Decon: 9 - Jesus was a poor magician

This deconversion routine, as always is not designed to be a scholarly work, but instead to be a way to bring questions. With questions comes research and that is what brings about deconversion.

Deconversion routines are not about presenting exact and expert facts, but offering some facts, and hopefully offering them in a sloppy way that causes the other person to have to look up your comments or citations. AND if you really did it well, they will want to get with you again to set you right.

If you are trying to approach deconversion from the point of argument and debate, I think you will find it pretty useless. People have been doing debates on religious topics dating back before Plato and Socrates. Deconversion is not about debate, it is about helping people recover from their religion. We can leave intellectual discussions to the professors at the universities, lets just go for results.

This is a topic that comes at people kind of sideways. Most people are used to looking at Jesus from the point of is he "of god", "of man" or even just a "fictional/mythical figure". We are going to answer "yes" to this. What I mean is it really does not matter. Before we get started lets review the basics of deconversion.

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Let me restate the concepts of deconversion again for new readers.

1. People did not get their religion by argument, you are not going to deconvert them by arguing with them either.
2. One of the most powerful words in the English language is the word AND.
3. You listen to what they have to say
4. You agree with them by saying "AND"
5. Then you mess with their mind. (see my other posts for more ideas)

KEY PHRASE
*Also, one critical part to this process is to understand an old saying
"If I say it, it might be true, BUT if they say it, it MUST be true"
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So lets get started and have some fun. Deconversion works because we consider works such as the bible being true. We do not want to dispute them but embrace them. We want the other person to have to dispute, we take the material as is, but look at it in interesting ways.

Now I will have bet you have heard debates about was Jesus a magician, the magicians who visited him as an an infant. There is much debate on that, and we want people do dig into that. We are not going to play that game. Remember, agree and then mess with their minds.

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We start this deconversion from an everyday conversation. NOT FROM A RELIGIOUS START.
We let religion stuff sneak into the conversation slowly.

Here we go...

* Do you like magic?
* Yeah me too?
* what is your favorite trick?
* Do you like tricks where the magician can make a person float or levitate?
* Have you ever seen a magician in a restaurant or bar? they do table or closeup magic?
* Do you know what a "load" is?
* You know, it is that secret stash that a magician hides his supplies?
* You have seen the magician who can keep producing cards, and more cards, and more cards out of thin air.
* He is secretly getting his loads so that he can make more cards appear but you are not seeing him pick up his loads.
* I mean at a bar or a restaurant, a magician might make some wine appear.
* Or maybe they will do one of these never ending roll tricks, where loaf after loaf after loaf appears.
* Making stuff appear and then more and more, do you know what that is called?
* That is called a "production" trick.
* You can produce gallons of beer from an ordinary newspaper.
* You could be at a company picnic and produce 100's of tuna sandwiches from nowhere.
* Tuna sandwiches are not that fancy but I bet you could make a lot of jokes around them.

---Tuna sandwiches. I bet you are thinking what is this guy talking about
---this sounds like the lamest deconversion routine
---But wait their is some madness to this insanity -he he he
---Some of you might have caught the subtlety I am letting slip, just a little
---What is a tuna sandwich made of (loaves and fishes) and production is occurring outdoors
---We are not saying sandwiches were given out in the bible,
---We are building a weak foundation for them to fall off.

* I don't know, food magic is just kind of lame to me.
* What about you?
* Would you be impressed the sandwich magician? really?
* I think best magicians can do some amazing stuff with fire, water, levitation. You know the big stuff.

* Production magic is one of the oldest forms.
* It was done in ancient China, Egypt and some of the earliest civilizations
* Wine and beer were favorites.
* Production is production, what it comes from is only part of the show.
* A magician might have a trick to produce 100's of gallons of wine.
* For one show he might set his loads so it looks like it is coming from a newspaper.
* For another show, might look like it is coming from one small pitcher of water.
* It is all in the setup.

---Are you seeing the setup here.
---Water into wine at the wedding. This is fun. But don't say anything yet.
---We have not gotten into the reveal yet.

