50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True

by Harrison, Guy P.

  Angels are interesting and popular, of course, but no one should shy away from the most important question of all: How do we know these beings even exist in the first place? The answer is that we don't know because no one has ever proved it in a scientifically credible way that others could verify. The best “evidence” for angels are a few blurry photos and eyewitness accounts, no better than the evidence we have for fairies, ghosts, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and alien visitations. One certainly can understand why people would want to believe in angels—guardian angels in particular. Who wouldn't like having an invisible flying superhero hovering just above you to provide magical protection day and night? It seems reasonable to suspect that many people who claim to have a guardian angel intervene on their behalf have chosen to inject a supernatural element into natural events based on nothing more than imagination. I have had near misses in traffic, I've been in a few very scary situations alone in faraway places, and I once found my way after being lost in the wilderness. But I'm not convinced that guardian angels exist, so it never occurred to me to credit one when I got out of a tight spot and things worked out well. If I did believe in them, however, I probably would go around citing some of the more dramatic events of my life as “proof” that I have a guardian angel. Claiming that an invisible angel saved you from danger is nothing more than a matter of loosely interpreting and embellishing real events to fit into the context of prior beliefs. But not all angel believers rely solely on imaginative interpretations. Some people claim to have seen angels.

  Undoubtedly people really have experienced powerful visions and even feelings of contact or intervention by something unusual. I have no doubt that many of these people are sincere about what they experienced. The problem, however, is that we can't be sure what the actual experience was, and that's why claims of contact with angels require a skeptical reaction. Given all that we know about the frailties of human vision, the reality of sleep paralysis, hallucinations, the power of suggestion, as well as the constructive and fallible nature of memory, claims of encounters with angels are just not good enough to qualify as proof. We need more in order to know for sure that angels exist.

  GO DEEPER…

  Nickell, Joe. Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995.

  Witchcraft is all around us. We must be vigilant and protect ourselves against it.

  —Cayman Islands preacher

  Magical thinking is a slippery slope. Sometimes it is harmless, other times quite dangerous.

  —James Randi

  I would describe myself as well above average in patience and optimism. No matter how unlikely a weird claim or story is, I'm usually able to summon up the necessary good manners and mental stamina to give it a fair hearing. I'm also optimistic about the future of humankind. There are no guarantees, of course, but my hunch is that the next thousand years will be better for most and less crazy for all than the last thousand years were. I do confess, however, to occasionally wrestling with some very negative thoughts about what tomorrow holds for humanity. There are moments, for example, when I literally feel ashamed to be associated with such a horrible and pathetic species. Sometimes I can't help doubting that we will ever free ourselves from the weight of ancient superstitions and irrational fears that have us so hobbled today. I struggled with such negative feelings a few years ago while watching a documentary about “child witches” in Africa. According to the documentary, these children are ostracized, tortured, and murdered by Christians who feared their magic. Maybe, I thought, we just aren't capable of ever escaping the pitfalls that come with these prehistoric brains we all still walk around with. Maybe science won't be enough to show us the way and clear out the cobwebs of our evolutionary past that continue to cloud our minds. Maybe the pleas of scientists and a few skeptics here and there can never win the struggle for reason. Maybe we are doomed to be Homo irrationalist forever.

  Even after all the horrible things I have seen, heard, and read about in my lifetime, I was surprised to learn that tens of thousands of children are persecuted as witches in the twenty-first century. I wondered if the documentary makers had been loose with the facts and exaggerated the problem in order to enhance their film, so I researched the problem. What I found is that it's even worse than the film suggests. These children can be persecuted for no other reason than they have a physical or mental handicap, or simply act or look slightly different in the judgment of an accuser. Even being gifted can raise suspicions. The results of being singled out can be devastating. Parents reject their own children and turn them out into the streets. “Child witches” are more likely to be physically or sexually abused. Many very poor parents take their children to Christian preachers who promise to cure them—for a hefty fee, of course. The “cure” often includes imprisonment, starvation, and beatings. And you probably thought witch hunts were a thing of the past.

  Sadly, tens of thousands of “witches”—children and adults—are still being imprisoned, ostracized, tortured, and murdered on a regular basis in many societies around the world today. Witch believers in Nigeria hammered nails into the head of a little girl in an attempt to drive out the demon of witchcraft. A Nigerian man experienced painful swelling in his legs and concluded that it must be the work of a “child witch” whom he then took to a river and tossed in.1 In 2009, a horrifying but not uncommon incident took place in India's Jhark-hand state when hundreds of people either watched or participated in a public attack on five women who were accused of being witches. In addition to beating them, the mob forced the women to parade around naked and eat human excrement.2 In India's Sonitpur district, a father and his four children were beheaded after an unofficial witch trial held by some two hundred villagers. The mother managed to escape.3 It was reported in December 2010 that several people accused of being witches were murdered in Haiti.4 A family pastor in Africa accused a boy of being a witch, so the father poured acid down his throat hoping to kill the evil spirit. The boy died a month later.5 An eight-year-old girl who liked to sleep outside of her home on hot nights because it was cooler was accused of being a witch and flying off in the dark to join a coven. In addition to being beaten with sticks, this little girl had to endure a series of expensive exorcisms that bankrupted her mother.6 Activists estimate that in just two of Nigeria's thirty-six states some fifteen thousand children have been accused of being witches in recent years and approximately one thousand have been killed. It seems that word about the Dark Ages ending failed to reach all of us.

