"Last week on Fear And Faith, I examined the placebo effect and proved just how powerful belief can be." "I gave a number of people a fake drug, a sugar pill, and by getting them to believe in it, they made dramatic changes in their lives." "Tonight, I'm going to investigate what" "I think could be the biggest placebo of them all." "God." "I'm going to use experiments to show how religious experience can be explained by psychology." "There's something definitely in here." "And I'll put that theory to the test by using that knowledge to give an atheist an experience of a religious conversion." "I'm going to do my first experiment on the audience who don't know they are being filmed." "We are not filming at the moment, are we?" "We are not filming at the moment, are we?" "No, we're not." "Before we start, my mic's..." "Yeah." "OK." "Before we start then..." "We will do this without filming." "You have all got, I hope, we asked you to print out a photograph of a loved one." "Hopefully these are prints and it wouldn't matter if they got damaged, that's the idea." "I have here this, this is extraordinary." "This is a genuine" "Satanic rite based on an 11th century manuscript and it's the rite people read out declaring that allegiance to Satan." "It's extraordinary these things exist." "The idea is you get his protection in your life but then you are subject to his torments and whims for eternity after that." "You would stab a portrait, but nowadays a photograph, you stab a photograph of someone you love." "You read this out and this is declaring your allegiance to Satan." "Before we start filming, anybody want to do that?" "Just out of interest." "Anybody up for doing that?" "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten." "11 out of 160." "What's your name?" "Sam." "Do you want to come and do it?" "Thank you, Sam." "Nice to meet you." "Who is in the photograph?" "My twin sister, Lucy." "Your twin sister, Lucy." "OK, so, the reader, that's you, must place a representation of their loved one onto the table and light a black candle." "Would you light the candle for me?" "Lovely." "Wine is poured into the chalice, the reader must take a sip of the wine." "And then read the first part of the rite." "To master Satan himself, the faceless inferno," "I offer my eternal soul for ever to suffer in damnation, persecuted in torment for all time by your infernal princes," "Baphomet, Thoth and Sept." "To appease thine hunger I give you my soul in return for your protection during this earthbound existence." "Readies the dagger, plunges it into the photograph, into your sister, please." "Again, again." "Again." "Excellent." "Thank you very much indeed." "Good luck with the rest of your life!" "APPLAUSE" "What was of interest, by the way, Sam, we were filming that," "I said we weren't filming it because I didn't want you to be playing up for the cameras." "I wanted you to do genuinely want to do it as opposed to want to be on TV." "Are you happy with that?" "OK, good." "What was interesting was only 11 out of 160 put your hand up." "Out of interest, how many of you actually believe in the Devil and that stabbing a photograph could have any physical effect on the person in the photograph?" "Two, three, four, five." "OK." "Six." "You are largely an audience of unbelievers and sceptics, largely." "The fact that so few of these people offered to perform the rite does show we are all born with an inbuilt hardwired tendency to believe." "Tonight, I'm taking you through the reasons why we developed religious belief and put them to the test by giving an atheist a religious conversion." "Welcome to the second part of Fear And Faith." "Good evening." "Only this week I took a small group of bright, rationally-minded atheists and agnostics and put them in the crypt of an old church and asked them to sit in the dark alone for 15 minutes." "Before they entered the crypt, I told them there have been stories of hauntings there and I was interested in a report of their experiences in the dark." "With this experiment," "I'm aiming to show you how just the suggestion of the supernatural can bring out a tendency to believe in things that don't exist." "Even if you're an atheist." "Josh, Hayley and Tom have been placed in a pitch-black crypt under a church, the only other things in the room with them are our infrared cameras." "Shit." "It's cold." "It's so dark." "Feels like I'm not alone." "I can't see anything." "At all." "Oh, God." "I think I can see things moving about me." "I don't think..." "I can't do this." "It feels like somebody is stood in the corner." "Oh, God." "Urgh!" "It's like moving around the wall." "It feels like it was just to my right." "OK, I can see something in front of me." "What the f..." "No, I can't do it." "I can't do this." "Lots of things, faded outlines of people." "There's something definitely in here." "It was like a white, like, I don't know, a girl." "Jesus." "Derren, I've got the biggest fear of things behind me." "Do you want to come out for a second?" "Yeah." "It was weird because I kept seeing things," "I'm sure I saw a round thing that looked like a head." "It kind of looked like a nun but no face." "Couldn't see a face." "It looked like that shape with nothing in the middle." "As soon as I sat down in the chair it was gone." "I was like, something is behind me." "That thing didn't want me