* I personally like Criss Angel.
* When he does that trick of walking across the swimming pool and that girl swims under him
* There are even magicians who go around using magic from thousands of years ago
* Stuff like Chinese linking rings, or whatever.
* So much magic has been around as long as people have been recording history.
* Don't you think that magic is truly timeless?
* I thought so.

* I mean there is so much magic tricks written about in ancient literature
* Whether it was a trick by an Egyptian priest, a Caesar or even a guy on the street looking for some coins.
* Don't you think magic was something that was done by the highest of rules, to the most common of men?
* Magic was magic.
* I don't think there was a time in humanity where magic linking rings were real.
* I don't think the magic card tricks were ever real,
* or the ancient Egyptian trick where cut off the head of chicken then re-attached it

* Don't you think most scholars were right,
* then when powerful leaders were using magic they were using it to influence their followers
* Stuff like the Mayan sacrifices and stuff?
* the Maya's, Inca's, Aztec and others would routinely make living sacrifices and perform stage magic

---OK, we have now set the stage. And gotten them to most of the agreements we might want
---Time to get going....

* Personally, "I think Jesus was a pretty poor magician."
* "Do you think Jesus was a poor magician?"

--- I need to stop you right here. The above wording is critical.
--- The wording above sets up a mental trap.
--- We do not want to ask if he was a "good" magician. We want to ask if he was a "poor" one.

--- Let me ask you a question (actually let's pretend I am asking this question to a man)
--- "is this the first time you have been pregnant?"
--- uh, NO, uh er, YES, uh uh, NO, wait ... uh - Huh?
---Get it. It is a brain frying question. You can't answer yes or no, although it is a YES or NO question.

---"Do you think Jesus was a poor magician?" is a very powerful question.
---if they answer YES, then they are saying that the son of god can't pull of silly magic tricks
---If they say NO, then they are saying that "Jesus was a magician - and was good at it"

* to me, I was not that impressed with the wine/beer Production routine he did at the wedding.
* way too many people around, way too many places to hide your loads or tubing.
* Using water as the gimmick. I would have thought he would have used something like a rock or an empty pitcher.
* that would have been way cooler of a trick.
* Or maybe done the trick way out in the yard or field so people could tell that there was nothing around
* but he does it right in the middle of the party. Way to amateurish.

* I really was not that impresses with his "food" Production routines.
* he does it a couple times

* He does his five loaf routine in the dark and has all the people come to him.
* it is so obvious he is just staying near his "load",
* a good magician would have made it such that he could move around and you could not tell where the loads were.

* He does the same thing again in his "7 loaf" routine.

* But what gets me, if he was a good host, he produces dry bread and raw fish.
* He can do a wine production routine, why offer water or wine or some tasty beverage

* Don't you think one of the old moses fresh water routines could have been done or something.
* Dry bread. That's it. Dry bread. Oh yeah, some stinky fish.
* No spices, oh wait. Fire, yeah, fire is an easy one. Nope none of that either.
* Huh. Not much of a magic trick.

* What's that you say. That was a miracle. I hope your kidding me.
* we just agreed that it was a pretty poor magic trick.
* Now you are saying the miracles are even more lame than a poor magic trick.

* I thought a miracle would be wondrous. But dry bread. No butter. No fire, no spices.
* If this were a miracle, why did he have to keep giving bread to his disciples for them to hand out.
* Couldn't he have just stood back and they could have gotten for themselves to hand out.
* I mean if it was a miracle, why did Jesus have to give it to the disciples and then the disciples give it to the people.
* It is right there in the bible. He does not let the disciples get the food directly.
* Even a mediocre magician could pull off an identical magic trick with out having to have to touch each loaf or fish.

* well I am just thinking here.

* I mean these were magic tricks done thousands of years before Jesus' time.
* Did you think he a lot more than would have been expected and gave a well rounded Production effect
* Do you think a crowd of people that large really needed dry bread as much as they could have used fresh water

* So if you were a magician or miracle making person, what would you have done better?
* Heck if you could do real miracles, I would love to hear some really good ideas.
* Maybe wine, cheese, - We are talking miracles here.

* Well anyway, it was good chatting with you.
* I have to get going.
* I will chat with you later.

---Hope you all had fun with this.

-Jack