  Skeptics point out that no one has ever scientifically proven that the popular concept of magic is a real force or that the traditional laws-of-nature-defying version of a witch exists. Nevertheless, witches and magic do matter, if only because people have believed them into relevance. I have seen the fear of witchcraft firsthand. It's a real force, even if the actual magic is not. While I lived in the Caribbean, sincere, concerned people often warned me about the dangers of “obeah,” the preferred name for magic in many Caribbean societies. I recall one of my first assignments as a journalist in the Cayman Islands was to report on a frog with a padlock clipped through its mouth that someone left on the courthouse steps. Obeah believers explained to me that it was done to silence a witness in court.

  Cases involving magical spells and witches make up approximately 40 percent of the cases in Central African Republic courts. In one of that nation's districts, witch cases account for more than 50 percent of the caseload!7 Magic belief is not only dangerous, it also can be costly and time consuming. For some people magic is harmless entertainment (Harry Potter books and films, for example), for others it's part of a life philosophy or religion. For too many people, however, magic is about fear, exploitation, and violence. The cost is too high, in my view, for the rest of us to look the other way. Can we really afford to sacrifice so much time, money, and bloodshed over unproven magic? Can we really live with knowing that “witches” are still being burned alive?

  Don't make
the mistake of thinking that this particular strain of madness only involves poor people in the developing world. Watch one of the fundamentalist Christian television networks in America and sooner or later you will hear that witchcraft presents a clear and present danger to us all. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for the vice presidency of the United States, apparently believes that witches possess dangerous powers because she participated in a church ritual designed to protect her from them.8 A primary problem with all of this is that the majority of the world's people accept and promote a magical worldview, even if they don't condone the witch hunts that sometimes stem from it. It would be beneficial if more people recognized that a direct line can be drawn from casual and seemingly harmless belief in miracles, astrology, ghosts, and so on to the murder of people who are thought to be witches. All these irrational beliefs grow from the same mind-set. All these irrational beliefs can be beaten back by skeptical thinking—including the one that says witches are dangerous and must be killed.

  WITCHES ARE PEOPLE TOO

  According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 21 percent of Americans believe in witches.9 This is strange because it seems to suggest that 79 percent of Americans are clueless about the obvious existence of witches. Of course witches exist! They have books, websites, they appear on talk shows, and one of their belief systems, Wicca, is legally recognized in the United States. No one, especially skeptics, should ever embarrass themselves by saying that witches aren't real. I can vouch for the existence of witches because I've met a few over the years. Witches may not soar across the night sky on brooms, but they do work in shopping malls, take university classes, and attend PTA meetings. People who identify themselves as witches and adhere to Wicca, a belief system based on supernatural magic, are not significantly different from people who call themselves Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Hindus and adhere to a belief system based on supernatural beings and powers. Modern-day witches have a lot of negative propaganda heaped on them, but if one looks into what they actually say and claim to stand for, it's clear that the vast majority are nothing like the Satanworshipping, animal-sacrificing menaces to society that so many followers of mainstream religions accuse them of being. There are no logical or fair reasons that Wiccans should not be afforded the same level of respect and their claims viewed as no more or less credible than those of people who follow mainstream religions.

  Michelle Mead is a US Navy veteran and longtime witch who says she casts “spells” often but rarely “hexes” people. She told me that Wicca is positive and helps her to be a better person. “The biggest misconception about witches that people have is that we are evil and deal with the devil,” Michelle told me. “The biggest misconception about Wicca is that we are a bunch of free-love types that engage in a lot of group sex. A lot of people think that we fling spells and hexes about indiscriminately. My faith provides me with some very valuable spiritual tools that enable me to consistently evolve as a spiritual being. Also, it could be said that most people think we are flakey and weird—but I can't say that's a misconception.”10

  From the skeptic's perspective, a basic problem for modern-day witches is the same one religious people face: claims of supernatural events, forces, and powers are unproven to date. Of course, this detail doesn't seem to bother most other religious people, so it probably doesn't bother most witches. Personally, I don't mind so much if someone believes in magic and calls herself a witch. But I do care very much about people—especially children—who are mistreated or killed due to the irrational fear of witchcraft. The number of people worldwide who are exploited, abused, and murdered after being labeled as witches is one more powerful argument for skepticism and critical thinking skills. The more people in the world who at least have some doubt about the reality of witchcraft, the less people there may be who think it makes sense to hate and harm fellow humans for it. Of course, we should also address the problem of witch phobia from the other side of the equation by demanding that people respect the basic right of others to think and believe whatever they wish. Christians certainly didn't like it when they were the ones being tortured and murdered in ancient Rome. Why do it to others now? Of course, respecting other people and accepting their personal choices would require humankind to grow up. Sadly, we aren't quite there yet.

