Why are people setting aside rational thought and pursuing blatant bullshit like this?  Why do they believe?

Well, our culture is full of perfectly secular forms of conventional wisdom like “you have to spend money to make money”, “if you build it, they will come”, and the like.  Shit, the entire American Capitalist Adventure is built on the idea that anybody can become the next Gates or Rockefeller simply by working hard and being an honest person. 

From there, it’s not much of a stretch to believe that “sending out good vibes” or “thinking positive” will affect your financial outlook.  And depending on your expectations, it might really be true—someone who has a confident and positive outlook is probably more likely to ace a job interview than a grumpy gus Eeyore type.  Someone who thinks a lot about how to improve their financial situation is probably more likely to eventually succeed at doing that than someone who doesn’t even care to know their options. 

Of course then you get to the really ridiculous ideas, like by the power of prayer, you are going to be magically vaulted into stratospheric wealth through no other effort of your own.  Which, ummmm, no.

But it’s not really quite as out-of-nowhere as you make it sound.

I admit to an embarrassing fascination with these TV preachers - I can’t resist spending a few minutes watching them when I whiz past with the remote… I was so sad when Benny Hinn finally let go of his gravity-defying comb-over! I do a bang-up Tilton impression at parties - I swear I could get my neighbors to send me money.

Joyce Meyer always seemed to be in a different category. I’m nothing close to being a Christian, but her TV sermons sound almost like eastern philosophy, gussied up with Christian catchphrases to make them palatable to the congregation. Maybe I’m just giving her to much benefit of the doubt.

But for real entertainment you’ve got to hand it to Pastor Arnold Murray and his Bible teachings. Many is the night that I’ve tuned him in and drifted off to sleep, secure in the knowledge that at least one man in the world (thinks he) knows exactly how it is… Seriously, at least he’s sincere… How do I know? Because he rarely asks for money.

Mmmm - sorry to double post, but I just thought of something.

What if the reason the Christianity Lite folks would rather dwell on The Power Of Positive Financial Thinking rather than sin and all that boring stuff is that it’s much closer to what people already believe?  Fewer and fewer Americans really take to heart all of the sin parts of Christianity, except for the Born Again folks who sometimes come off as Protesting Too Much, and often have trouble coming up with real life examples of their own sins and/or actually working on their acknowledged flaws (and they like to come up with a lot of loopholes about how their bad behavior doesn’t actually count, anyway).  But, as I said above, the prosperity stuff goes hand in hand with belief in the American Dream, which even in secular society is almost blasphemy to refute in any way.

Get ‘em in with what they already believe, rather than something they’re supposed to believe but obviously don’t.

Ack!  Amanda, fix the italics.  They’re hurting my eyes and I want to read this post.  It happened after the Secret.

Why are people setting aside rational thought and pursuing blatant bullshit like this?  Why do they believe?

Because the country was founded by Calvinists who thought that outward signs of prosperity were signs of God’s favor, and we still have never managed to shake that philosophy.

Not to mention that the economy has sucked for ordinary people for at least 20 years now and people are receptive to the idea that there is something—anything!—they can do to do better financially.

“a flight attendant [whom Victoria Osteen] assaulted, who is suing for “loss of faith” and hemorrhoids from the encounter.”

Wow, the flight attendant got hemorrhoids from the encounter? Sounds like the dark side of conservative Christian faith healing: “Nice ass you’ve got there. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, would you, now?”

I read a little bit of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, and what I can recall from that brief moment is that Jesus’ world was very similar in attitude to the Prosperity Gospel—if God likes you, you’re rich and healthy; if he doesn’t like you, you’re poor and sick.

Perhaps this impulse to interpret prosperity as the result of right living has been with us forever.

What Jesus did was upset the status quo by going among the poor and the sick and offering what little relief and aid he could give (discounting all the miracles he’s said to have performed), which was a real rebellion of the time. Similarly, Gandhi went among the untouchables and helped to weaken India’s caste system.

What these preachers like the Osteens do is not what Jesus did. They don’t particularly care about the poor and the sick, and in fact make their livings off fleecing the flock.

