[quote: Wikipedia]The retreat is a four day, three night (or three day, two night in some cases) residential retreat[2][/quote]
No need to nitpick.

Humans and their irrational emotions ...

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TiKels, I dunno about you. You claim to be a nontheist, and I'm sure you're smart and strong willed, but I don't think you'd be really ready to put it all to the test. There's a lot of subtle irrational arguments for the existence of a deity, and more than that, there's a lot of emotional manipulation and doublethink that goes on by the religious.

One example is the man who claimed to feel God or Jesus or whatever when speaking to Richard Dawkins. He quite insightfully, and correctly, pointed out that the man was merely deluded. Many are swayed into focusing on positives and filtering out negatives, and thank their deity for this good, or convince themselves the deity wishes it to be such a way. There are subtle errors in this sort of thinking, and it really takes a philosophical type of thinking to see them clearly.

Not to brag, but I've always been good at thinking philosophically. It's sort of a second nature, so I often have trouble understanding why people can't grasp the logic behind Epicurus's riddle. It's important to be mindful of all the arguments for a deity's existence. I've had them been thrown at me time and time again as if they were new or hot shit.

They're not. They're old by at least a few centuries. They've been discussed by great luminaries that are long dead, and haven't really stood up against the test of time.

Eh. We'll see. By the way, my birthday is on the 16th, I'll be 18 the day after I come back!

TiKels, please attempt to log the Kairos activities as comprehensively as you can. I am very interested in the nature of this dark magic that has somehow converted BioAtK.

I don't see the point in those Kairos camps. It sounds more like a military training. I'm not sure if you said it yet, but do you know which group organizes those camps? It sounds like some sort of extremist traditionalist group from before Vatican II.

If I had kids, I would never send them there.

At the very least, it doesn't sound like a very balanced life style (Even I know it's only for a few days.)

It is really just a case of pavlovian conditioning. The whole thing is as pleasant as can be, and people just pair that and the Jesus thing together and think the positive feelings they are getting are coming from Jesus when really, it is coming from their surroundings.
Unconditioned Stimulus - positive social environment. Unconditioned Response - positive feelings.
Neutral stimulus - JESUSJESUSJESUS. Conditioned Response - positive feelings.

You could make the neutral stimulus FSM and you'd have everyone saying that's real at the end of the camp too. It's just very simple pavlovian conditioning by pairing neutral stimuli with unconditioned stimuli. It is quite smart really, you have to wonder, do they do this deliberately or did they happen upon it by chance??


But yeh it would be good if you report what happens there, I'm willing to put money on the table right now that it will be exactly what I say. Lot's of emotional lovey dovey shit where they try to make you have the time of the life, then pairing that with heaps of religious drivel. You seriously should try to deconvert people while you are there, do not leave them to the throes of madness and ignorance.

Someone has been taking Psych 101 and trying to apply it to everything.

Classical conditioning doesn't work that rapidly. Not every phenomenon can be attributed directly to a basic psychological concept. Additionally, the descriptions of Kairos thus far provided do not seem that "pleasant", voiding your conjecture.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 14 2011, 1:08 am by Aristocrat.

So, lets say this is what they're doing. Is 4 days enough?

Uhhh... of course. Pairings can occur after a single trail. But don't take my word for it, read the wealth of research material available.

Alright, I'll step in and answer this as well, because I *think* I might see what Moose *might* be saying, but I could be off. My church had a youth retreat every winter called Powderburn. There were a few other names, but they all considered teh same thing: a weekend up at a christian camp in the rockies middle of winter. We'd leave Friday night and come back Sunday evening. Saturday was reserved for snowboarding/skiing (lift tickets were extra but not ungodly, same with rentals), and if you didn't want to do that there were a TON of other silly fun things to do at the camp...karaoke, hot tub (hot tub+snow angels = derp burns), sumo wrestling, mafia/card/board games/full contact spoons, and so on. Each youth group got their own floor in a mini cabin...boys on one side of a main sitting area, girls on the other, roaving death squads - I mean councilors - to make sure that boys weren't in girls rooms and the other way around. In the evenings there was a Bible Study led by someone the campground hired, an indie Christian band played worship songs before and a "sending song" after, we went back to our floors with our youth groups and we talked about the lesson, sometimes as a group sometimes in small groups (my youth group had divided groups by gender and grade). Saturday morning there was an option early prayer/worship thing, but you didn't have to go.

We were exhausted all weekend, mostly because we were willfully up ALL NIGHT. Curfew was liberal up there, eleven o'clock friday, midnight saturday. As long as you kept your nose clean you could go do whatever you wanted (it was truly beautiful, because the camp ground was high and the sky was clear so you saw a lot of stars), and I'm pretty sure people 'broke' curfew by hanging out in the common area regularly. And of course we were exhausted anyways...we got out of school, stuffed our backpacks with overnight gear, went on a three hours car trip up to the mountains, waited an hour for everyone to get rentals, went to an evening "welcome chapel," did activities if you could and crashed at eleven. The next day if you were going skiing you had to be up at seven, were on the slopes all day, came back down to another chapel and bible study, more activities, and crashed at midnight. Sunday was pretty chill except that you had to clean and all that, but by the time you were home it was time for another nap, because its another three hours down...and so on. You could've gone back to the cabin whenever you wanted and bitched enough until it was quiet enough for you to take a nap if you really wanted to, i guess.

For most of us it was a chance to gt away from our parents, and the adult volunteers were always on the level with us - they didn't demean us or talk down, so as long as you didn't majorly screw up you could do whatever you wanted. They fed us obviously but we were cracked out on sugar...it didn't help there was a convenience store right next to where you picked up ski/snowboard rentals so we'd pick up all the stuff we weren't allowed to have. Childish sure, but come on we were in high school. Most of the stash was cookie dough. ;P There was very little stress up there, if you weren't comfortable with talking to your peers there were the volunteers, if you weren't comfortable talking to them there were college aged kitchen volunteers, if you weren't comfortable there there was the band...seriously...a very open and comfortable atmosphere. It was also relatively cheap, so pretty much every year our entire youth group went, which made it a lot of fun. (Not to mention my church had 'scholarship' funds to help people who otherwise couldn't afford to go).

I would say it was religiously powerful and I honestly miss that type of experience. A lot of what happened in chapel I'm sure would make most of you think I was batshit crazy. There was a lot of emotions, a lot of crying and connecting. It was open...people really got to know each other there. I really got close to a lot of people, and after they explained where they were coming from I was able to understand people who I otherwise kept away from.

Everyone came back closer because we shared the same air for a weekend...we all got to open up and act like ourselves and be totally comfortable in a judgement free environment. I'm sure there were some people there who would turn around and talk about things people did or said behind their back, but I never witnessed it.

It was fun and uplifting. Kinda wish there was something like that now, except now I have to act like an adult and can't be coerced into karaoke without liquor.

I find it really sad that so many people seem to have to rely on religion to provide those experiences...

And come on, gender segregation and curfew? You're killing me!

Humans are far too emotional to begin with. Or at least, too full of the wrong emotions.

Raunchy.

I think you are both missing the point.

A concise and well thought out argument, Apos.

It was actually a lot of fun. you put the spoons in another room, so when someone got four of a kind it was a mad dash to wherever the spoons were. Sometimes on an icy balcony, sometimes in a stairwell.

I read it as "full contact spooning".

Kairos is just about having friends who care about you and sharing your deepest personal issues and problems (furthering that unity).

That's about it. Religion is a part of it, but if you are an Atheist the retreat would still work for you.

Nooo-ho-ho-hooo. Most atheists do not want to further the misguided impression that religion is even needed in today's society for anything, and thus would not go. But instead go to other venues that offer the same experience minus the religious drivel and pressure to convert (though I concede some religious events are far more subtle at this than others).

Any beneficial service it provides can be provided just as easily elsewhere, minus all the fictional nonsense.

The only thing religion CAN give that no other method can give is a belief in the existence of an afterlife. But this is a false hope. And I pity the humans who claim they need this false hope to have meaningful lives.

I mean I can kinda see where you come from, there was pressure to be religious. I can't deny that. But even so, I could just say something like (if I was) "I don't believe in god and I really don't want to talk about it" and I would probably get a few words from each student in my small group (10 people) and that would be the end of it.

But as far as I know they aren't. It's called being tolerant rather than openly bigoted.

False hope? Can't really say for certain whether there's an afterlife or not, it's whatever you want to believe. Difference between optimism and pessimism... I'm an optimist. I enjoy life whether there is a god or not, I just hope there is one. I don't "need this false hope to have a meaningful life" but I for damn sure don't know the answer as to whether it is one way or the other. IMO the norm of saying "there is a god" "there is not a god" is pretty ... arrogant? It just kind-of says that "I know what I am talking about. I can't be wrong. Everything I say is concrete, proven, and infallible." Even someone who was a super devout catholic, Mother Teresa, was uncertain as to whether there was a god.

@Who reported him
I reported that on the post so the mods would see it.