Does anyone feel used when religion pulls your heartstrings?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

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…the creative professionals at Bonneville Communications…unique strength is the ability to touch the hearts and minds of audiences, evoking first feeling, then thought and, finally, action. They call this uniquely powerful brand of creative HeartSell® — strategic emotional advertising that stimulates response.

HeartSell.

[_zeezrom]

I felt the Spirit when I watched this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PGVH_mSDNE

Oh! and this one always did it for me. It hit me right here [thump the chest]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d5ymkcxWEU (note: it helped that the actress was pretty and her man had perfect teeth)

[_stemelbow]

Stemelbow, my wife and daughter visited a local Christian kilochurch (not quite big enough to be mega yet, but certainly larger than a dekachurch) not that long ago with a sister-in-law of ours. They really got all worked up by the music, the words, and so forth, and my daughter told me how they ended up bursting into tears and crying with very powerful emotion.

First question: was this the Spirit, telling my then-wavering-LDS wife that this local born-again Christian church was in fact the true church?

Several weeks later, they went again, and I went with them. It was a pretty good time. Other than the insipid message of the music, I enjoyed it (it rocked out reasonably well). I definitely felt the heartstrings being pulled, though my overly-analytical mind probably nipped it somewhat in the bud as, rather than just giving myself up to the emotional manipulation, I recognized it and analyzed it in realtime, instead.

In a subsequent conversation with this sister-in-law, she was trying to convince me that this church has the Spirit, and she needs that, and appreciates that. When I didn't look convinced, she reminded me of the time I went and asked me "didn't you feel that? I know you did!"

I simply asked her if she's ever watched a Hollywood chick flick, feel-good-hit-of-the-summer, or whatever. She said of course. And didn't she ever cry, or feel all verklemmt, get all emotional at some point during the movie? Of course.

Well that's because human beings know how to create situations in which emotional responses will be evoked in others. Hollywood chick flicks are absolute proof of this, and they do it all the time. People have got this "set up a situation where we can pull the heartstrings" thing down, probably literally, to a science.

So I asked my sister-in-law, and I ask you now, if Hollywood proves that human beings are very good at setting people up to feel touched, emotional, inspired, heartstrings pulled, etc., how is it unreasonable to assume that churches, such as the local Christian kilochurch, and the LDS one during its various conferences, etc., do the same thing?

In fact, I continued to my sister-in-law, I absolutely know, 100%, that this was human-created emotion rather than some "Spirit" testifying to me, because part of the message they taught the day I went to the Christian kilochurch included references to Creationism, Biblical inerrancy, and the literal Adam and Eve story, which I know to be false.

Boyd K. Packer himself said that emotion and "the Spirit" are so closely linked that we often mistake one for the other. I can't agree with him, because I am convinced that it's all emotion and other psychological phenomena (eg: euphoric states), and there's no "Spirit" at all! But even within the Mormon paradigm, Packer admits people often confuse the two. So how, other than what I read recently on MDD "when you feel the spirit, you just know", can one reliably differentiate between the two?

I see what you're saying, I simply can't see it as attempting to use you. They are attempting to teach that feelings are important to the human experience, in all the cases you allude to. But again, I don't think every good feeling is the Holy Ghost sending a message of truth.

[_EAllusion]

I don't know. Most LDS material I'm familiar with meant to pull heart strings are so childishly sentimental that I feel like I'm watching a Hallmark movie. I'm not an emotional person by nature and that does absolutely nothing for me. Maybe it would be different if I had grown up in that religious culture. I don't feel used, but I suppose I roll my metaphorical eyes on occasion. More sophisticated religious expressions that do have the ability to move me don't make me feel manipulated. But, again, I'm not part of a religious culture that taught me to feel as though my emotional reaction was validation of the religion.

[_Tator]

As a kid I cried when Old Yeller died. If I watched it again today I would probably cry. The older I get the less control I have over my emotions. In the Morg it seems that a lot of old people return to it. I guess they have trouble facing mortality and the church uses that. In my younger days I lost two kids and each time and for a long time we got visits and letters that were filled with emotional stuff about raising those girls in the hereafter. It got absurd. My wife bought into it all no matter what. Even almost 20 years later when I was divorced and was leaving the church I got visits and letters reminding me that I would not be able to raise my girls if I left. Plus a slew of other emotional dribble.

The amount of guilt (emotion) and etc. that the Morg tries to put on you is endless. It really doesn't matter the circumstances.

[_Buffalo]

If the Holy Ghost will tell you the truth of all things, why don't Mormons cure cancer? Science cured smallpox. How did religion do with that one?

We have a cure for spiritual cancer. Since you seem ravaged by that desease, perhaps you should consider treatment.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

What does the spirit look like? What's it made of? Where is it located?

[_Themis]

I see what you're saying, I simply can't see it as attempting to use you. They are attempting to teach that feelings are important to the human experience, in all the cases you allude to. But again, I don't think every good feeling is the Holy Ghost sending a message of truth.

It's an attempt to manipulate. Most don't do it with evil intentions, since they are only doing what they have been taught to do. Most here can relate becuase we were part of it. I think most people understand that emotions are important to the human expereince, but the church and it's members do generally tell people that your good feelings, emotions, thoughts, impressions, etc that one is experiencing, say in a religious setting, is the spirit testifying to them the church is true. Now this is fairly generalized here. Each experience is unique but the church and many of it's members will generally try to get one to interpret these expereinces in favor of the church.

[_Buffalo]

God, why am I just hearing about this? Mentioned earlier in the thread:

http://www.bonneville.com/?sid=582&nid=32

At Bonneville Communications, our ability to touch the hearts and minds of audiences makes us an essential resource for organizations with vital messages.

For more than 30 years, our creative professionals have designed public service and direct response messages for national nonprofit organizations such as the Huntsman Cancer Institute, Boy Scouts of America, National Hospice Foundation, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and The Salvation Army.

Our unique strength is the ability to touch the hearts and minds of our audiences, evoking first feeling, then thought and, finally, action. We call this uniquely powerful brand of creative "HeartSell"® - strategic emotional advertising that stimulates response.

Our people not only create effective messages; we get them out effectively. We maintain an ongoing public service relationship with more than 11,000 radio and TV stations and networks, and cable networks and systems in North America alone. We distribute public service and paid media campaigns directly from our offices in Salt Lake City.

We provide all pre-production, production, and post-production services, as well as state-of-the-art special effects and post-production facilities, closed captioning, electronic tagging, and video and audio duplication.

We are an advertising agency engaged in communications for quality life. Our people are driven by the belief that advertising can - and should - be a powerful, positive influence on the values and lives of people.

Visit us at Bonneville.com

God, that's so manipulative. Now the church is selling their manipulation techniques to the gentiles.

Wasn't it Eyring who told people at the Christmas devotional that the emotion they felt after watching the emotions-tugging video was the Holy Ghost.

They're actually packing it up and selling it now.

Holy crap! This is possibly the most cynical thing I've ever heard of.

http://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/commen ... irit_in_a/

[_zeezrom]

Oh my goodness. They actually put that little R with a circle around it. HeartSell is a registered trademark? They actually hired some attorneys to get that settled? Wow.