Cherished beliefs

[catsittingstill]

There is a belief in Africa (possibly in other parts of the world too) that children can cause harm to their parents and neighbors using supernatural powers.  People who suspect a child of causing harm with supernatural powers punish the child.  Machetes sometimes feature.  So does acid, drowning, beatings, starvation and burnings.

Some people offer exorcism services to drive the evil spirits out of the children.  Which, it turns out, in addition to being very expensive, also feature machetes, acid, beatings and starvation.

The Independent has an article.
So does the New York Times.
So does CNN
And MSNBC

Of course, suggesting that the supernatural doesn't exist, or that the idea that anyone, much less a child, could cause harm by supernatural means is bollocks, would be mockery.  And some believers resent that rudeness and attack skeptics physically.

Part of the problem here is that well-respected individuals often share these evidence-free beliefs.  Even senior police officers may genuinely believe in witchcraft, leaving the children, and the skeptics who would like to protect them, with nowhere to turn.

So when you're mad at skeptics, because the evidence for a cherished belief some people hold isn't strong enough to convince them yet, remember that a little skepticism can prevent a lot of harm, and that having someone say something that makes you think they think you are dumb when you're not is pretty small potatoes in the larger scheme of things.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"He feels that you're sneering at him and his"

And since the "him and his" included SF fans (as commented on that post, the media at least don't seem to know the difference, and there are indeed a lot of SF fans and readers who also believe in extraterrestrial life and the possibility that it has/does/will visit), the position the sceptic was reported as taking in the TV programme was that we should all "get a life" (see Shatner) and stop wasting our time with fabrications. Which fabrications, of course, include the whole genre of SF.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm an SF fan myself (I think a lot of skeptics are, actually), so if the show (which I didn't see) was sneering at him for that it was sneering at me too.

Which would be art being very unlike life, because I've really had no trouble with people being rude to me because I like SF/F. I've had people tell me *they* don't care for it, of course, but that didn't seem like rudeness to me.

But art is sometimes very different from life, and goodness knows movies and tv shows can be as stylized and not-like-life in their expectations as any kabuki play. So I guess I can picture this.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I and most fans I know have experienced the "getalife" attitude. Sometimes for reading any fiction at all ("Why do you read known fabrication?"), but any 'minority' interest gets it (train-spotters are the stereotypical ones here, and Star Trek fans probably almost equally maligned). Usually, as in his example on TV, regarded as either credulous idiots, nerds, or unemployed/unemployable (generically weirdos). As he pointed out, but the media hardly ever does, most of $maligned_group are in fact 'ordinary' people with a similar distribution of jobs as the rest of the population.

But just as most of the population doesn't know that there are "SciFi Weirdos" among their friends, neither does most of SF fandom know that a lot of their friends are also 'weirdos' -- UFO believers, for example. So I also see 'mainstream' fans who look down on Trekkies and other 'fringe' interests, and who when confronted by someone who they didn't know liked or believed those things say "I thought you were an intelligent person, I didn't know you did/liked/believed X". Where X is things like UFOs, or acupuncture, or religion, or dressing up, or being a furry, or S&M, or whatever the 'superior' person feels is bad or wrong or unbelievable.