The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (22 page)

Music is among the most useful of all viral tools. Independent of religion, music is capable of creating a wide range of biochemical responses. How
many times have you listened to a familiar song on the radio and had a feeling of joy, sadness, love or sexual arousal? Does a particular song bring back strong memories of a past romantic love? How does a patriotic song affect your heart rate or stomach?

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Journal of the National Cancer Institute Advance Access,
The Mind Prepared: Hypnosis in Surgery
[article on-line] (28 August 2007, accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/99/17/1280
; Internet.

Listening or singing Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus evokes strong emotion in almost anyone. Here is an interesting experiment I once tried on a friend. I played a rousing hymn sung in a foreign language and I asked him what feelings he experienced when listening. He used words like pride, aggression, solidarity and bravery. The song was a Stalinist-era military hymn performed by the Red Army Chorus! It was used to inspire soldiers going off to fight against the Nazis in WWII. While the words may add to the feeling, the music itself is exquisitely designed by the composer to evoke specific universal emotions.

Watch any number of religious videos, on-line sermons or televangelists, and you will realize that every one of them uses music to magnify and enhance the emotion of the verbal message. Subtle, quiet music at key moments in the delivery of the sermon opens up the participants to subliminal and hypnotic messages. At other times, loud, commanding music is used to create a feeling of action and purpose. The manipulation is obvious when observed from a viral viewpoint.

The American evangelicalism has fine-tuned the music of today to open the mind and prepare it to receive the virus or to support and reinforce viral responses. It is the same tool used by Stalin to prepare and inspire his armies for battle. The design of music programs gives people a strong emotional and biochemical boost each week. Sitting in the pew, the church goers feel the rush of endorphins and easily mistake the feelings and emotions for some spiritual experience or communication from a god. They would not interpret a love song on the radio that evokes similar responses as a communication from a god, but the same response in a church is easily interpreted in this way and that is the intention of the vectors.

Once the biochemical response has been created with the music, the audience experiences it in some vaguely spiritual way. Now they are ready for the message the vector wants to pour in. To a great degree, logic and critical thinking are not involved as the infected are placed in a state of receptivity that precludes critical thought. Those who go through this have no awareness of the manipulation involved, nor do they care. They come to the church to get their fix and leave feeling good about themselves and their virus.

When I was in high school, I belonged to a group called Future Physicians of America. Each month we had a different program. One month a psychiatrist came to demonstrate hypnosis. Alvin, our club president, was adamant that he could not be hypnotized. The psychiatrist asked for five volunteers, including Alvin. In the course of five minutes, all five were hypnotized at the same time. To prove they were hypnotized, the psychiatrist asked them to hold their arms out full from their body during his complete lecture. In addition, he had Alvin hold his arms AND legs out while sitting down. After another 20 minutes, he slowly released each volunteer and gave him or her a post-hypnotic command. He saved Alvin for last.

I challenge you to hold your arms out straight for 20 minutes. Two or three minutes feels impossible to most of us, but Alvin sat patiently with arms and legs outstretched until he was released and given the post-hypnotic command to scratch his nose whenever he answered a direct question from the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist asked, “Do you believe you were hypnotized?” Alvin scratched his nose and said, “Absolutely not!” A big laugh came from the group. The psychiatrist then asked, “Do you think you could hold your arms out straight from your body for 20 minutes?” Alvin scratched his nose and said, “I don’t think so.” The group laughed again. Alvin left that meeting convinced that he had not been, and could not be, hypnotized, but everyone else in the room knew otherwise.

It does not take a psychiatrist to hypnotize a group. Many good preachers do a credible job every Sunday. Go on line and watch any televangelist or visit a local evangelical church service. Take a pen and paper and, count the number of times he repeats himself – says the same thing twice or more in the same cadence. Repetition in cadence is a very effective hypnotic technique. Even if you are a non-believer, notice the physical effect this technique has on you when you simply listen without thinking too much. You might notice yourself going into a relaxed, altered state. Once put into an altered state of consciousness, people can receive all kinds of messages about giving money to the church, feeling guilty about sex, hating those who oppose the president of the United States or voting for anti-abortion candidates.

While our discussion has focused on American evangelical religions, all religions use hypnotic methods to facilitate infection. The Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox churches have perfected the use of ritual as well as music and the aroma of incense to create receptive states in its parishioners. Islamic preachers use techniques that incorporate Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and evangelical hypnotic approaches.

Catholic monastic orders have used hypnotic techniques for 1,400 years. Buddhists, Hindus, Native Americans and members of most other religions have discovered and used the power of altered states of consciousness to infect and maintain the god virus.

Read each of these:

Jesus loves me this I know …

Hail Mary, mother of god …

Onward Christian Soldiers …

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth …

For god so loved the world …

Reading these statements, you may have found yourself compelled to recite the entire saying in your head. It may have brought back memories or emotions. You may have learned these when you were young. You had no idea what they meant; they were just something you learned like brushing your teeth. Religious routines are an important part of religious infection, so let’s learn how they work.

When your alarm clock goes off in the morning, you probably go into a thoughtless routine of brushing your teeth, showering, shampooing your hair, etc. Such routines consist of a series of activities that are generally carried out in exactly the same order each time. The same is true for other activities like balancing your checkbook or driving to work. They can be complicated tasks, but the routine is so ingrained that you think little of it and complete it with relative ease.

