If you self-identify as a Christian, you might want to skip this entry. It might be very offensive to you.

Those of you who have been reading me know that I feel very strongly that Christianity and its practitioners represent some very seriously mentally ill members of our global society. I believe these mentally ill people represent a serious threat to the rest of us, especially the ones that are out to tell everyone they can about their religion, out to pattern our country after their apocalyptic view of the world. But it's not all their fault, they have been the unwitting victims of circuitous logic and brainwashing that is absolutely impervious to reason. While there is no hope of ever completely reaching these poor souls, we can do what we can to add to their unconscious understandings of how to keep their infectious disease from spreading to others (despite their best efforts).

First, it is helpful to understand how they get trapped into believing the mythology. Their entire basis for belief is a fundamental assumption of the accuracy and infallibility of their core text, "The Holy Bible." They say their religion is true because it says so in the Bible. In their book, their god says "I am the ONE TRUE GOD" and "Thou shalt have no other god before me," and they are not permitted to question or challenge that in any way. When you ask them how they know that's true, they will look at you and with a straight face say "Because the Bible is the word of god." Ask them again how they know the Bible is the "word of god" and not the word of man using "god" as a pseudonym, and they'll tell you "because the Bible says so."

So they're stuck in this loop that says "The book is true because the book says so. God is real because the book says so. The book cannot be questioned because it is the infallible word of god. The word of god is true because the book says it is." Many of them are bombarded with so many suggestions about god and how their life is presently lacking (despite any evidence to that effect) and they will manufacture out of the deepest wells of their unconscious minds entire mystical experiences in which Jesus comes to them, rights all their personal wrongs, they have an internal catharsis, and they say that "Jesus touched them." The hallucinations are just as real to them as the words you are reading right now, and you are never allowed to point out to them that they hallucinated it all, lest you incur a wrath that is Biblical in proportions. Psychiatric facilities all over the world are filled with people who have mystical experiences with Joan of Arc, Napolean, all sorts of demons, ghosts, spirits, and angels, and the mental health establishment has no difficulty properly identifying them as mentally ill. But when it comes to Christian Dissociative Disorder (CDD), most of the victims of that pathology are freely walking the streets, free to try to infect you or me, free to influence governments, even presidents! This is why they represent such a virulent threat that must be contained.

One of the most effective ways of forcing a Christian to re-examine their delusional states is to offer counterexamples that follow their same logic. I recently provided a living example of doing just that, and the effect was rather explosive. Immediately the most ill of the Christian community attacked me and began raving to all who would listen not to listen to me, attacking me from every other standpoint they could. One woman, a user called FaithfulDisciple, was so intensely disturbed by her cognitive dissonance that she immediately stopped talking to me and banned me from commenting on her blog, that's how powerfully intimate these beliefs are. This is the effect of being faced with the inverse logic of a deeply held belief, and the mind cannot resolve the two equally. The two opposing concepts will clash and create intense amounts of cognitive dissonance that the Christian simply must resolve in order to avoid a more severe crisis. Often the introduction of a series of congruent inconsistencies is enough to destablize the entire complex to the point that you can actually reach them, but this often takes much longer to do than one conversation. If you've ever studied the work of any of the mainstream cult deprogrammers you see the difficulties and the realities of reaching these troubled souls.

As a prime example, let's look at one component of the delusional constellation of Christian Dissociative Disorder. In applying the framework of their mythology to creating a counterexample you create a context which they can readily accept into which to inject the dissonant vector. Let's examine their conceptualization of "God" for example.

God is described as being perfect in every way, loving, jealous, and wrathful. God is described as all-knowing, omnipotent, omnipresent, and supposedly has a "plan" for everyone and everything. God embued humankind with a free will, but demands that we use that free will to choose to bow down and enslave ourselves to him. God wants your soul and after you die, if you have placated and fed God's ego enough with worship, then (maybe) you get to go to a paradise called "heaven" and spend eternity with him (presumably doing nothing). God's enemy is Satan, or "The Devil", and the Devil is fearsome for the following reasons.

