Thanks to Flibbert, I ran across two bizarrely interesting videos of religious worship.
In the first, a toddler walks around the stage spouting impassioned nonsense in the style of an old-time country sermon.
In the second, Marjoe Gortner continues to pretend to be a faith healer for a time even after he has become convinced that it’s all nonsense.
One message to take from this is that some people are just goofy. They do things that make no sense. This is true whether they package their nonsense in religion or something else.
However, there is an especial tendency with religion, grounded as it is in faith, to promote emotionalist, cathartic practices quite separated from any understanding of reality. While religion at its best is quite sophisticated and intellectual, religion’s popular manifestations seem to lean toward the other variety.
[September 14, 2014 Update: The videos in question are no longer available.]