I received this email about Dr. Ray's current activities and thought I'd pass it along:
TO: Recovering from Religion facilitators
Facilitators and potential facilitators:
This is just a note to all who have expressed an interest in facilitating a Recovering from Religion meeting in your area and to some people I want to keep in the loop. We had our first meeting this week expecting 4-5 and 11 people showed up. Nice surprise. From that meeting four people agreed to start two meetings in the KC area. We now have confirmed facilitators in Atlanta, Conroe, Tx, Kansas City, and potential facilitators in Joplin, MO, St. Louis, New Orleans, Lubbock, Tx. and Manhatten, KS. Kay and I drove two hours to see Dan Barker speak at KSU last night and talk with the secular students there. They were very receptive to the idea and are looking for ways to "combat" the religious stuff going on at that university. The president of the FreeThinkers, Jessica, told us about a book someone gave her about "How to stay a Catholic while in College." She said it mostly said, "Just don't think too much and you will be alright."
We are working to make the webpage as useful as possible for facilitators. Please keep an eye on it for new resources and send ideas. I am speaking to the NY City Atheists on Thursday and a CFI/philosophy club event on Saturday in NYC where I will not only talk about The God Virus but also Recovering from Religion. I hope to get some interest from people there. I was interviewed by the NY Atheist PR woman and when I talked about RR she got very excited. She put it in the press release, even though I didn't ask her to. See below. We hope to get some good publicity for RR from these events.
If you know of people who may be interested in facilitating, please let them know to get in touch with me. This is a way to make a real and tangible contribution to people trying to escape their religious indoctrination. I would encourage you to talk to Cole Morgan or Kay Huddleston if you want to know more about how the meetings are conducted or what people are looking for in the discussions.
Darrel
What Is the Deep Dark Secret Behind the Lure of Religion?
Psychologist Analyzes How Religion Entraps You
New York, April 25, 2009—Dr. Darrel W. Ray grew up in the belly of the beast—Wichita, Kansas, heart of the Bible Belt. His grandfather was a preacher in a country church; his parents became Christian missionaries. He thought he would go into the Christian ministry himself so he studied for a Master’s degree in religion. But something strange happened on the way to his becoming a minister: He lost his belief in religion.
Dr. Ray holds that losing one’s belief is not uncommon among clergy; but once they become preachers, they can’t easily get out of the profession. Luckily, he was in his 20s when it happened to him. He changed his field and, instead, got a doctorate in clinical psychology from Vanderbilt University. He is now a successful practicing psychologist whose team of five employees specializes in organizational psychology—coaching and counseling executives.
But what Dr. Ray learned in his year of studying religion—not to mention a lifetime of listening to fundamentalist preaching—stuck with him throughout his doctorate studies in psychology. Somewhere along the line, he saw the connection: that the church uses subliminal psychological techniques to ensnare and capture its victims. The result was his ground-breaking book, The god Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture, in which he analyzes how the church uses psychological techniques to lure and entrap the vulnerable.
Church Manipulates Emotions
“In my view, we atheists have missed the boat,” he says. ”Most of us think that logic is the way to combat religion. My thesis is, logic is NOT the way to combat religion.
“We have to learn to understand how religion manipulates people emotionally,” says Dr. Ray. “If we just argue logically with it, it’s not going to go away. The more you argue with it, the stronger it gets. We need to look at the emotional exploitation that the church engages in and understand it.”
Dr. Ray holds that religion uses guilt, fear, rhythmic sing-song cadences, music and hypnosis-like techniques to inculcate religion. At the Thursday, April 30th NYC Atheists meeting, he will demonstrate how the guilt cycle works—“You weren’t born guilty,” he contends. “You have to learn to feel guilty.”
He will start his presentation by doing a demonstration of typical fundamentalist preaching. “I’ll do about 60 seconds of hellfire and brimstone,” he says, “because I want to show how the verbal cadences and the music give a subliminal message about guilt.”
New Group for Ex-Believers
Dr. Ray has recently started a new initiative called “Recovering From Religion” or RR, in which he hopes to create face-to-face meetings in every city in the nation of people who are trying to get out of their religion. “I’m trying to do the same thing as Alcoholics Anonymous but for people who are trying to get out of religion,” he notes.
Come, hear this fascinating, pioneering psychologist and author who has taken time from his busy schedule to advance his belief that science tops religion and to show to the world how insidiously religion uses old and new psychological techniques to bait the unwary.
EVENT SUMMARY
WHAT: “How Religion Uses Psychology to Entrap Its Victims,”
a talk by Dr. Darrel W. Ray of Kansas City, KS,
psychologist and author of The God Virus.
WHEN: Thursday, April 30th at 6:30 P.M.
WHERE: SLC Conference Center
352 Seventh Ave. (bet. 29th & 30th Streets)
16th Floor
COST: FREE. But we would appreciate a donation of $5 toward the cost
of the conference room if possible.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Jane Everhart
Director of Communications
New York City Atheists
212...
or
Kenneth Bronstein
President
New York City Atheists
212...
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New York City Atheists Inc. is a 501C not-for-profit educational association dedicated to the separation of church and state and to promoting the atheist lifestyle and values. All are welcome, including agnostics, humanists, skeptics, freethinkers and those just questioning and seeking.
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