from the youtube page:
The late Kenneth Hagin and not-late Kenneth Copeland are seen here during a pastor's conference in which the crowd was worked up into quite a state. "Holy Laughter", "Spiritual Drinkenness", dancing, thrashing about, falling out, speaking in tongues, mooing (yes, you read that right) and various and sundry other so-called pentecostal manifestions.
It becomes evident that in a room full of preachers and their wives, especially of the crazy holy-roller persuasion, no one wants to be seen as being left out or not being spiritual. So.... these kinds of mass-mind outbursts tend to snowball.

The pastor did not realize they placed the conference next to a cooking plant for Heroine.

The only think missing is the wailing psychedelic rock guitars and randomly zooming camera effects.

Weird stuff, but no weirder than many religious doings.

how can I upvote and downvote at the same time?

I've never seen anything like this before in my life, and I've grown up around tons of religious fundementalism.(unfortunately) It's like someone piped in nitrous oxide in the room.

This is church for some people...unbelievable!

I can't get over this. What the hell are these people doing?

They're being absurd and irrational.

Or to put it another way, they're practicing religion.

no, I equate that with plain irrational emotionalism indulging themselves in something that looks obscene to me.

You can't equate this with people that search for knowledge of a greater being in which they have faith exists....and lump it all in together to call it "religion"

It's just not the same.

These people are practicing religion. There's no way around that.

And "faith" involves arriving at - and sticking to - a conclusion despite a lack of evidence. Intellectual redundancy, in my opinion.

Having said that, I respect everyone's human right to believe whatever they want to, and I respect you for being swampgirl.

you're absolutely right, Snake. It just burns me up to see these clowns give people of faith that live normal lives a bad name.

You're right about faith though, Snake. So many people live their lives from their "indoctrination" and call it faith. They believe in God because they've been taught to since birth. I want to see examples of real faith.

It's hard to attempt to strip away years of indoctrination to try and see if there was any real faith there to begin with. If you've never been raised to be religious, it's hard to understand.

It would be really interesting to compare this to anthropological films of folk rituals and healing cermonies. The phenomenon of "religious intoxication" crosses cultures, and is an important part of many rituals.

This, though, seems more like mass hysteria or mass conformity, or some of both. Scary. They lose their minds, and preacherman gives the orders.

If these were young adults at night somewhere in a field they would have been arrested.

Oh, I was raised to be religious but my parents were just adhering to the same unquestionable dogma many generations of Plisskens had fearfully clung to before them. I developed an immunity to fear early in life so the whole religion thing kind of fell apart for me thereafter.

For the sake of discussion, what is "real faith"? How is it different from the kind you were indoctrinated into? Can you come to any conclusion about the existence of a god without resorting solely to guesswork?

I sometimes wonder what would happen to religion if organized religion was illegal for those under 18.

You see my problem then, lol

Despite all logic and reason with the evidence (or lack of evidence), many people cannot accept that there is no God.

We all have the need to understand our world and our place in it. Faith in something being in control somewhere is what invented religion.

So in our search to learn about the "God" we've had faith in existing...we've disciplined ourselves in science...to acquire truth and knowledge. So faith could be argued as the base for knowledge.

Now one saying they have faith that a creator just "made" everything sounds ridiculous...scientifically. We've thought ourselves into a corner.

Call it intuition, instincts or just plain hope...I just can't help but wonder at what point will science fail those of us that want to believe and yet need to understand (more proof). Science isn't giving the answers yet to the questions man keeps asking. Maybe it never will. Maybe knowledge eventually lead back to faith.

"guesswork" huh?

James, did you see the "Jesus Camp" video? That would do it in my book!


Maybe this video here James is proof there is no God: http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=9634


Because I'd like to imagine God would have smitten the shit out of these camp leaders.

Why not start with what you actually know to be fact and work from there? Isn't the actual universe you live in amazing, breathtaking, and beguiling enough for you?

I just don't see the need to resort to obvious myth and fantasy when at a loss for answers. The bible purports to teach humility, but you can't get much more humble than admitting you don't know the answer to something and getting on with your day despite the fact.

you know Snake, I think that's what I'm doing.

Let me add more. I'm not resorting to fantasy and myth to explain my exisitence. I grew up from that long ago. That doesn't mean there isn't basic questions that should be asked. And asking those questions doesn't make me a religious fanatic like these freaks...

I didn't say it made you a fanatic, but these people are experiencing an extreme version of what people willingly experience whenever they enter a church: Mass delusion.

Asking questions doesn't make you religious. Arriving at conclusions without a shred of evidence does.

I'm clumsy w/ words here... I didn't think you were calling me fanatical, lol.

I don't think God exists, because God is a concept arrived to by man. Religion is simply man's interpretation of the most important question in our lives, "Why are we here?" What is there is something that I believe is beyond the realm of our understanding currently.

Life is a journey, and a life lived is life understood. The Bible like the Quran and like any other Holy text is a guide of allegorical stories that in essence teach you the fundementals of being a good person, being a positive contributor to society. This evolved simply because it had to, there needed to be a guideline of behaviour that man would create, before the current religions evolved we had paganism which was basically worship of the land, before that we had conceptual worship of various Gods.

Each of these foregone religions were Man's attempt to understand life and existence. Now am not belittling religion, not at all, am saying Religion is simply our understanding of forces beyond our understanding. I believe in the future we will see the rise of existentialism, spiritualism and individualism.

well, I had "faith" this one would escape the queue....so I can vote now.

This video affected me almost as much as the "Jesus Camp" video:http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=9634

I've edited the tags on the Jesus Camp posting so it now shows up in the "Related Videos" below the comments. Oh, are the rest of you still working in Videosift 1.0? I like it here in new, improved 2.0 land.

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