Why do I fight bad thinking?
HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) – An elderly husband and wife were burnt to death in Andhra Pradesh after villagers accused them of practising black magic, tied them together on a pyre and set them on fire, police said on Thursday.
“The aged couple died screaming for help,” said police superintendent P.V. Sunil Kumar.
In many cases, it’s pretty easy to connect uncritical thinking to murdering innocent people.
Ironically, the article goes on:
Belief in black magic is common in some parts of rural India, despite the country’s robust economic growth and cutting-edge high-technology industries.
Why is that ironic? Because I know a lot of Americans will read that and think, "stupid bumpkins" or some such derogatory term, and they forget that just a few nights ago, three out of ten people on stage vying to become President of these United States raised their hands to affirm that they, too, have no qualms dumping centuries of scientific reasoning to embrace fantasy. And the consequences are just as grave.
We are all savage animals, and thinking clearly is hard, very hard. But not thinking clearly comes with a very dear price. Let’s hope soon that everyone gets tired of paying it.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Completely unrel… no, actually, it’s related. I wanted to be the first to tell you, it seems right up your alley…
http://xkcd.com/c258.html
Enjoy
May 6th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Not necessarily related, but apparently there’s some new brand of bottled water in the US being marketed as “Holy Water–not for sinners!” or some such nonsense. A relative of mine said she saw it on the local grocery shelves, and thought it was the dumbest bit of marketing she’d seen in a while. (The young cashier she was talking to in the checkout line agreed, and said she’d quit working there if the store continues to carry the product.*)
Whether or not the water is actually ‘blessed’, whether or not it’s just a joke on someone’s part, it’s catering to a certain mindset that thinks their religion is right over anything else, and it’s using religion as a cheap marketing gimmick. (Someone’s laughing all the way to the bank, I’m sure.)
Yet I’ll bet there are credulous shoppers out there who will flock to the stores to buy this stuff.
*The young cashier’s comment, while a bit extreme, was interesting. She may not carry through with the threat of quitting, but the sentiment is interesting on two counts.
First, it’s interesting to see a young person (early twenties) voice an opinion implying that she’s fed up with religious stuff being crammed down her throat at nearly every turn.
Second, I wonder if her comment is indicative of a trend… might there be a backlash–eventually a very strong backlash at that–to all this ‘religiosity’ America is going through in these times? Might peole get tired of not only politicians, but of anyone trying to force any religion into the mainstream? (Especially younger people, who seem hardwired to rebel against the older generation anyway… this ‘religion in every part of life’ thing in America could give them a cause to take up in their developing quest for independence.)
May 6th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
http://www.xkcd.com/c154.html too
May 6th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
This story has a Heinrich Heine kind of feel about it. The books may only be getting burned metaphorically but the people sure aren’t!
May 6th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
“I know a lot of Americans will read that and think, “stupid bumpkins” or some such derogatory term, and they forget that just a few nights ago, three out of ten people on stage vying to become President of these United States raised their hands to affirm that they, too, have no qualms dumping centuries of scientific reasoning to embrace fantasy. ”
very well said, gonna have to show this one to a few people.
May 7th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Phil – Bravo to you for posting this. You find yourself in the company of some pretty savvy people (Bronowski, Sagan,) in saying these words. As we face the world, no matter who are, lest we forget our humanity, we should all keep an awareness of critical thinking in ourselves.
http://www.ronrecord.com/Quotes/bronowski.html
May 7th, 2007 at 12:43 am
“Not necessarily related, but apparently there’s some new brand of bottled water in the US being marketed as “Holy Water–not for sinners!—
According to http://www.wnbc.com/news/11182645/detail.html sinners are warned that drinking this water may cause them “burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness, vomiting, bloodshot and watery eyes, pale skin color and oral irritations.” !
May 7th, 2007 at 4:09 am
According to God, everyone is a sinner. Doesn’t sound like that water has much of a market.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:36 am
“…have no qualms dumping centuries of scientific reasoning to embrace fantasy.”
I don’t *necessarily* think they are dumping scientific reasoning. I think the assumption in your comment is that they have seen the scientific evidence/reasoning and have chosen to disregard it in favor of fantasy. It may simply be that they have NOT been exposed to scientific information and reasoning or they may have been exposed to it in an inaccurate way.
It is possible that they may have been exposed to a caricature or straw man of science that is then easy to dismiss when their other fantasy “explanations” seem to make more sense.
