Posted by:
schrodingerscat
(
)
Date: January 21, 2021 05:43PM
There was a whole book written on this subject in 1956
https://www.amazon.com/When-Prophecy-Fails-Psychological-Destruction/dp/0061311324When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of A Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World
They all follow the same pattern.
Look at the faith we inherited, Mormonism.
Joseph Smith gave an exact date when Jesus was supposed to return to Earth, in the scriptures. 1891.
When that day came and went to no consequence, the Mormons, many of whom had crossed the plains and sacrificed family along the way, had too much invested at that point to just pull up stakes and leave. So they stayed, my family among them, in the oxbow of the Jordan River, which sounds like a kind of heaven on Earth for them, all living communally across the river from the Snows and the Youngs were spread out all over the West. They had waaaay too much invested. Life was good for them. Why leave? Why denounce the faith you'd invested everything into, for what?
A trip to outer darkness, or hell? Hey, this shit's working for me, shutup about science and philosophy and any kind of real education.
So they stuck with it. Willfully ignorant to the rest of the world around them. Completely ignorant.
It's called 'sunk cost fallacy', "I've got so much sunk into this belief that if I turned back now I'd have to start all over, so whatever you have to say is nonsense!"
They were brainwashed. They brainwashed my Grandma and her son, my Dad, who believed there was nothing wrong with Mormonism, except that god didn't exist, because he didn't work. My father was a very practical man. At 18 he went away to college and started partying and decided he'd better find out for himself if this whole Mormonism thing was true or not. He knelt down and asked god if the Book of Mormon was true and if Joseph Smith was a prophet. He asked God to please send him a sign that he'd heard him.
God never answered him.
So he figured that God either, didn't exist or didn't care to answer. Either way it made the same difference,
none.