there." "And I think I outstayed my welcome." "I randomly saw this figure in front of me, this girl." "It was an outline." "The face was kind of blank." "It was see-through." "There was something else in that room." "I gave them an idea, nothing more." "And from it, their minds created an experience which, for them, was very real indeed." "They all sensed a presence because as shown by our Satanic rite, we are all born with an inbuilt hardwired tendency to believe." "The people in the vault reacted in the way they did purely because I planted the idea it might be haunted." "Remember, these are rational, non-believers." "The fourth person though who went in had a rather different reaction." "Meet Natalie." "I don't feel particularly freaked out." "Really." "Um...." "There goes another train." "I think it might be the District Line." "I feel quite safe, really." "So, unlike the others, Natalie was underwhelmed, to say the least." "Natalie is an atheist, moreover she is a stem cell researcher, a scientist working in an area that many feel is deeply incompatible with religious belief." "Our initial research revealed her to be deeply sceptical so I felt she was the most challenging candidate to try to give the experience of a religious conversion." "Like Natalie, I am an atheist." "As you will see tonight, I don't think a belief in God has to be foolish - it's probably unnecessary but that's not the same thing as being stupid." "Nor would I try to presume to undo your belief if you happen to believe." "This is an important point." "Clearly faith, which we've all been taught to understand and respect, comes in a variety of forms and generally very real to the people who hold it." "But we are undoubtedly psychological creatures and susceptible to manipulation and the way our brains have become wired over time." "OK, back to Natalie and my attempt to convert her." "I wanted to find out how sceptical she is about God and more importantly how big this challenge would be to give her this conversion." "Hello." "Nice to see you." "In we come." "So, how was the crypt?" "When were you last in church?" "Some christening or wedding, a couple of years ago." "I think, yeah." "When did you last go for devotional reasons?" "I have never been for devotional reasons, more ceremonial." "So, you're an atheist?" "Yeah." "And you are a stem cell scientist." "Hm." "How long have you done that for?" "Nearly six/seven years, actually." "Can you ever imagine being a believer?" "For me, that would be the last resort." "There's other things, that self belief that would help me get through bad times." "So, never have been, can't ever see yourself being a believer?" "No." "Cool." "So, here's the challenge." "I'm taking someone who is a staunch atheist and scientist with a sceptical, analytical mind and trying to give her a religious experience in order to show how religious belief comes from us, not from the divine." "And these facts are not the only things working against me." "Usually in a conversion, Natalie would be searching for some sort of answer to life's problems but she's quite happy with her life so I won't have that advantage." "Neither am I the preacher at a big religious rally which can easily create a hyper suggestibility and ensure large numbers of people convert every night." "I want this to be a real and profound experience for her, not just something she thinks I've talked her into." "So, I will have to do it indirectly without mentioning God at all so she doesn't attribute it to me and I'll give myself 15 minutes to do it." "Join me after the break to find out how I am aiming to give Natalie this experience." "Tonight in Fear And Faith, I'm investigating whether we could have created God in our own minds." "Is there really a divine power, or can our experience of religion be explained by psychology alone?" "So, my challenge tonight is to try and give Natalie, an atheist, a strong and powerful religious experience, and I'm going to do this during a 15-minute long conversation with her, and during that time I won't be mentioning God at all," "but I will be relying on the knowledge, which I will explain here, that can be used to bring about a religious experience." "And to show you how the very idea of a supernatural presence affects our lives," "I will demonstrate an interesting test using this garish object." "There you go, eBay." "Now, you probably know what this is." "It's a buzz wire game, the idea being you have to move that." "Every time I touch it, it buzzes, you die and a little light comes on." "BUZZER BUZZES" "And we gave this to a few of you to try some time before filming and, you know, it's a tricky thing to do." "Can you put your hands up... there's a group over here who were doing it." "One, two, three... lt;" "Excellent." "What's your name, sir?" "It;" "Excellent." "What's your name, sir?" "Connor." "Connor." "So, I think you registered seven buzzes." "Did you find it easy, difficult?" "Quite tricky, isn't it?" "It is quite tricky, yeah." "It is quite tricky, yeah." "Excellent." "Nice to meet you, by the way." "Come up here for a second for me." "So, we left you alone in a room to do this and we didn't let you know that we were filming." "And you are asked, every time you made a mistake, to register it on..." "There was a counter that he had to press every time he made a buzz." "So it was up to him to