You completely missed the point of what Derren Brown was doing.

I watched that show. He isn't a devil in disguise. He's an illusionist, a trickster and manipulates people using NLP techniques, slight of hand and the predictability of people living in a society. He regularily admits there's no magic involved. And he does it for entertainment, not because he's trying to bring the establishments down from within or start his own cult following.

The point of his show was to illustrate how people do not question the very important things in their lives, like their faith or belief structures. They instead merrily accept them like dopey sheep.

He said at the beginning of the program that if anyone asked him if it was a trick or if he was lying to them, he would say yes it was a trick and yes, he is lying to them.

And no one did. Not when he pretended to be an alien abductee-faith healer, or the religion converter or any of the other 4 things he also did.

*That's* was the point. And it's so very, very sad. But highly amusing




[edit on 9-2-2010 by noonebutme]

There is a certain quality of honesty that I respect in brown, he doesn't obscure the fact that he is a charlatan, and the deviousness of his devices.

This can be compared with an incident when I went into a book store and a Satanist looked at the satanic bible and started talking about how awesome it was. Then I read a book called "Jesus" by Deepok Chopra from that same book store which basically had the same message as the satanic bible, but instead was presented in a more deceitful manner.

Derren Brown is a stage magician. How could anything he does be relevant to somebody's religious faith?

Every word out of his mouth serves one purpose: to create the illusion he gets paid to create. Mostly, that illusion is that he has something to do with what his subjects do, that his "knowledge of psychology" allows him to cause things to happen. Uh, huh.

No, his knowledge of psychology allows him to estimate what percentage of his subjects will do each of the various possible things in the situation. His knowledge of stagecraft, which these days includes the art of tape editing, will direct the audience's attention to some subjects, and away from those who did less interesting things.

As in all theater, the audience does at least half the work. Derren has the benefit of an audience rich with guys who think that if they tell a girl that their nickname is Rick, then the girl will fall into bed with them, because Rick rhymes with another nickname for Richard. Hey, that's not woo, that's science!

Wow. If you believe that, then what won't you believe? How are Indians so far behind because some of them believe in "pictures that drip honey" gurus?

(Obviously, generations of exploitation by an Imperial power is irrelevant to the material situation of India. Clearly, the main problem is home-grown bogus gurus. Right... and then the girl tells "Rick" that her name is Regina, pronounced in the Canadian style, and ...)

I like Derren Brown, because he is a good entertainer. What can be learned from him is theater. No small thing, theater. Not really psychology, though, and not spirituality, either. Especially not anything about Indian spirituality.

Nice thread, though. Foe flagged.

What is "real"? How do you define "real"? If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain

Originally posted by eight bits
Derren Brown is a stage magician. How could anything he does be relevant to somebody's religious faith?

I'm just going to quote this part. Why? because you answered this question with the rest of your post.

Priests and stage magicians are the same thing, with one crucial difference. people don't go home believing that David Copperfield should dictate how they live their life, under the authority of the invisible statue of liberty.

When you open a package of cheese or a can of soup you are
going by faith that the manufacturer won't poison you.

When you eat at a restauramt or stay at a hotel you are going by
faith that the people will not poison you-even though several people
have died from food poisoning from restaurants.

The people in Minneapolis who drove over the bridge that collapsed
had faith the bridge was going to deliver them to the other side.

So much of our lives relies on faith not just religion.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox

Originally posted by eight bits
Derren Brown is a stage magician. How could anything he does be relevant to somebody's religious faith?

I'm just going to quote this part. Why? because you answered this question with the rest of your post.

Priests and stage magicians are the same thing, with one crucial difference. people don't go home believing that David Copperfield should dictate how they live their life, under the authority of the invisible statue of liberty.

Yes this is what Jesus warns us against, people need to extracate the simple and true Gospel from charlatans and "lying signs and wonders". In Browns case everyone knows he is a trickster, if anyones faith is based on such trickery they are decieved.

Let me be clear, I believe Gods word, I believe in Jesus 100% But you have to test the spirits to see whether they are of God and judge all things.