1. He lies, he will say or do anything to steal your soul.
2. He is a tempter, he wants you to do bad things so he can get your soul.
3. He is arrogant and thinks himself equal to God.
4. He is as omnipresent as god and seeks to enslave all of mankind for his own purposes.
5. He "gets you" by the same free will that god demands you devote to him. People choose to "do bad things."
6. He wants your soul so that when you die he can spend eternity burning and torturing you, as some kind of revenge on god.

If you compare traits attributed to god and those attributed to the Devil, it almost looks like they are after the same things. If what they say about God is true, then the same things could equally apply to the Devil. Ask a victim of CDD how they know that what they have come to believe in as God isn't really the Devil masquerading as God (which by their own admissions, he can do) doing all the things God is doing, and letting you feel good and like you've really connected to god when he gets his hooks into you nice and deep, and you'll get a very curious response. The immediate response will be one of incredulity. They will scoff and dismiss you outright. They'll give some reason like "I can feel God's Divine Glory when I pray to him." Don't ask them how they know it's not Satan filling them with the pleasure that he is so good at giving, you run the risk of escalating them to a state of near panic. The power of this intervention is not so much in the moment, but in when they take it away with them. You have attached a new idea to an old in in a way that is very incompatible, and their unconscious minds will struggle to resolve it. They will deny it to the Nth degree, but in the end it simmers somewhere in the back of their minds, bubbling and stewing, slowing eating away at the foundations of the delusion, until ultimately it will come to a critical crisis point. Some people will develop a temporary depression when their "faith" (delusion) starts to crumble in the light of day, some will lash out in anger, other will just get diarrhea or itch a lot.

For a more concrete example, you can ask an evangelizing Christian about the moment right before they had their "epiphany" and became a convert. Ask them to describe the situation right up to the moment before they had that realization, and then STOP. Suggest to them that, in that moment they were faced with a choice, there were several directions open to them. What if, in that moment right before they made their mind up, they discovered (though no fault of their own) that they were being deceived and what they were *really* about to *commit to* was The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus? Have you ever bought a used car and right before you signed on the dotted line discovered that the salesmen had been lying to you about something important? What would you feel like doing to that salesperson? Would you still sign it? And that decision that was made so long ago now has another possible option that could have been pursued. And with the emotions of betrayal resting right here on that threshold, the back of the mind records and and weighs it all in balance.

There was a guy who was rather famous in the U.S. for being a lookalike for a certain president. When you looked at him, you saw the other guy. When he spoke, it was the other's voice you heard. And when it counted, you knew he was just an impostor. There was another guy like this who looked like George W. Bush, and recently at a dinner for Washington journalists, the impostor performed for the crowd. President Bush smiled and laughed along with the jokes, some of which were very pointed and slightly critical of his policies. I heard a rumor that W was secretly very put off and offended by some of the comments made by his doppelganger and has since blacklisted that performer. People often respond negatively when a mirror is held up to them that reflects the parts they don't like to acknowledge.

If you've never had the very human experience of having your mind changed by the facts, then you are in a truly disenviable position indeed. One of the hallmarks of human intelligence is its flexibility. We can CHANGE OUR MINDS and UPDATE OUR KNOWLEDGE. But it is a choice that we make. Many of us are very comfortable making the choice to continue to learn and grow and expand our knowledge. And it is vitally important that we rage against anyone and anything that would prevent us from fulfilling that basic human need, the need to grow and enrich ourselves our lives, and our species.

Won't you join me in combatting CDD? How can you help? Whenever you hear a victim of CDD speaking publicly about their delusions, quoting their book, and doing that thing they do, go out of your way to say something really ugly and offensive in that moment and in a way that captures their attention. You will probably make them angry, and possibly those who overhear you. Think about training a puppy not to peepee on the carpet. You have to catch them in the moment they're doing it and take them where you want them to go. Do this enough times and their brain will come to automatically associate having to urinate with going to the right place. The same principle works with humans. By power of neural association, the average person can attach negative feelings to the parts of the delusions of CDD victims (aka Christians), and OVER TIME, the effect will be cumulative.

Who said social engineering couldn't begin with one person? And they they'll tell two friends and they'll tell two friends, and then you blog about it. :-)

RMLP