Opoponax:

What if the reason the Christianity Lite folks would rather dwell on The Power Of Positive Financial Thinking rather than sin and all that boring stuff is that it’s much closer to what people already believe?

Well, I think it’s pretty easy to establish that most — perhaps all — people use religion to post-justify what they already believe, not the other way around.

I’d bet that most Americans really do believe that simple positive thinking has a sizable effect on their personal financial status. Capitalism naturally engenders that belief, and it has the advantage of carrying at least a small grain of truth. Where Christianity Lite (and more generally, any other form of Christianity derived from Lutheranism) fails objectively is in ignoring the “you can’t get something for nothing” rule: it asserts that you don’t actually have to do anything to become rich, you just have to believe in getting rich.

So the Mouse and Disco Ball are sort of like Crom, only with better clubbin’?

Perhaps this impulse to interpret prosperity as the result of right living has been with us forever.

Yes. Defensive attribution: if I can convince myself that bad things happened to you because you did X wrong, then as long as I never do X wrong, those bad things will happen to me. The flip side is that if good things happen to me, it must be because I did X correctly.

I’m perplexed about why people go to these churches and who they are, too.

But on one other matter, the audiences I see in these people’s churches on teevee don’t appear very poor or struggling to me. They look rather well off, as well as any superficial examination through the tube can determine these things.

I suspect that has much to do with the message these preachers convey. People who are pretty well off aren’t likely to listen for very long to criticisms of their lifestyles.  Still, one would think that if they are well off, these people would be somewhat educated, too self-aware to fall for the lines of garbage they’re getting fed by these people.

Guess there are some things that will forever remain mysteries.

Amanda, I was more talking about what people already believe, not so much what people want to hear. 

Even most atheists and a lot of liberals will look at you funny if you question the axiomatic belief that underlies the American economy, that positive thinking, right action, and honest hard work will make you rich. 

Whereas the culture wars were pretty much the straw that broke the Repent Ye Sinners camel’s back.  Sin and guilt just don’t pack ‘em in like they used to, and even the churches who get by on hellfire and brimstone seem more interested in pornographic fantasies about Teh Evul Homerseckshul Librul Aytheeiss Commeez getting their due, not actually passing any judgement on the actions of the people in the pews.

Which means that if you want to run a profitable megachurch (with maybe a TV show and some book deals on the side), you have two options.  Either craft your sermons to fit what most people already believe, or play to hateful people’s inner tribalism.  And the hate and tribalism can only go so far before you start turning people off.

bleh.  i hit ‘blaspheme’, drastically changed my mind about what i wanted to say, hit “stop”, but it was too late…

Yes. Defensive attribution: if I can convince myself that bad things happened to you because you did X wrong, then as long as I never do X wrong, those bad things will happen to me. The flip side is that if good things happen to me, it must be because I did X correctly.

That’s pretty neat, mythago; prosperity gospel therefore works a whole lot like rape-victim blaming.  Ie:  as long as I don’t wear tight clothes/walk alone after dark/drink at the party, I won’t get raped, and those girls who did those things deserved raped as a punishment. 

Neither one of them makes a lick of sense when held up to rational scrutiny, but I can see how they could be comforting to folks who’d rather not waste precious brain cells reasoning these sorts of things out.

Laura Penny, in her excellent book Your Call Is Important to Us, said that most Americans see themselves as “pre-rich.”  So of course people are going to shell out more green dollars to find out how to get rich just by thinking about it. 
As for the Osteens: he has Live Your Best Life Now in hardcover, paperback, and audio; the “Live Your Best Life Now” Workbook;LYBLN journal; LYBLN candles, scented soap, and sheet sets. (OK, I made those last few up—but you wait: they’re coming.) And in the meantime, yes, he’s living his best life, thanks very much, and have you tried our new mouthwash? It makes your breath smell rich!

As for The Secret, the only secret I want to know is how do you get people to shell out $22.95 for a hardcover book that basically paraphrases Johnny Mercer: “You’ve got to/accentuate the positive/ Eliminate the negative/Latch on to the affirmative/Throw away Mr. In-Between.”

