By David Phillips
Just how gullible are we? I’d say the answer to that is, “pretty gullible.” In fact, these days political schemes, sales plans and even religious doctrines seem to depend on the likelihood that the majority of people in general will tend to fall for almost anything, especially if the pitch is convincingly presented with important-sounding terms.
In discussing the reality of false teaching in his commentary on Second Peter, Brother Burton Coffman tells of an occasion in 1974 when 3 university medical educators put together a plan to demonstrate just how easily people are deceived by an important-sounding presentation, if it has enough “polish” on it. They tried out their plan on a distinguished gathering of 55 educators, school administrators, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers.
“The speaker was introduced as Dr. Myron L. Fox and identified by a high-sounding ambiguous title, and as an authority on the application of mathematics to human behavior.
“Actually, the lecture was nonsense – pure meaningless double-talk; but it fooled the distinguished audience! It so impressed some of them that they expressed interest in learning more about it. Not one of the distinguished auditors recognized it as a hoax. ‘Fox’ was only an actor, hired by the three medical educators to prove a point. The audience was asked to fill out a questionnaire concerning Dr. Fox’s lecture, after it ended. Exactly 42 of them agreed that ‘he used enough examples to clarify the material, ‘ and that ‘the material was well organized’ and that it stimulated their thinking!”
The report of this demonstration was widely circulated in newspapers throughout the United States, and Brother Coffman explains, “It is reproduced here for the purpose of pointing up this writer’s observation that there is also an incredible amount of the same kind of nonsense being disseminated from religious platforms in the present era.” Brother Coffman wrote that in 1978. It is much worse now, 45 years later.
Be on your guard! Let’s be like the Bereans, and search the scriptures daily … (Acts 17:11).