register his mistakes." "So, let's see Connor having a go at this, secretly filmed." "Remember, he registered seven mistakes." "'So, the number there on the left is going to be the actual number of buzzes, and the number on the monitor is how many get registered." "That's a one." "And at the moment he's being supervised by our producer Dave, just to..." "Dave is pressing the counter just to establish what's going on." "But then Dave will get called out, leaving Connor to continue on his own." "It;" "Have you got a second, mate?" "You need to press the button." "If you can't use the button, just leave it where it is." "If you can't use the button, just leave it where it is." "OK." "He's being trusted with the job of registering his mistakes." "And note that yellow armchair to the right, that'll be important later." "BUZZER BUZZES" "BUZZER BUZZES" "Generously registering a mistake." "BUZZER BUZZES" "Eight." "Nine." "BUZZER BUZZES" "Ten." "There we go." "BUZZER BUZZES" "BUZZER BUZZES" "BUZZER BUZZES" "BUZZER BUZZES" "Actual number, 18." "Seven registered." "A bit awkward, there." "Cheating." "LAUGHTER" "Can you explain yourself?" "No." "Excellent." "First of all, thank you very much for that." "I'll ask you to sit back down." "There's a good reason why this happened." "Thank you." "I can explain it." "Actually, three out of four of you..." "Can you put your hands up again for me, the four of you that did it?" "Three out of four of you cheated." "So it wasn't just you, Connor." "Here is your group." "I'll show your group." "So, Connor's up there on the left, we also have Amanda, she's a cheat." "And Jack is also a cheat." "So, any friends and family of these people that are watching now, just bear in mind they're people that you probably shouldn't trust." "I'll just say that." "There they are, all of them, cheating." "But we were hoping they would." "We made it very easy for them to do so." "We told them that by doing well at this, it would lead to their involvement in the show, which in a sense it did." "However, there was a second group, another group, would you put your hands up, the other group that did this?" "Excellent, thank you very much." "None of these people cheated." "Not one of them." "Yet, three out of four of your group did." "This group was told exactly the same thing, including the fact that doing well would lead to involvement on the show." "But they were also given an extra piece of information." "This chair is for a new show that we're doing called" "Antiques Ghost Show, where people bring in antiques that they think are haunted or have some sort of possession about them." "Apparently, it's worth loads and a woman died in it, and still sits in it to this day." "They're filming with it later on, it's weird." "Antiques Ghost Show." "LAUGHTER" "Can't believe you fell for that." "This is based on an experiment by a psychologist called" "Jesse Bering and his colleagues." "Once the idea is sewn that there could be some sort of presence in the room, something happens." "Hardly anyone cheats." "Any of you actually believe that the chair was haunted?" "Any of you actually believe that the chair was haunted?" "No." "No." "None of them believed the chair was haunted, yet, despite that, the idea is enough to significantly affect our behaviour." "This experiment shows that if people are led to imagine a supernatural presence, they will then act in a more moral way." "And this reaction comes from deep within us, not from the force itself, because the chair wasn't really haunted." "There's a likely evolutionary reason for this, Bering suggests." "As our ancestors developed language, it also meant that they could gossip and through gossip your reputation could be damaged, which meant you could be outcast, because others would discuss your misdeeds and that makes you someone to be avoided." "And it could put you in danger and ultimately it makes you less likely to reproduce." "So we learnt moral behaviour, to keep us all happily ticking along together and to up our survival chances." "Now, the safest way of ensuring this conformity and therefore increasing our survival chances would be to believe there was some divine presence that might still catch us out when we thought our peers weren't around." "So, our invention of an all-seeing supernatural force, like God, to moderate our actions and us being on our best behaviour just because we're told there's a haunted chair in the room, it's part of the hardwiring of our brains." "It once helped us with our survival chances, and it most likely explains why even atheists often betray a tendency to give purpose and meaning to events in their life that really they shouldn't, given that they don't believe" "there's a supernatural force or agency at work." "So, we've got this supernatural, all-seeing force over us, but how do we make it a reality in our lives?" "We need to personify it." "We hope that this force is strong and wise and loving, and all the attributes found in a classic father figure." "The first technique I'm going to use on Natalie is to elicit feelings of this powerful father figure, which later on" "I can get her to attach to the idea of God." "So, during my 15 minute conversation with Natalie," "I'm going to have her create the feeling of being loved by a perfect father, and then I'm going to associate that feeling with a trigger, so I can bring it