Other routines take place throughout your day. You may have a lawn mowing routine or a laundry routine. You may have an anger routine that goes off when triggered by something your spouse says. You may have a sadness routine that runs whenever you hear a certain song on the radio. We have hundreds of these routines. We generally have enough control to decide whether to use them or not. For example, you may choose not to use your morning routine on Saturday. Other routines seem to run outside of our consciousness. Do you think about your teeth brushing technique? How much do you think about driving while on the way to the supermarket?

Your parents taught you how to wake up and get your morning routine accomplished. You don’t think about these lessons every time you brush your teeth. You just do it without thinking. Once a subroutine is learned, it becomes independent of the initiating event.

Some routines are triggered by outside events. The alarm goes off, you start your morning routine. The dog whines, you start the dog walking routine. If you smoke or have smoked, you have a smoking routine that is evoked by certain triggers – after dinner, after a beer, or before an important meeting. How you learned this is long forgotten. The environment triggers the routine now.

Now let’s look at how the god virus uses routines to its advantage. Routines are designed to get an emotional response. The emotion may be a feeling of love or joy; guilt or unworthiness; power or pride. No matter what the emotion, after years of repetition it is deeply tied to an environmental trigger, often outside of our awareness. The very act of walking into a church may evoke a routine. Just as you don’t think about brushing your teeth, a Catholic doesn’t think when making the sign of the cross after a blessing.

If you want to know some of the routines that are deeply programmed, watch a person who is unfamiliar with your religion’s rituals. He will be like a fish out of water while you swim blissfully through the service. He will struggle to know what to do next. You may not look at the words in the hymnal as you sing whereas the new person struggles to find the right page and follow the music. You will know when to sit, stand and kneel, the guest will try to follow awkwardly along.

These routines appear benign and often feel good. That is exactly their purpose. God viruses long ago learned how to build and trigger simple routines that create specific emotional responses. The best vectors are masters at creating or following rituals. Rituals are key routines for a particular god virus. Catholic routines are different from Lutheran routines. And both are quite different from Muslim routines. Routines build upon one another to create a full religious experience for a particular religion.

If you were to attend a church that is very different from your own, you may find that it does not evoke your emotions or evokes negative ones. The routines are unfamiliar to you. If you are Protestant, for example, reciting the rosary probably does little for you. If you are Muslim, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” may evoke a strong negative emotion. If you are a Christian, saying “there is but one god and Mohammed is his Prophet” may evoke an equally negative response. Religious routines are designed to evoke friendly and positive emotions within those infected with the particular religion. The religion also creates routines for strong negative emotions from other virus’ routines.

Many routines were imbedded in childhood and do not change easily or often. Since these powerful programs were learned when you were largely unaware, they have emotional power that goes beyond reason and critical analysis. Just as the song on the radio or the poem from childhood can trigger a certain response, the god virus triggers a series of routines that are designed to evoke very specific responses from the infected. If you are not infected, however, you probably won’t respond to the routines in the way they were designed and intended.

In your daily life, chaining one routine to another helps you accomplish many tasks without much thought. By chaining, you can get all your morning routines done while planning the day in your head. Chaining allows you to drive home from work and plan supper at the same time. Sometimes the sequence of links is important in a chain. For driving a car, there is a sequence of activities that needs to be followed. Unlock the door, adjust the seat, put key in ignition, turn key, look around, put car in gear, etc. Doing one or more of these steps out of order may make the task difficult or impossible; it can even be dangerous.

Religions also chain routines together to achieve a result. The chaining begins when you are young. You may have learned the Apostles’ Creed in catechism. At the same time, you learned an emotional response. It goes like this. Say creed; feel humble; then feel secure in the church. As you grow up, you develop chains of routines that create a full religious experience. Here is a simplified example:

1. Listen to sermon

– Feel guilt

2. Sing song

– Feel pride

3. Listen to prayer – think of sins

– Feel guilt

4. Sing song before offering

– See offering plate

5. Put money in the plate. Feel satisfied.

The chain is the same each week or only slightly modified. If the chain is effective, it evokes the response that deepens the viral bond and makes you feel like you got something out of attending the service.
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One measure of a given chain is how much money it brings in to the church. Another is how many new people answer the altar call.
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Skillful vectors are always looking for chain sequences that get better results. Sometimes people get satiated with parts of a chain and stop responding. For example, asking for money too often may alert some people to the manipulation of the virus. Too many song verses on the altar call may feel emotionally manipulative.

While parts of the chain may need to be adjusted on a regular basis, there are only so many ways to build a successful chain. That is why few churches start the service by asking for an offering. Altar calls don’t come in the middle of services. Sequence is everything. The sequence is designed to achieve a series of emotional responses that lead to greater or renewed commitment to the virus, more resources for the virus and new members infected.

A religious service can be analyzed by looking at what emotion each of its parts is designed to evoke. Each component gets a response that leads to the next component. They build on each other to create an entire religious experience that bonds the person closer to the virus and makes him happy to give time and money to infect other people.

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In applied behavioral psychology, chaining has been used with great success to teach children and adults with disabilities everything from toilet training to hand washing to homework completion. For a child, a chain is designed to achieve a certain end, such as successful toilet behavior or homework completion. For a religious vector, a chain is designed to achieve a material and emotional response – give money or time and feel good about it.