1. ANDY THOMPSON: PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

2. WHEN PROPHECY FAILS (1956)  A Chicago woman claimed that she received a message from aliens: The world will end on 12/21/1954 and the aliens will rescue just a few chosen people.  Followers gave away their properties, quitted their jobs…etc. to wait for the doomsday, but nothing happened.  They didn’t want to admit that they made a mistake. To make themselves feel better, they were passionate of “evangelizing” people

3. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE  Jews expected the Messiah returned with glory but Jesus died on the cross in a humiliating way  Jesus’s disciplines expected Jesus’s second coming is imminent. But nothing happened!  They didn’t want to admit the mistake, and so they declared that Jesus won’t come back until they spread the gospel to every corner of the world.  The psychological theory sounds convincing, but there is a problem.

4. PAUL  Paul does not fit the psychological profile.  He was not one of the 12 Jesus’s disciplines.  He was happy to see the failure of the movement.  He persecuted Christian Church.  He had NO cognitive dissonance!

5. ANDY THOMPSON’S EXPLANATION OF PAUL

6. WHY WE BELIEVE IN GOD: A CONCISE GUIDE TO THE SCIENCE OF FAITH  Humans have many psychological weaknesses.  Religious leaders use human psychological tendency to brainwash our mind.  Dr. Thompson is a forensic psychiatrist. He wrote about both Christianity and Islam  One of his jobs is to interview psycho-killers to study their innermost thought: Psychological manipulation and religious doctrine play major roles