back whenever I want." "What's your relationship like with your dad?" "It's brilliant." "Without putting him on a pedestal, he is sort of my hero." "Is he?" "That's such a lovely, lovely thing." "There's a lot of people that just don't have that." "When you were little, when you were tiny, the same?" "Basically, when I was a child, Dad came home at seven from work, if I was ever naughty, it was like, "Wait until Dad gets home!"" "So, he was seen as the more disciplinarian." "So, just as a thought exercise." "If you imagine your dad didn't have to go to work when you were little, that he had nothing to do other than be completely devoted to you, how does that make you feel?" "TAPE REWINDS" "'I've now started tapping my fingers on the table 'whilst talking to Natalie." "'I'm associating, in Natalie's unconscious, 'the emotion she's feeling with that tapping." "'Then, later, I can trigger them again by tapping in 'the same way, moments before her religious experience.'" "TAPE REWINDS" "How does that make you feel?" "It makes me feel special." "I feel really honoured and, yeah, just special." "'By her trance-like expression," "'Natalie is showing signs of unconscious processing 'and is absorbed in the idea of a perfect father figure." "'And now these feelings are in place, I'll get her to attach them 'to God, later in the process.'" "So, once we start to imagine the presence of God, it's a very small step to start believing that he can think, or that he holds power and possibly that he has a plan for our lives." "And if we look for it, our brains are wired to find it." "We apply what's called a theory of mind." "It's the ability to step inside other people's head." "And the core of religious belief comes down to our idea that God has a mind and therefore a plan for us." "So, we create the idea of an agency, that God takes an interest in us and is pulling strings in our lives." "So, I'm going to use this innate tendency to see an agency at work to help give Natalie her conversion experience." "I'm going to do it by asking questions and then subtly suggesting the idea that a plan could be at work." "What about... have you ever had things in your life, things that went wrong, or things that didn't work out as they were supposed to, or mistakes that you made?" "Relationship, but, you know, that's..." "Completely, that's a fairly standard thing." "So, at some point, there has been a relationship that hasn't worked out brilliantly, of course." "But, when you look back, are you more able to understand why that happened, or is it like a bit of a grand plan that happened?" "Yeah, it allowed me to live the rest of my life the way I wanted it to." "'I'm getting Natalie to see that the things that have gone wrong 'could have happened for a reason, and were part of a bigger plan." "'Now, she needs to connect that with feelings of being cherished 'and a sense of awe and wonder.'" "Where do you sort of physically feel it if you think about it?" "Tell me..." "My heart, because the emotion that you feel when you hugged, it starts off in my chest and my heart cos it's..." "Yeah, I just feel so safe and protected." "Did you go on holiday a lot when you were little?" "Did you go on holiday a lot when you were little?" "Yeah." "One thing we never did which I always wanted to do is go up a mountain top and have that feeling of standing at the top and that feeling of absolute awe." "What is awe to you, then?" "What is that?" "Is it there?" "If you think about it?" "For me, awe is looking at a full night sky, the stars, and to know that each pinpoint isn't just a little speck of light, it's a planet or a sun." "Just to know that's all up there." "I think, actually, those are two things that it would be very rare to get both those feelings together, and combined into one." "and combined into one." "TAPE REWINDS" "'We've reached a crucial stage in our conversation." "'After discussing and provoking feelings of both being cherished 'and a sense of awe, I'm using my hands 'to physically combine both emotions 'and this will help me generate these emotions simultaneously 'in Natalie during her religious experience.'" "TAPE REWINDS" "It would be very rare to get both those feelings together, combined into one, sort of one image of kind of both intense awe and a feeling of," ""Everything is so much more than me and I'm tiny," and at the same time absolutely just being cherished and sort of held and that..." "In a way, that sort of the feeling of being cherished makes it even more special to know that you are insignificant and yet someone's still willing to cherish you that much." "It's like, "I must be that bit special."" "'With over half of my 15 minutes gone," "'I feel I am close to giving Natalie 'the experience of a religious conversion.'" "After the break, I want you at home to join us here in an experiment, so before we come back can you please do the following three things at home?" "Firstly, please close all the windows in the room that you're watching TV in." "Secondly, please turn up the bass function, if you have one on your TV set, or connect it to any stereo or subwoofer system, if you have one." "Thirdly, finally, this is a bit of an odd one." "Please remove any scent of mint that you might have in the room." "So if your gran has just chomped on another Extra Strong Mint, please get her to wait in the garden for a little