In short, our conclusions are based upon what we have been exposed to. Garbage in, garbage out.
May 7th, 2007 at 5:43 am
s/extreme/moronic
Someone thinks there’s a market for bottled holy water (this supermarket isn’t in Sunndydale, is it?). They put some money behind it and managed to get a supermarket to carry it. Ultimately the market will decide. No one is cramming the water down anyone’s throat — indeed, the warning on the bottle would seem to be a suggestion for non-believers not to. Do you and the cashier find it equally objectionable when stores carry kosher/hillal foods?
There’s a line — and even a particularly fine one — between opposing crazy religious nutbars who want everyone to believe like them, and opposing innocuous religious displays that don’t affect you in the slightest.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:09 am
“Do you and the cashier find it equally objectionable when stores carry kosher/hillal foods?”
It’s not the same sort of thing. There’s no pretense that non-Jews will be smote by eating of kosher foods. It’s kosher within the doctrine of Judaism, but others are quite welcome and presumed able to safely eat such foods as well. The bottled holy water may be a joke (somewhat like pet rocks, etc.). However, if not, then it’s a despicable tactic to play people like cheap fiddles.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:27 am
test
May 7th, 2007 at 6:31 am
For all the god-fearing, school-curriculum-altering, anti-evolution worship that goes on in Kansas, you’d think their magical invisible sky being would have been kinder to the people of Greensburg.
Or was that town full of Democrats and atheists?
May 7th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Hm, at first i assumed that Holy Water thing was similar to the Wash Away Your Sins products which are a joke. But their website looks like they imagine themselves to be legitimate.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Sean brought up some points that made me realize I need to be a bit more specific with voicing my opinion, so I’ll try to do so now. Hopefully I won’t make things more confusing…
Actually, I think this ‘holy water’ is being marketed nationwide in America. I don’t know if it’s being sold abroad, nor even if any other country would find it marketable in the first place.
I don’t find marketing certain foods certain ways objectionable, though I suppose ultimately I believe it is a bit silly; it really wouldn’t make a difference to anyone who doesn’t practice religion. (In other words, is it edible? Reasonably healthy? Non-lethal? These are standards applicable to all humans everywhere, regardless of any belief system.)
However, marketing a food as Kosher (for one example) in order for people who truly have religious guidelines to follow is different than marketing a food (drink, in this case) as a religious gimmick in order to gain sales by appealing to people’s strange/incorrect/wrong sense of what a religion (Christianity, in this case) is about.
My concern (and apparently the cashier’s, though I wasn’t there to ask her) about this is that it’s yet another way ‘Christianity’ is being worked into every aspect of daily life in America. That’s what I meant by “crammed down her throat”, not that anyone was forcing her to buy and/or drink that particular product. But the worst part is that it’s a symptom of a politicized and/or marketized version of Christianity. I think if many self-proclaimed American Christians actually stepped back and saw what’s being done to and in the name of their religion, they may think long and hard about whether it’s what they truly believe. (Or at the very least, may fight to keep their religion from being perverted or misused.)
Sean said “There’s a line — and even a particularly fine one — between opposing crazy religious nutbars who want everyone to believe like them, and opposing innocuous religious displays that don’t affect you in the slightest.” and that’s actually a very good point whose logic I can’t dismiss. But what may seem innocuos may be symptomatic of a graeter underlying problem. Allow me to elaborate…
Ulitmately, you’re right in that the water display doesn’t affect me directly. I won’t buy it, and I suspect that once the initial flurry has worn off, it will go away, after someone’s gotten incredibly rich off of it.
But I don’t believe it’s a very honest thing to do, not an honest way to use religion, and that is what can ultimately affect all of us. And it’s part of a growing trend in America to force ‘Christianity’ into everyone’s life. I’m not going to bash Republicans here, but the recent Republican presidential candidate ‘debate’ is a very public example (and just one example; this isn’t solely a Republican thing, but more of an American thing) of how some potentially powerful people want to bring religion to the fore in daily life and in politics. Dangerous, that. (Isn’t prayer, for example, supposed to be a private communion between an individual and God? Why then, National Day of Prayer, or prayers around the flagpole and the like? And why invoke God/Christianity in the name of warfare, while criticizing other countries for doing the same with their god/religion?)