I so wish I’d got a jury summons for this trial. I’d love to be on the jury and I live in Harris County. I could have been picked too. I once wrote “Why you askin’” on a juror information form under the “religion” blank and still was foreman at a celebrity trial. Local trials are amazingly secular in spite of the fact that Repubs have taken over most of the county judge seats. Harris County TX claims to be the second largest cout jurisdiction in the US. Who is number one? NY boroughs have seperate courts: But wat about the LA or Chicago area? Does any jurisdiction there have around 4 million residents?

Local Repub judges are secular, and some impressively so. If I have been impressed by a repub judge on a jury call (Cosper, for instance) or if a Repub is is endorsed by the Gay Political Caucus, as sometimes happens (Cosper and Crowe get it), I vote Republican. I’ll click checks for Democrats I’ve never heard of, but these Rebublicans have my support.

McCain doesn’t though. I’m not gonna get off his lawn. As far as I’m concerned Obama poops rainbows even though I know he doesn’t.

I don’t know why we don’t move County elections off year and make them non-partisan just like the Houston elections. Still, I’m glad they’re not. Huge local Obama surge will reshape the County Comission.

So the Mouse and Disco Ball are sort of like Crom, only with better clubbin’?

And when I die, I will go to the great mouse in its throne made of discarded orangina bottles and broken minidisc players, and it will ask me “What is the Riddle of Indie?” And if I do not have the answer, it will laugh at me, and cast me out.

That is Mouse, irritating and snobbish in its vintage clothing shop.

Bacopa, LA county has about 10 million residents.  In fact, if Los Angeles county were coterminous with Los Angeles, rather than about 80 separately incorporated municipalities, LA would be the largest city in the US (New York only has about 8 million, in the 5 boroughs itself).  I’m not 100% that the Los Angeles court system is by county (that’s a biiiiiiig county…) rather than each of those separate cities, but if it is, that’s got to be #1.

If not for that, I’d say the largest should be Kings County, which is Brooklyn, with 2.5 million residents.  We have such a large jury pool that you only have to serve once every 7 years!

I don’t buy that this is just economics.  First off, since its founding, Protestantism has promoted the idea of poverty as punishment for sins and wealth as God’s reward for righteousness.  Second, variations of the prosperity gospel has always appealed to Americans.  It fits right in with the American Dream and old school promises of streets paved with gold in the New World.  Mormonism is a great example of this.  A religion founded 160 years ago has long preached the prosperity gospel.  And its early adherents ate it up, not because they were necessarily in dire straits, but because believing that God smiles on rich people is just too convenient a belief to pass up.

Mnemosyne;

Your second-hand Max Weber to the contrary, no Calvinist has ever believed that material wealth indicates any kind of spiritual blessing.

This conversation reminded me of an article from Free Inquiry that touches on the same subject, comparing the rates of secularization in Western Europe to the United States. Excerpt:

Despite private affluence for the well-off, many American families, even in the professional middle classes, face serious risks of loss of paid work by the main breadwinner, the dangers of sudden ill health without adequate private medical insurance, vulnerability to becoming a victim of crime, as well as the problems of paying for long-term care of the elderly. Americans face greater anxieties than citizens in other advanced industrialized countries about whether or not they will be covered by medical insurance, be fired arbitrarily, or be forced to choose between losing their jobs and devoting themselves to their newborn children. The entrepreneurial culture and the emphasis on personal responsibility has generated conditions of individual freedom and delivered considerable societal affluence, and yet one trade-off is that the United States has greater income inequality than any other advanced industrial democracy. By comparison, despite recent pressures on restructuring, the secular Scandinavian and West European states remain some of the most egalitarian societies, with relatively high levels of personal taxation but also an expansive array of welfare services in the public sector, including comprehensive healthcare, social services, and pensions.

Growing up in societies in which survival is uncertain is conducive to a strong emphasis on religion; conversely, experiencing high levels of existential security throughout one’s formative years reduces the subjective importance of religion in one’s life. As a society moves past the early stages of industrialization and life becomes less nasty, less brutish, and longer, people tend to become more secular in their orientations. The most crucial explanatory variables are those that differentiate between vulnerable societies and societies in which survival is so secure that people take it for granted during their formative years.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=norris_27_2