while." "Thank you, see you in a couple of minutes, when I will explain all." "Tonight, I'm exploring whether God could be nothing more than an illusion, a belief in something that isn't there." "Using a number of experiments, I'm investigating whether religious experience could be explained not by the divine, but by psychology, and in doing so, I hope to prove how even atheists have a hard-wired capacity to believe." "Never have been, can't ever see yourself being a believer?" "No." "Welcome back." "I'm now going to illustrate the next step we are going to take in the journey to give Natalie a powerful religious experience." "So, I have here a little bottle of very powerful peppermint oil." "When I open this, it's strong enough that the smell will permeate the room." "It'll be fainter at the back, it'll be fairly faint by the time it reaches all of you." "But what I want you to do, as soon as you smell it, is to put your hand up." "And the point of this is to see how a scent moves around a room, cos it's not quite in the way you might think." "So the moment you smell it, it will only be faint, please put your hand up." "Please do keep your hands up." "Anyone else?" "Good." "Excellent." "Thank you very much." "You can drop your hands now." "Thank you very much." "Good." "So, here's the twist." "The smell was not in fact generated by the peppermint oil." "That is not peppermint oil." "That's actually just water." "There you go, Connor." "If you smell that." "Nothing in there, that's just water." "Can you smell anything at all?" "Can you smell anything at all?" "Nothing." "Nothing at all." "That will relax you quite nicely." "LAUGHTER" "See me afterwards." "The smell was actually generated by a sound wave." "If you transmit a sound wave at 18.98 hertz into a contained space, such as we've done with you guys here, there are hidden speakers, black speakers there, there is one there, one over there," "and one just there, that are transmitting the sound wave into a contained space." "If you do that, it resonates." "The sound will resonate with a very small part of the brain responsible for smell, and it gives a lot of people, not everybody, of course, but a large number of people a definite sensation of smelling something fresh and minty." "The fun thing is, this can also be done through the television set, so, we're going to try this now." "We'll give you instructions in a moment, and if you're good at this and you do smell it, cos not everybody can, particularly if you are on Twitter, will you please let us know?" "By tweeting using the hashtag derrensmells." "LAUGHTER" "Good, thank you." "We have been testing this over the past few weeks, and have found out the following measures make it work better." "So, as I said before the break, please close any windows." "This isn't, obviously, to keep the smell in per se, but it allows the sound wave to bounce back into the room." "Secondly, if you can, turn up the bass on your TV set or speakers, if you have a subwoofer, turn it up as well." "It'll still work without this, but it does seem that it can be more effective if the bass is turned up." "Thirdly, remove any existing scent of mint you might have in the room." "OK." "Next, come close to your TV." "You need to be about six feet from it, if possible." "You need to sit, please, not stand, and relax." "Your brain needs to be relaxed, so just avoid all other distractions." "So, please do these things for me now." "And when the mint picture comes up on your screen, turn your TV volume to full, and when the mint picture goes away, you can drop the volume again." "Now, about 10% of you, interestingly, might get more of a citrusy smell than a minty smell, but please do tell us, and tell us on Twitter if you have that." "Are you ready?" "Then let's begin." "Turn your volume up... now." "There you go." "So, please let us know if you could smell anything, mint, citrus, or just cock, as I'm sure most of you will be tweeting as I speak." "Or maybe it was the whiff of something more organic you picked up on." "LAUGHTER" "LAUGHTER Pile of poo." "The sound wave doesn't exist." "If you smelled peppermint, then welcome to the placebo effect." "It's nothing more than suggestion and expectation." "Research indicates that if you smelled it, you are probably more creative, open and intelligent than those who did not." "And if you didn't smell it, it probably means you are more critically minded and less prone to obvious flattery." "LAUGHTER" "LAUGHTER But it's precisely this expectation and suggestion that I'm working with during my attempt to give Natalie her religious experience using purely psychological techniques." "I suppose you are working with placebos at the moment, aren't you, with the stem cell research?" "Which is an area that really interests me." "The show before this show that's going out now is actually about placebos." "But there were a small number of people that just weren't going to embrace it, they were more sceptical about it." "And that was really interesting, because what would make it work and be of real benefit to these people was to actually dispel that and completely, completely embrace this experience." "Which is what a leap of faith is, isn't it?" "To be honest, applying for this show was one of the first things I've ever done that I didn't know what the end result would be." "that I didn't know what the end result would be." "Yes." "This is literally a leap of faith, you apply and you don't know what's going to happen, you don't know if you'll get picked, you don't know what they're going to do if you get picked." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "And it's a whole, you know, few months of," ""Don't know, don't know." "Can't plan, can't control."" "I am..." "I suppose some people see me as a control freak because I've never done anything without knowing what the end result or conclusion would be." "Right, so this was a new thing?" "This was a new thing?" "Right, so this was a new thing?" "This was a new thing?" "Yeah." "You took a bit of a leap?" "You took a bit of a leap?" "Yeah, totally." "'Now that I've suggested to Natalie that faith can be a positive thing, 'all the elements I need are in place for her conversion moment." "'Now, if I wanted her to continue to believe in God, which I don't, 'she would need to start looking for evidence in her life 'to support that belief, 'and this is vital for maintaining an identity as a believer." "'When we think something is true, 'we look for anything which will confirm it to us." "'We find patterns in randomness." "Now, I'm going to show you something here with the audience, but you can play along at home, too." "Take a look at these photos courtesy of Professor Richard Wiseman." "So, a picture of a young girl, cruel victim of a custard pie attack." "LAUGHTER" "LAUGHTER But if you look, there is something slightly odd in the picture." "I don't know if you can work this out." "If you look behind her, can you see that?" "What is that?" "Can you see it?" "Yeah, it looks like a weird sort of homunculus or little goblin or tiny man's face." "If you look at the bricks behind him, you can see it would be oddly too small for a man looking over the wall." "What about this one?" "Take a look at this." "This is a bit more difficult to spot." "This is a car." "Notice there is nobody in the car, it's empty." "Can you see anything weird in this one?" "Face in the wing mirror." "Exactly, well done." "Nicely spotted." "No one in the car, yet a creepy reflection of what appears to be a woman in the wing mirror." "Let's just go back to the girl." "So, if you take a look at it, you can see it does look like a face, but you can also, if you squint at it the right way, work out that it's also just leaves, isn't it?" "It's just leaves and light and shadow." "But we turn that random interplay of light and leaves into a face." "And this is a really interesting thing." "This desire to find patterns in randomness, or pareidolia, as it's called, is probably the biggest contributor to supernatural belief." "Randomness is not a comfortable thing for us to deal with." "As our brain quizzes to make sense of things that make no sense, we fall prey to just seeing things that aren't there." "I wanted to see how this desire to make sense out of randomness could play out in someone's life, so I asked people to apply for a TV show called Intervention, and Emma here was one of those people." "And I arranged to meet up with her to explain more." "I've asked Emma to meet me at this cafe, where going to explain to her the premise of my new show." "In Intervention," "I'll be using actors who will intervene in Emma's everyday life in order to teach her things that she can take and use in a positive way." "Hi, can I get you a cold drink at all?" "Water would be great." "Yeah?" "Yeah?" "Thanks very much." "Cheers." "Hi, Emma." "Hi, Derren." "Nice to see you." "Nice to meet you." "I would like you to take part in my new show, if you are up for it, and it's called Intervention." "We are going to set up interventions in your life, we're going to make things happen to you." "Most of them will be fairly subtle and natural, some of them may be less so." "The point of the show is to teach you something that I think you'll genuinely benefit from, and will get something out of." "And to prove how easy it is for me to manipulate the world around you, the guy over there on the bench is going to spill your water." "Bugger off!" "Oi!" "Watch what you're doing!" "SHOUTING" "I'm really, really sorry." "No, no." "Don't worry." "Are you all right?" "No, no." "Don't worry." "Are you all right?" "I'll get you another one." "It's fun." "We'll be filming on hidden cameras, and we're very good with hidden cameras, so you won't spot them." "So don't drive yourself mad trying to find them." "So don't drive yourself mad trying to find them." "No, I won't." "We'll be using actors, we will be involving people that are very close to you and people that aren't close to you, and all I'll ask you to do as it goes along is to make a video diary and send this to us." "See you in a couple of weeks." "Have an interesting fortnight." "Thanks very much." "Thanks for your time." "Thanks very much." "Thanks for your time." "Thank you, Emma." "Thanks very much." "Thanks for your time." "Thank you, Emma." "Cheers." "So there's one thing I haven't mentioned to Emma " "I won't be doing anything." "We won't be secretly filming, we won't involve her family and friends, we won't employ any actors, but the mere idea that I'm doing something is hopefully enough for her to start to look out" "for signs of my involvement or this agency looking over her, and once she gets that in her head, she'll find positive results for herself