going to take on the real price of Pascal's wager because of a tiny percentage chance that God is the asshole that fundamentalists think he is? Christians, apparently. Just imagine how much worse their fear must be behind their whistling through the graveyard.