And before anyone else asks the obvious, yes, I do know all religion has been, and shall continue to be misused. And one could even argue, as I myself have elsewhere, that religion itself is a misuse of our ability to make ourselves better as both individuals and as a species. But I think I’m dragging this thread off topic a bit, so I’m not going to get into that here. Or perhaps it isn’t off-topic: Quoting Phil’s blog entry: “We are all savage animals, and thinking clearly is hard, very hard. But not thinking clearly comes with a very dear price. Let’s hope soon that everyone gets tired of paying it.”
I did think of a more relevant example relating to this topic, though… Phil also said in this blog entry “…I know a lot of Americans will read that [the story of the black magic executions] and think, “stupid bumpkins” or some such derogatory term…” regarding people in other countries commiting some act in the name of their religious beliefs. I wonder what other countries think of Americans who attend revivals where snake handling and speaking in tongues is a standard practice.
To me, here or abroad, weird practices are simply that: weird. When they harm people, they are wrong.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:56 am
>> I don’t *necessarily* think they are dumping scientific reasoning. I think the assumption in your comment is that they have seen the scientific evidence/reasoning and have chosen to disregard it in favor of fantasy. It may simply be that they have NOT been exposed to scientific information and reasoning or they may have been exposed to it in an inaccurate way.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Something went terribly wrong with the previous post. My comments on the quoted text seem to have disappeared. Here’s what I said (I hope this doesn’t end up being a duplication):
It took me a few moments to realize that you were talking about the Republican candidates rather than the Indian villagers. The same could be said of both.
And in both cases, I don’t think it excuses the respective actions/attitudes. If anything, the wannabe-Presidents are more culpable for their ignorance (or for their cynical pandering to the evangelical constituency), since in this country they at least have the *chance* to be exposed to rational thinking; the same may not be true of the villagers.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:03 am
One more thing about the ‘holy water’, by the way: the warning that it may cause “burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness, vomiting, bloodshot and watery eyes, pale skin color and oral irritations†in sinners is part of the campaign; my relative commented about it when she told me about the thing in the first place. That’s the serious part. My not-so-serious (and hopefully never-comes-true) comment to that warning is this: Sounds like symptoms of tainting or poisoning. Does the FDA need to investigate this?
May 7th, 2007 at 7:12 am
This is amusing.
1. Other faiths? Like maybe Muslims? No wait, they mean denominations.
2. Aren’t Catholics, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox the only denominations that believe in holy water? For many Protestants, their only experience with holy water is via vampire movies.
From the website:
Protect the product during consumption? How? From what? Being thrown onto vampires?
It looks like they’re going for reverse psychology. “Hey, I drink the water and don’t burst into flames, I can’t be that bad.” Now we just need to let Charles Manson try some to test the disclaimer.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:41 am
In Iraq last month, a 17 year old Kurdish girl was stoned to death for having a relationship with a Sunni boy. Nine grown men dragged a little girl into the street and stoned/kicker her to death. For an hour. The video is only now surfacing.
How’s that democracy experiment going, George?
It isn’t just science that’s under assault. It’s basic human rights at every level. I used to tolerate religion at one time. Maybe that was a mistake- tolerating too much BS. Same with politicians. We tolerated too many shenanigans, and now the term “public servant” is merely a novelty to our new aristocratic class.
As for the sales of holy water, maybe we can combine it with homeopathy and increase stocks with high dilution.
Would that work, or would it make baby Jesus cry?
Well, I’m off to draw a cartoon of Mohammad.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:44 am
>> One more thing about the ‘holy water’, by the way: the warning that it
>> may cause “burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes,
>> itchiness, vomiting, bloodshot and watery eyes, pale skin color and oral
>> irritations†in sinners is part of the campaign;
Apart from the lack of “anal leakage”, that’s pretty much how I reacted to potato chips with Olestra.
>> my relative commented about it when she told me about the thing in
>> the first place. That’s the serious part. My not-so-serious (and hopefully
>> never-comes-true) comment to that warning is this: Sounds like
>> symptoms of tainting or poisoning. Does the FDA need to investigate this?
Now *there’s* a separation of church and state test case if I ever saw one.
May 7th, 2007 at 7:59 am
So couldn’t a person simply denounce the holy spirit (which seems to be the ONLY upardonable sin) and then drink the water, pour it over thier heads, and wash their nether regions in public view and show all witnesses the false claims being made by the product?
Holy water has as much effect as prayer (although studies show that prayer can actually be bad for you!)
May 7th, 2007 at 9:03 am
I’m pretty sure, although, FSM forgive me but I can’t find it now, there was a study that showed that the standard holy water font that you would find in a catholic church is a relatively disgusting cesspool of bacteria due to all sorts of random people dipping their fingers in and anointing themselves.