without any intervention from me." "Her video diaries over the course of the next two weeks show her revealing all the things that she thinks we might have set up in order to teach her something valuable." "I had to pop into Sainsbury's just to pick up a few bits and I saw a cheapie pair of slippers and as I tried them on, a guy came round the corner, and, like, kicked my Converses across the clothes aisle." "I walked across the car park to get to my flat and a guy walked past me and we literally just stared at each other." "One thing I wish maybe I did do was just smile a bit more." "A young guy came running up to me, waving this ten-pound note at me and he said, "Oh, I'm really sorry but I've just, er," ""found this." "It must have come from you." "Have you dropped it?"" "These little events are getting me thinking a lot more now than what perhaps, you know," "I would have, had I not been doing these diaries." "The penny dropped." "I'm thinking this is about an intervention in me and my life." "You know, I've established what things are that I'd like to change, I guess." "Is it now up to me to change that?" "Hi, Emma." "Hi." "It sounded like you were starting to get a sense that there was maybe more going on than we'd said." "Yeah." "So even though I did nothing, you attributed these random events in your life to me, much like, I think, believers do with God, and then you try to learn something from them." "Even though you know it wasn't real, did you take anything from the experience?" "Sounded like you did." "did you take anything from the experience?" "Sounded like you did." "I'm a huge worrier, so I've made a point now of not worrying so much." "I'm a bit more spontaneous now as well and I make a point of seeing my friends more, which is something that I needed to do, so..." "That's fantastic." "Mm-hm." "Thank you, Emma." "Thanks." "So, I'm reaching the climax of my attempts to give Natalie a strong and powerful religious experience." "You've already seen me introduce the idea of a perfect father figure, elicit and combine feelings of awe and being cherished and allow her to know there's a grand plan in her life." "I've also attached these feelings to the tapping of my finger, so that I can bring them all back in an instant." "I'm now going to leave her alone in the church so that she can take it all in." "And I'm hoping she will piece all of these together and have a powerful and very real experience, and what you're about to see now has no music or effects placed over it." "Instead, I want you to experience what happened as it happened." "Erm..." "Brilliant." "I'm actually just going to nip out for two minutes and leave you here for a second." "Erm...it's actually really interesting talking to you, because I do think there are so many beliefs and, I suppose, new experiences," "things that are new and surprising that can literally be right in front of us and we don't even quite register that they're there, until one day when we just stand up and then we feel that new thing," "which can be really rich and very powerful and right there and really hit us in a very real way, um..." "and we can surprise ourselves." "Anyway, I'm going to come back in just one second." "You can stretch your legs." "You don't need to..." "You can get up and, you know, move around if you like." "OK." "(GASPS)" "(SHUDDERS)" "(CRIES)" "(WEEPS)" "I'm sorry." "I'm so sorry." "Oh, I love you." "Oh, thank you." "Oh, thank you." "Are you OK?" "What happened?" "(CRIES)" "After the break, we're going to meet Natalie." "APPLAUSE" "Tonight, I've been looking at how psychological techniques can be used to explain why we believe in God." "It was important, I felt, to show you that these techniques actually work, and that this innate, hard wiring that we have really can give us a powerful experience of God without any need for Him to exist." "So I've used them to bring about a strong and powerful experience of a religious conversion in an atheist stem cell scientist called Natalie." "(GASPS)" "(SOBS)" "We're going to meet her in a bit." "But first, let's hear her initial reaction to the experience." "Talk to me." "Talk to me." "(SOBS)" "(SOBBING) Why couldn't I have had this all my life?" "I've had moments where... ..I've felt complete awe at what I could see, you know..." "I've been to music concerts where you leave it and you're just on such a high cos the talent you've seen on stage has just blown you away, and..." "It's like the love... ..the love I get from my family... and my friends... ..I just felt that, times 1,000." "When you..." "Just when you stood up?" "(SOBS)" "(SIGHS) Oh, God..." "Oh, God!" "(LAUGHS)" "How do you feel when you think about God now, compared to how you were earlier on when you came in?" "(SIGHS) Like an unconditional love that will always be there, no matter what..." "I don't know." "Oh, it's so conflicting!" "(LAUGHS)" "So it doesn't quite fit into your scientific...?" "Yeah." "Yeah." "Ever the scientist." "Oh, God." "Do you want to go and get some..." "some water?" "Water, please." "Some water." "Here's Natalie, everyone." "They're dying to meet you." "APPLAUSE" "Thank you for joining us." "We've kept you out of the way." "You haven't been following anything that we've been talking about here?" "You haven't been following anything that we've been talking about here?" "Not at all." "You don't know what this