Pentecostalism & Pavlov's Dogs
Recall Pavlov’s dog experiment where he would ring a bell when he fed his dogs. He would bring food to his dogs and they would salivate, and he would ring a bell at the same time. Eventually, the dogs would salivate upon the ringing of the bell without the food. Thus, one manipulated the dogs into salivating with the ring of a bell by connecting it with food.
The word “reprobate” in extremist religions evokes extreme fear. Why? Several preachers over the years have linked the word “reprobate” with burning forever in the fires of hell and screaming and yelling over the microphone this message to the point where extreme anxiety and fear accompanied the word “reprobate.” Thus, when a preacher says the word “Reprobate” after a few years, the audience knows that this is a fearful thing to become and they are in terror at the thought of becoming a reprobate. Thus, as Pavlov did to his dogs, extremists do with the word “reprobate.” They have designed a system by which the mere utterance of a word will evoke extreme fear within their audiences. This is called Loaded Language in Mind Control circles. One can read about the phenomenon in Steve Hassan’s book “Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to think for themselves” here:
There are many other words within extremist religion used as Loaded Language or Code Words: reprobate, backslider, rebellion, the Truth, bitter, etc.
In a responsible system of religion, people are free to come and go without endangering their reputations. Debate is healthy, and leaders are not threatened when people leave or disagree. But, if a leader is insecure and cannot answer questions or tolerate debate, he may use methods of Mind Control and manipulation to evoke extreme fear at the thought of debate or honest questions. Thus, the Loaded Language and the Code Words. Again, this idea is not new, and you can read about the phenomenon in several scholarly books from extremist religion to the Korean and
To top it all off, if a person has sufficiently performed Pavlov’s experiment on his congregation, he may use the term as a quote from the Bible to an even more extreme effect! Thus, all the yelling and screaming to condition the fearful response of the Loaded Language (Reprobate, backslider, etc) is multiplied when one thinks that God himself even uses these terms!
The problem is that when one is conditioned under such a system, it is hard to see these things for what they are. Once you get out of the trap, you can see clearly. That is the most difficult thing to understand.
derkrash-at-earthlink-dot-net
JP Istre
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