Since there is a labelled warning to sinners, I would think that would count as a medicinal claim that should interest whoever looks into such claims.
And, IIRC, doesn’t the Bible say we’re all sinners, and that even though accepting jeebus as your saviour gets your sin forgiven on the judgement day, you’re still a sinner. Therefore shouldn’t everyone explode or whatever when they drink it?
May 7th, 2007 at 9:29 am
These warnings about the Holy Water sound a lot like the warnings on the MSDS for dihydrogen monoxide:
http://www.dhmo.org/msdsdhmo.html
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html#DANGERS
May 7th, 2007 at 9:47 am
What’s really funny is that the two most militant, expansionist religions on the planet are derivatives of an exclusionist religion(Judism), one into which you must be born.
I wonder how that happened???
As an avowed agnostic/mystic/Deadhead sinner of massive repute, I volunteer to be the first to shower under the so-called holy water, just to see if anything advertised happens. If nothing happens, does that mean I am the second coming???
(,,,or something like that,,,)
Gary 7
May 7th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Hence the “burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness, vomiting, bloodshot and watery eyes, pale skin color and oral irritations.â€
May 7th, 2007 at 10:49 am
How about we distribute an oral contraceptive as “Holy Water?”
It’d take a while, but eventually we’d be rid of them.
Just a thought.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Don’t know why but that statement conjures up memories of Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life one of the early songs.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:45 am
No, Evolving Squid, it’s Divine retribution for Kansas. Don’t forget that they voted out the righteous members of the state school board that were trying to save Kansas students from the evils of evolution….
May 7th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
>>> How about we distribute an oral contraceptive as “Holy
>>> Water?†It’d take a while, but eventually we’d be rid of them.
Wait, wait, wait… are you implying religion is inherited?
This is Skepticland, buddy. I’m gonna need a cite.
It’s a meme, not a gene. Hey, there’s a bumper sticker there somewhere.
“Give a citiation or receive one”
May 8th, 2007 at 1:42 am
I didn’t think you were meant to drink Holy Water anyway. Isn’t it just for splashing about? The Holy Water types drink wine don’t they? Ah well, whatever.
The whole thing is just a big scam playing on the stupidity of a mentally challenged section of the population. I’d feel sorry for them if they weren’t the ones trying to force their crackpot beliefs on the rest of us.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:12 am
“Holy Water not for sinners” ? The Bible says we are all sinners according to God’s definition of it. The Ten Commandments, a listing of “dont’s”. Who has never lied or coveted, for example? And other sins.
May 8th, 2007 at 9:33 am
I am shocked that things like this can go on in modern times now it would be simple to beleve that this is just the work of superstitious people but ther is somethin more at work then just the belief in black majic .it is the histerya and feer that we all have of the enemy within
we have seen it in our own crountry in the salem witch trials but even in our own time inocent people have suffered because of a feer of a enemy within that had nothing to do a belief in majic .in the 50s we had macarthyism and feer of comunism many inocent people had ther lives destroyed on the accustion that thew they were comunists and after 911 even thro only a few moslems are terroists ther is ongoing wicth hunt in witch every person who followes Islam is suspected . In lesser known incicdents in the 50s in several towns in america people claimed that a manaic was puping poision gas into ther homes this turned out to be not true in the 80s several daycare workers were worngly convicted of molesteing children and thes had nothing to do superstion like this incendient it had to do with feer and hysteria.
May 9th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
It’s not just India – happens all the time in South Africa too. Last month a 70 year old woman, her 56 year old daughter and her grandson were hacked to death by a machete wielding mob because of witchcraft accusations.
People accepting a concept such as witchcraft without requiring any real proof that it exists, directly leads to them being able to accept that someone is a practitioner of witchcraft without requiring any real proof that they are. And that’s why we need to fight superstition.
May 9th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
oh, and one more thing – the story i just wrote about only made it to page 13 of the local paper. Interpret that fact as you will, but I know it sickens and saddens me almost as much as the crime itself.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
The truth is the vast majority of religious leaders in this country have little or no real education, but they yield a dangerous amount of power and influence in society and politics. This is something the founding fathers warned us about, which we seem to have forgotten.
Unless we find a way to stop the blind adoption of parental belief systems by increasing the depth in the teaching the objective and neutral truth of science the scientific method, we are doomed to repeat history.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
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