  GO DEEPER…

  Who needs magic? As the following sources show, science and reality are every bit as exciting as unproven claims about supernatural forces.

  Books

  Calder, Nigel. Magic Universe: A Grand Tour of Modern Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

  Kaku, Michio. Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension. New York: Anchor, 1995.

  Kaku, Michio. Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100. New York: Doubleday, 2011.

  Kaku, Michio. Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel. New York: Anchor, 2009.

  Krauss, Lawrence M. Beyond Star Trek: The Physics of Star Trek, The X-Files, Star Wars, and Independence Day. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1998.

  Nelson, Sue, and Richard Hollingham. How to Clone the Perfect Blonde: Using Science to Make Your Wildest Dreams Come True. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2004.

  Panek, Richard. The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

  Turney, Jon. The Rough Guide to the Future. London: Rough Guides, 2010.

  Vyse, Stuart A. Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

  Other Sources

  Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (DVD), Revelations Entertainment, 2011.

  Atlantis continues to captivate people's imaginations because it offers the hope that lost ideals or some untapped human potential will someday be uncovered, not the masonry blocks of a dead civilization. Scrying for crumbled roads in Bimini or poring over the outline of some terra incognita on a forged map ignore the real Atlantis, the undiscovered country of human ideals.

  —Kevin Christopher

  Some people may think that the lost city/continent of Atlantis shouldn't be included in a book like this. After all, it's been discovered countless times, hasn't it? But it does belong here, of course, because—despite repeated claims of its discovery—we still don't know where Atlantis is or if it ever even existed. Not surprisingly, such pesky details have not stopped millions of people from believing it's down there somewhere. In fairness to the public, it's easy to be misled given the way new reports of the lost continent's discovery or near discovery keep coming, year after year. Here is a small sample of eyecatching headlines that reputable news sources saw fit to place atop reports that ultimately proved unfounded: SATELLITE IMAGES “SHOW ATLANTIS,”1 ATLANTIS “OBVIOUSLY NEAR GIBRALTAR,”2 TSUNAMI CLUE TO ATLANTIS FOUND.3 But there is something interesting about such recurring reports: Atlantis has never been found.

  The weird claims about advanced technology, crystals, and paranormal powers attached to Atlantis mean its existence is unlikely. Some believe, for example, that magical or at least highly sophisticated survivors from the sunken city migrated to other continents and founded great civilizations such as Egypt and Greece. Charles Berlitz, the same writer who stirred up belief in the Bermuda Triangle, also wrote Atlantis: The Lost Continent Revealed. Berlitz goes so far as to promote the belief that the people of Atlantis possessed nuclear weapons many thousands of years ago and it was a large-scale nuclear war that destroyed their culture!

  The citizens of Atlantis are widely believed today to have been not only highly advanced but extraordinarily wise and peaceful as well. Atlantis was not merely a great ancient culture, it was a utopia inhabited by angelic superbeings. This directly contradicts the original source of the Atlantis story, however. Greek philosopher Plato wrote that the people of Atlantis were warlike and lacked the sense to avoid
their own demise.

  One version of the story is that surviving slaves from Atlantis are our ancestors. They settled around the world and attempted to recreate Atlantis culture and technology after the disaster but failed because they just weren't smart enough. The troubled and divided world we see around us today is the result of their fumbled attempts.

  Despite the absence of good evidence for any of these claims, Atlantis remains a popular belief today. A 2006 Baylor study found that 41.2 percent of Americans believe in the existence of “ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis.”4 A study on pseudoscientific beliefs in America's classrooms revealed that 16 percent of high school science teachers believe in Atlantis.5

  Many skeptics scoff at the mere mention of Atlantis and can't resist berating those who dare bring it up. I'm a bit more nuanced in my rejection of the Atlantis claim. No, I don't think the remains of a superadvanced high-tech city are submerged somewhere out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Nevertheless, my mind is wide open to the likelihood of many stunning discoveries yet to come from marine archaeology. This is partly because of an enlightening interview I did with Bob Ballard a few years ago. Ballard is the underwater explorer who discovered the Titanic and life-supporting hydrothermal vents in the deep waters of the Galapagos Rift. He was bubbling with enthusiasm about marine archaeology and left a lasting impression on me about the promise of underwater discoveries. Ballard believes many amazing finds are likely to be made in the coming years as robot and search technology continues to improve. Imagine, for one example, finding ancient shipwrecks that still contain well-preserved human bodies from thousands of years ago, thanks to anaerobic environments in deep-sea muck. It could happen, says Ballard.6 We have been a seafaring species for a long, long time and there is no doubt that much remains to be found beneath the waves that cover more than two-thirds of our planet's surface. But what about Atlantis? If I'm so excited about underwater archaeology, why do I stop short of believing in Atlantis?