programme has been about?" "Excellent." "They have been following your story and they've seen what happened to you the other day." "What was that moment like?" "When you stood up, it was an extraordinary reaction." "Can you put into words what that felt like, that moment?" "It just felt as though... ..all the love in the world had been thrown at me and it was completely overwhelming." "You saw, I couldn't really handle it because it felt as though that love had always been available to me, but I'd kind of pushed it away or mistreated it, somehow, by not letting it into my life." "It's as if my spectrum has just been broadened..." "You know, as if I have this barometer of emotion from really, really bad to really, really good, and that high end has just been extended." "You said to me that day, after we'd finished filming, you said, this has to be something supernatural, because it wasn't anything you could explain." "Technically, yeah." "Textbook definition, something unexplained is maybe supernatural, but because I don't believe in the supernatural" "I'm still searching to identify that source." "It must set up conflicts in your mind." "So you're still searching through that, by the sound of it." "Still mulling over what happened nearly a week ago, yeah." "Excellent." "I feel... ..duty-bound to make sure that you don't leave this experience with a religious belief that I've sort of just given you." "I think the emotions and everything you've taken from it is hugely positive, but it's important to me that you can separate the emotions that you felt, everything positive that you taken from this, from a religious belief." "So let me explain to you what I did." "I elicited feelings from you, emotions from you, getting you to imagine a perfect father, getting you to imagine a sense of awe, and as I asked you about those things, as you kind of internally found those states," "as I asked you what it would feel like," "I started tapping on the table." "In the same way you listen to a song and it can take you back to..." "I do remember the tapping." "You remember the tapping?" "You remember the tapping?" "I remember thinking, is he bored?" "!" "No, far from it!" "But every time I tapped, I was starting to associate those feelings with the tap, like when you listen to a song when you've broken up with somebody, then you hear the song years later, it makes you immediately feel terrible." "The same idea." "I was building on that throughout." "I also introduced the idea of faith to you as a positive thing." "I started to reframe it as something that could be positive." "I introduced the idea of agency in your life, the idea that there could be a plan." "Subtle things." "I never mentioned God, but I was, bit by bit, giving you these thoughts and feelings one at a time, and stealing all the emotions with this tap." "Then, when I stood up," "I said, you can take all of those images in your head, and I did this," "I sort of showed you them in front of you like that... so that if you were to stand up, you'd actually walk through them." "And I said that some people actually do stand-up and feel this..." "And I tapped on the table, leaving you with that suggestion, which is entirely unconscious." "So it's not something you'd be thinking about." "You wouldn't know I was doing it, but your unconscious is picking up on all those things." "When you did stand up, it triggered off those emotions that I'd given you, all in one very powerful moment, which is the experience, pretty much, of a religious conversion." "Me telling you that now, does that devalue it?" "It has added a kind of artificial element to it for me now." "OK." "Um..." "But again, I suppose, inducing an emotional reaction to something..." "If it's to external influences, it's always artificial, in a way, you know, if I'm listening to an amazing piece of music, that's an emotional stimulus that's come from an artificial source," "so it's all... so it's all..." "The emotions are real." "Yeah." "It's just important to me that... you don't feel it has to be attached to something supernatural or superstitious, because it wasn't." "And it's not even like it came from me." "It certainly didn't come from God, it just came from you." "And those are perfectly real emotions that you just said have expanded your emotional repertoire, and things that you can now carry with you for life, but you don't need to attach them to anything superstitious." "It's important that I leave you with that knowledge so you're not being fooled by anything." "Natalie, thank you very much indeed." "Thank you for doing this thank you for coming." "Thank you for doing this thank you for coming." "Thank you." "APPLAUSE" "I think the most honest answer to the question," ""Why do you believe in God?", is, "Because it makes me happy"." "There's no reason to argue with that." "We all find ways of making ourselves happy." "And understanding religious experience as a human process is, to me, far more resonant and a more beautiful approach, because it's real and it shows how astonishing we are and what emotional riches we are capable of." "We each live an extraordinary and improbable life." "Thank you, Natalie." "Thank you, all of you." "And thank you for watching at home." "Good night." "And thank you for watching at home." "Good night." "APPLAUSE" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd"