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#1 |
Master Poster
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Desperation fuels belief in the supernatural
I think a lot of belief in the supernatural will disappear when living conditions throughout the world improve for people so there's more social equality. I'll give some examples of why:
Example 1. Yesterday evening, there was a television programme about a cult with a lot of appeal for gangsters in Venezuela called the Cult of the Thugs. Members worship the spirits of dead gangsters, and visit mediums who say they channel the spirits of especially prestigious dead gangsters, who give people advice on keeping safe, such as on how to hold guns to make them less obvious so their carriers won't be such a target for other gangsters. You see, Venezuela has a huge murder rate, mainly because of the gangs. It's trippled since Hugo Chavez took over as president nine years ago. Government figures now say there's a murder every forty minutes. There's a hospital in the capital where they say 80-90% of their patients have gun shot wounds. There's a prison filled with gangsters that has massive overcrowding, where murder is very common, and they say no efforts are made to rehabilitate people, so when they get out, they don't know any other life than violent gang life, so they just go back to it. People living in violent neighbourhoods think the police are providing a completely inadequate service. So they've turned to the supernatural for protection. There are massive festivals honouring dead gangsters, where devotees worship them and seek their protection. See here for more information. Example 2. Many people in the third world don't have access to adequate healthcare, and don't even know such a thing could cure a lot of their ailments. When something bad happens to them, they often think they must be the victim of a curse put on them by a witch. So there are witch hunts to find out who the witch is and punish them. This isn't helped by the fact that some people do in fact try to better themselves by turning to witchcraft, sometimes committing gruesome murders to get body parts, which they believe work as charms that can give them prosperity or other good fortune. For example, see some of the articles in my latest post in the Please help with the Wall of Harm thread. (He's had it unstickied since I put that there. LOL I hope that wasn't because my post was so gruesome he couldn't tolerate any more. I feel a bit guilty now.) I actually know a Nigerian person who said when he was at school one day, all the children were warned to stay indoors, because they were warned there were "medicine men" in the area who might want to get their body parts. I know someone who knows another Nigerian man who actually was attacked by such people, who gouged his eyes out to use in medicines supposedly containing supernatural charms. Anyway, belief in witchcraft in such places causes a climate of fear. Here's something I posted elsewhere that illustrates how: From an article called: An Unexplained Death in Haiti:
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There was a television programme recently about how a lot of children in Nigeria are being rejected and killed or threatened with being killed, because many pastors were accusing them of being witches who caused bad things to happen to their families or communities. It said that though there's a longstanding tradition of accusing people like elderly women of being witches, the craze for accusing children of witchcraft started about seven years ago, when someone made a video about how children can get involved in witchcraft and do all kinds of terrible things, and lots of people saw it. You can find out more information about the programme and the issues here: Saving Africa's Witch Children. It features a charity that takes in abandoned children who've been accused of being witches:
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When there's adequate healthcare all around the world, good education for all, an efficient police force and a progressive prison system in the more lawless parts of the world, and poverty is reduced a lot so many more people have satisfactory living standards and can live in security for much more of the time, then belief in the supernatural will probably diminish a lot. I suspect that in Europe, the virtual elimination of belief in witches who go around causing serious harm had a lot to do with such things. |
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#2 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Sep 2003
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Certainly ignorance, poverty, and fear work hand-in-hand to promote a climate where supernatural beliefs flourish.
Still, how do we then explain the widespread belief in such things in all manner of countries with good education and affluent lifestyle? In the US alone, we have always had a flourishing market for quack medicine and bizarre "therapies", and the amounts of money made by "psychics", "readers", fortune tellers, and the whole panoply of such people must be in the billions.... |
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#3 |
Muse
Join Date: Nov 2008
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Yes, a surprising number of rich women love to see "psychics"---even those who are liberal Christians or non-believers. It is "fun" to them. They have difficulty assessing the trickery involved.
But this subject can be delved into deeper than we have. I mean that no one has clearly stated what "superstition" is. Was what we call "superstition" the same thing as what was thought of as "superstition" in Roman times? If not, then much of what we now call "truth" is sure to end up being called "superstition" in the distant future. In other words, "superstition" is only old religion. I would add that it is old-religion that is so old that it no longer has a clergy able to defend it! In Asia, I met many people who believe in "ghosts"---even putting food out for them every August and burning money so they can get it and spend it when they go back to purgatory. These were middle income people. What I think is that the "upper classes" everywhere break free of such beliefs while all religion and even superstition has always been what binds the common people and the poor together into a community. Belief serves a function. charles |
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#4 |
Master Poster
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But I think these people still prey on vulnerability, since even in a rich country, there's still a lot of that. For instance, mediums advertise to grief-stricken people, faith healers appeal to people who aren't getting satisfactory healthcare, etc. Here's an example:
From an article called Psychic Scams (AsianWeek, Apr 2003)
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I'm not saying it's always the case that people who fall prey to things like this will be vulnerable in some way. But educating people to think critically about such things from an early age, as well as helping towards eliminating social equalities like third world poverty and highly inadequate healthcare, should go a long way towards improving things. After all, there may be a lot of people turning to psychics now, but as I said, at least people in the West have advanced beyond witch burnings now. I suspect a lot of them were motivated by just the same kinds of concerns that motivate some people in the third world to try to kill people who've been accused of witchcraft now for instance, they have little modern healthcare, so they don't realise diseases are caused by natural things and that most can be treated with drugs. But actually, people who've researched these things say the fear of witchcraft in the third world is often taken advantage of by people who just want to get revenge on people or put competitors out of business, and so on. They can accuse the people they want to harm of being witches, and chances are, they will be harmed. There's a group in India calling themselves the Rationalists, who go around educating people about what really causes misfortunes. I think more of that should happen. |
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#5 |
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Originally Posted by Me
Here's a quote from an article that used to be on the Internet, called My Nightmare Job as a Phone Psychic. It's by someone in America who thought being a phone psychic would be fun. She didn't think of herself as psychic, but didn't have to to learn what they had to do on the phone. She soon realised it was unethical, since lots of people were calling who actually needed professional medical or psychological care or specialist advice, not a psychic reading; but the psychic hotlines were far more popular than seeing a counsellor, (counselling probably has an image problem for one thing, not undeserved; but I won't get started on problems with some types of counselling). Anyway, she said,
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#6 |
Master Poster
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Here's an interesting story: The confessions of a leading psychic.
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#7 |
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#8 |
Muse
Join Date: Aug 2006
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Cultural and religious harm with paranormal cured with education
Many of the comments expressed on this thread are over due. The best cure for many dangerous health ailments while reducing quackery is education that overcomes pseudoscience beliefs. Worldwide cultural, emotional, and religious impacts that often seek paranormal cures can be steered to ones with repeatable results. And in doing so the "profit" motives of some are economically dismantled and new lower cost methods spread to larger segments of the public.
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#9 |
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Thanks. I think the same.
If people were educated about psychics in schools, it wouldn't mean teachers had to be controversial and risk offending some people in the area by saying real psychics don't exist or anything. They could teach about the dangers of being too trusting as part of a general social development course, where besides learning about psychic scams, like this one: Exposed: TV's bogus 'psychics', they also learned about other types of scams, such as the ones you can find out about here: An Overview of Consumer Rights (from the BBC). Car Repair Scams. Typical Consumer Cons (Rip-off Tip-off). Classic Cons… and How to Counter Them. Work-At-Home Scams. Phishing Scams. Dealing With Loan Sharks (Consumer information from the UK Government). Consumer Alert | Beware: Predatory Lenders at Work (AARP Bulletin). They could learn about views that astrology has no basis, for instance by studying things like this: The Universe At Your Fingertips Activity: Activities With Astrology. Horoscopes Versus Telescopes: A Focus on Astrology. Astrology or Star Struck. But they could also read perspectives from astrologers, so they weren't just getting one side of things, so it wouldn't be so easy to argue they were being taught to be biased. Or is there a reason why that wouldn't work? Also, in Nigeria where all those children are being accused of being witches and harmed and abandoned by their families, the craze began when there was a popular video made about how children can get involved in witchcraft and do all kinds of things, like leave their bodies at night and go off to covens, or something like that. If a video could have such an impact, I think someone should make a video debunking those beliefs in a compelling way and do their best to popularise it there. It might save a lot of children from harm. |
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#10 |
The Grammar Tyrant
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The bad news is, you'd be completely wrong.
You might end up stopping belief in voodoo and witchcraft in the third world with education, but all you need to do is look at the exponential rise in psychics and astrologers in the past 20 years in the western world to see that education doesn't matter a whit. (not to mention the explosion of paranormal-based tv in the past decade) Social equality has nothing whatsoever to do with it - people want to believe and as people slide off religion, they frequently pick up something equally stupid. |
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#11 |
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But are people being educated about paranormal scams?
Well, at least the really harmful things would probably disappear. The things that are causing the most suffering. Like the examples I gave in my first post. For instance, if modern healthcare was accessible to everyone and people in the third world were educated more about science, people would stop getting scared and going on witch hunts when they or others got ill or a natural disaster happened because they thought someone had cursed them. If they knew illnesses were caused by germs, and had other rational explanations for things, it could even save lives, not only the lives of the people who were getting ill but currently haven't got access to adequate healthcare, but also the lives of people who might otherwise be killed because they were being blamed for causing the problems. At least in the West, people aren't being killed because they're being blamed for supernaturally causing disasters. Another thing that would happen is that people's ignorance couldn't be played on by nasty people who want to commit crimes, who make knowingly false and malicious accusations against people. They couldn't draw people into helping them, or convince them to ignore what they were doing by saying they had it on authority that these people were witches. For more information about the kinds of attacks that go on in the third world, see these articles: Where Superstition, Black Magic Thrive (The Hindu, Apr 2001).
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#12 |
I lost an avatar bet.
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I'll agree and go even further. What's wrong with offending people who believe in psychics? In many states and cities, fortune telling is outlawed. Explaining to students why an outlawed activity is outlawed is a perfectly appropriate activity.
On the other hand, there is a limit to how much progress can be made with this topic, students will talk about things they have seen on TV or things they have seen themselves and may be unwilling to abandon a belief in psychic phenomena. |
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#13 |
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Oh what a relief, you're agreeing with me this time instead of telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm glad you think that Idea's OK then!
![]() So you don't think that parents who were strong believers in psychics might complain to the school or even take their kids out if the teaching was perceived to be anti-psychic? When I suggested children could be educated about ... whatever it was we were talking about in that thread about how a Baptist minister had said women deserved to be beaten, or whatever he said, - my memory isn't that good, - you said education wouldn't work, and one reason was that parents would take their kids out of school if they thought teachers were teaching them things that conflicted with their particular view of Christianity. But then, I suppose the amount of time devoted to teaching each topic would make a difference, if teaching about psychics was only a few lessons in a social development course? Wouldn't schools still be at risk of getting complaints though? If kids were taught that people have been drawn into psychic scams thinking they were only entertainment but then getting caught up in them and defrauded, and read stories from people that happened to, it might make them more cautious about seeing a psychic, even if they still believed a lot of them were genuine, so it would at least cut down on the harm done. |
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#14 |
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Can you provide a link?
ETA: nevermind. I found it.
Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis
Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis
ETA: I may be way off on the number of psychic-believing parents. Here is a poll showing that in educated countries like the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. belief in the paranormal is not small: http://www.gallup.com/poll/19558/Par...ally-Some.aspx Here's my take on your position, BN: - Because curricula is set at the state and city level (in the U.S.), we will have a difficult time convincing a significant number of school boards to adopt the ideas you have outlined. Some topics will draw significant protest. - Even if the ideas are put into widespread practice, I don't think you'll ever get beliefs in the supernatural to drop below 20% in first world countries and below 50% in third world countries. - I agree that education in third world countries is of great importance due the persecution and murder of innocent people. - Achieving a reduction in less educated countries will be exceptionally difficult and will have to be a multi-generational effort. Even if children are convinced, the adults will continue their superstitious beliefs and will die before they give them up. - I have no idea how much this educational effort will cost in uneducated countries, but it will not be small. |
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#15 |
The Grammar Tyrant
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Maybe not at school, but I think you'll find the entire school curriculum is a bit full of other stuff to start on a subject as enormous as the number and type of paranormal scams in existence and how to deal with them.
That sort of thing is best done by private institutions, and as to whether anyone's currently educating people, there are a few organisations already doing it - CSICOP, various skeptic societies and the James Randi Educational Foundation which runs a forum you should check out. |
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#16 |
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Do some schools have social development-type classes already though? Such things wouldn't have to be a big part of the curriculum. They could just be five or six lessons even, and the one about psychic scams could maybe even be just one. Children wouldn't have to be taught about the whole range of psychic-type scams to become sceptical about them. They'd only need to be warned by listening to a few salutary stories, and maybe given a couple of websites to look over for homework with more on them, and explanations about how some psychic scams are done. That might be enough to make them cautious enough to be less likely to be scammed themselves, and it might make some of them want to find out more about scams.
One of the best articles I ever found about psychic scams was actually on the website of a professed psychic. So it could be put to anyone protesting about the introduction of such lessons that children weren't being taught that all psychics were fakes, just to watch out for scams. There are educational sceptical organisations, but I think it's likely that most of the people who read their articles are already sceptical. The people most likely to be scammed would probably only read such things if they were recommended by a friend. Hopefully, in the third world, if some children learn about rational explanations for things currently put down to the supernatural at school, some of them will pass the knowledge on to their parents and their parents will be convinced. Also, those rationalist/humanist groups who are beginning to educate school children go around to various neighbourhoods holding meetings for everyone about how there are scientific explanations for things commonly considered supernatural. They have had some success in making people more sceptical, and I think some people's lives have been saved as a result. So hopefully they'll carry on and their efforts will increase. It might still take ages, but in one of those articles I linked to, it said the belief in witches is partly being fuelled by a soap opera that was on. If the makers of such things could be persuaded to make one with a storyline in it about rationalist groups persuading villagers not to kill people because they weren't really witches because what they were being accused of really had a scientific explanation, then things might change the other way. If governments got more involved, things might change more quickly. There was a television programme on last week about how billions has been poured into aid for third world countries over the years, meant for them to improve their healthcare systems and other things, but not much has got to the people who need it, because a lot of it has been siphoned off by corrupt officials who've used it to finance luxury lifestyles. If systems were put in place so things could be monitored better to make sure aid was getting to the right places, then maybe healthcare in the third world would improve quite a bit in a relatively short time. And when people had better access to it, and knew their diseases had natural explanations and a lot of them could be cured easily, then their belief that witches were causing their misfortunes would diminish, and so hopefully, that would save a lot of lives. |
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#17 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2006
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I think the idea that superstition or belief in the supernatural correlates with lower socio-economic status is factually not true.
Ever visited a psychic fair? Do you know about the weird beliefs of Prince Charles, Ronald Reagan, and the like? The U.S. is one of the wealthiest nations, yet we are among the most religious/superstitious. Don't misunderstand me--I'm all for improving living conditions world wide. I think that should be a goal for its own sake. I disagree with the prediction that as these conditions improve, supernatural beliefs will disappear. |
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#18 |
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Well, they might not disappear, but I'm sure they'd at least be replaced by less harmful ones. I mean, as I said in about post 4, in Europe in the Middle Ages, there were beliefs about witches that were akin to beliefs in the third world today. People were accused of witchcraft and persecuted and killed, just as they are in some third world countries today. People held similar attitudes, like that they could cause storms to wreck ships and other disasters. I doubt it's a coincidence that at the same time there was advancement in scientific knowledge and improvements in healthcare, such beliefs disappeared, although I don't suppose they were the only factors.
But if education in critical thinking was part of school curriculums, that might help as well. Even at the best schools, it might not be at the moment. |
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#19 |
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I do wish for improved conditions in those places, but I cannot put any credence in the idea that the type of people who believe witches should be stoned to death are prepared to learn anything from their children. Those people will carry that belief to their graves. The only hope is that the next generation can be taught to be more rational.
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#20 |
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The children might not be able to convince the kinds of parents who are actually prepared to do the killing, but the children of parents who might otherwise believe false accusers and so ignore their crimes might be able to convince their parents not to, so the parents will be more likely to report them to the police.
Hopefully witch-hunts will become less and less acceptable in ccommunities where children have passed on information to their parents about the real causes of the things people are being accused of causing by witchcraft. Fear might drive a lot of the tolerance of such behaviour. Hopefully that will be eliminated by education. |
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#21 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2008
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.
From this month's "Free Inquiry "The Big Religion Questions Finally Solved"/ by Gregory S. Paul "Democrary, middle-class security and a scientific outlook constitute a triple threat to faith so powerful that across the first world it is inflicting severe damage upon popular religiosity, except where economic tribullations perpetuate the dysfunction milieu that popular religion must enjoy if it is to thrive." "Across the first world, lower income inequality correlates with lower religiosity." "With its low taxes, relatively high rate of poverty and huge disparity between incomes of the poor and rich, the United States displays greater income disparity than any other industrialized democracy." "It is no coincidence that religiosity is low in every first-world nation with universal health coverage and high in the only one without it." "Religion, then, has proved able to thrive only in populations where living conditions are sufficiently defective to cause the majority to resort to petioning speculative supernatural power for aid." It's a good compilation of data with charts as the the state of religion. |
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#22 |
Thinker
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In a word, evolution.
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#23 |
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It is not my goal to simply be a contrarian. I do wish for better conditions in these places. That being said, I think that the scenario you describe is not likely to happen. If a teacher in a village of one or two thousand people begins telling students that there is no such thing as witchcraft, the kind of people who use lethal force to attack alleged witches will beat the crap out of the teacher. Desperation and ignorance are powerful forces in third world countries. A concerted and organized effort may eventually reduce or eliminate the murder of accused witches, but it will take years, probably decades of work.
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#24 |
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#25 |
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You're probably right.
There are small humanist/rationalist efforts now to teach children that things commonly attributed to witchcraft have natural causes. They hope to do more of it. I don't know how they're avoiding being beaten to death by people who don't want that kind of information being taught to children, when so many other people who are standing up against other oppressive traditions are being harmed. And I suppose if parents start opposing people like witchdoctors who declare people witches and make money from such things, they themselves might be in danger of being accused and harmed. I don't know how that could be got around. Maybe the only thing that'll really help is if large projects happen all at once, such as if big government hospitals are built that have so much prestige that witchdoctors can't discredit them with propaganda because they're worried about losing business, and where people are treated successfully so they realise there are modern scientific treatments and scientific explanations for their problems so they can tell they're not being caused by witches. |
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#26 |
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I can agree with that. When a country has a functioning health care system, a non-corrupt and widely situated police force, and a non-corrupt military to support the police, then the government can make significant progress when working with outside and domestic rationalist/humanist organizations to focus the public school system and private entities (television stations) on the goal of eliminating superstition-based violence.
Progress can be made before all that happens, but one has to be careful given that some people may have a vested interest in perpetuating the ignorance that leads to these crimes. I agree with you that this is a laudable activity and it deserves our support. |
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#27 |
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Just to add a small point to Ladewig's post. You also need lots of outside contact. It does not matter if people go outside the community and see people having different beliefs or people with different beliefs coming into the community or both. Once that happens people will start questioning their own beliefs.
Things will change when the things ladewig has mentioned has happened. |
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#28 |
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#29 |
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#30 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Joe, it's a multi-page article, well worth the reading, but in essence its premise is security in life; economic and physical, leads to a lessened need to invoke the supernatural for assistance with reality.
All the first world nations except the US are for all intents non-theistic. The standards of living there have brought this about. The US "anomaly" is due mostly to the large gap between the haves and the have-nots. This gap isn't as great in the other first world nations. |
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#31 |
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Joe, it's true that some wealthy and influential people rely far too much on astrologers and people like that. But you never hear of things like this happening in the developed world:
Planetary Panic Leaves Town Deserted.
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#32 |
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Well desperation is a step beyond being not being completely secure...
It's not exactly uncommon knowledge that when people are in desperate situations and in dire straits they often choose to engage in wishful thinking and believe in a world where the laws are a little more flexible... INRM |
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#33 |
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Indeed. This thread's about what can be done about the direst of such consequences. You can find out examples of what those are by reading the thread.
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#34 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Did everyone feel a strong desire to go west last night?
With the Moon, Venus and Jupiter this "close" to each other, just imagine the forces on your Chi! |
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#35 |
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I will agree with this. When people are exposed to conflicting point of view to their own they may start questioning their own point of view. The internet is one way to get other points of view. Of course you need to be able to read to use the internet or books.
Cheap printed books were the one of the first ways used to combat woo (I am think of fighting the Catholic church as my example). |
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#36 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 1,147
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Might as well throw people who go to church or believe in god/relegion into the premise as well.
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#37 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 2,381
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There's an interesting article called Rapture and Renewal in Latin America which says there's been a huge rise in Pentecostalism there in the past sevearal years, and talks about the benefits and drawbacks of it from a social point of view.
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#38 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 1,147
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Consider this. A belief in the supernatural cuts across virtually all of human existence. But it was perhaps strongest in Hunter Gathering times. If desperation fuels a belief in the supernatural then we must assume that our ancient ancestors were mired in desperation. I don't believe this is the case at all. I am of the opinion that there is far more desperation in the modern world than in ancient times (read pre agriculture). Was life ever easy? No and I don't imply that it was. However basic needs were met directly which if nothing else adds to a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Furthermore its been speculated that humans spent only about 4 hours in the day meeting their basic needs. Compare that stress level with modern times and expectations. So within the construct of ancient culture there arose a belief in the supernatural. Why? As a means to explain existence and as a means to enrich the open time after basic needs were met. After all what were they supposed to be doing in their free time? Washing the car, mowing the lawn, or fixing the lawn mower? I do not believe that the roots of belief in the supernatural stemmed from desperation and there are many many non desperate people who believe in the supernatural.
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#39 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 2,381
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Well, perhaps this thread could be more accurately titled "Desperation fuels belief in the most harmful aspects of the supernatural".
People in those days may well in part have developed beliefs in the supernatural to explain all the things they couldn't understand. Supernatural explanations might have seemed the only logical ones for things like why the seasons changed, why it rained, why plants grew, and so on. But there was more to it than that. In the absence of effective medical care for a lot of things, when they got ill, feeling otherwise helpless to do anything about it, they would want to appease the forces that seemed beyond their understanding that were harming them, and control them. When there wasn't much food around and they were going hungry, instead of just feeling helpless about the situation, they'd want to try to ingratiate themselves to forces that seemed beyond their control, who might be able to improve their food supply. In fact, sacrificing things, including humans, sometimes children, was apparently well-known in a lot of ancient cultures, and sacrifices apparently increased in times of hardship, like when harvests failed. Human sacrifice still goes on today in some places. See, for instance: Indian couple sacrifice boy, 7, to ward off evil spirits.
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#40 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 1,147
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Of human sacrafice it still goes on even without supernatural reasoning. We're sacraficing lives at the moment in the middle east and it doesn't need a supernatural reason to go on. Lives will always be sacraficed lives are expendable like it or not. Take a look around and look at the expendability of lives, the human condition reeks of it.
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