There is no factual basis to believe that damp feet cause colds, Santa and the Easter Bunny are real, “You have been chosen to inherit the millions of dollars of gold left in an airport locker in Lagos, Nigeria”, good people go to Heaven, or that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
No facts, no truth.
Of course, as human beings, we are entitled to believe whatever we want, even if we know our beliefs don’t hold water. Someone sage once said, “In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is either true or becomes true.” Basically, if we want to believe in something, then we can.
Prayer is a good example. Religious people pray all the time for good luck, the curing of cancer, that a hurricane will divert from its path, that their son in the military will be spared from injury or death, and such. The idea of prayer is that God is “listening” and can dole out His Grace if he is so inclined. Typically, He is not, but on occasion something good happens, all credit goes to God, and belief in the Almighty is bolstered.
True believers in God have been taught that “God has a plan”, so that accounts for the genuine, desperate prayers that aren’t answered. An example might be the six million Jews who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. One can only imagine all the prayers being uttered in those ovens at Auschwitz, just before the Zyklon B cannister was dropped. Those were God’s “chosen people” and He ignored those prayers. They must have done something wrong, collectively, to be punished that way… goes the belief. “We promise to be better next time”, say the surviving observant Jews.
That is the beauty of religion: if some good happens, God made it happen; if something bad happens, the Devil did it, the suffering party earned it (by angering God?), or the outcome is not yours to question (ask your priest for a rationalization). A tornado strikes a home killing two adults and two children, but the third child survives. “Thank God!” is the typical response. Question: if God could save the one occupant of the home, why not the others?
Charlie and I watch a lot of “reality” medical shows where patients arrive at the doctor’s office with a long-ignored, obvious problem that should have been treated years ago. The patient says that the reason that he has ignored the tumor is because he “doesn’t believe in doctors”. Whether that is because the guy can’t afford to believe is unknown, but non-belief in the medical profession is most common in poor people.
Medicine is factually-based science. While a doctor is said to be “practicing medicine”, it is not as if he is simply experimenting with his patients; rather, he is utilizing methods, procedures, protocols, and products that have been vetted to make sure that they help the particular malady. In other words, hundreds of years of research by others have contributed to his skill. It is not necessary to “believe” that a cast can help set a broken bone because that technique has been proven millions of times over.
Some people “don’t believe in vaccines”. These people fear that inoculations introduce foreign material into the recipients’ bodies that may cause diseases or medical conditions that are worse than the threat being countered by the vaccine. Some conspiracy theorists believe that vaccines are a way for Big Brother to implant spyware within the body.
Sure, anything is possible, but the promise of vaccines, which have eradicated horrible diseases over the past century, surely outweighs the risk of bodily contamination. Not opting for vaccination, on the basis of spurious claims and fears, would be like refusing to wear an automobile seat belt because it might trap the motorist when he has survived a nasty accident and can’t get out of his burning car. That is a possibility, but it is much more likely that in such an incident, the seat belt would have enabled the driver to survive the impact, rollover, etc. The historical record proves that seatbelts save lives, just like horrible diseases that have been miraculously banished once the population has been appropriately vaccinated.
Recall the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the refusal by many boneheads to wear a mask in public to help limit the spread of the virus. Publicly-available masks were certainly not game-changers in their own right (hence the “I don’t believe in masks”), but they were a component of disease prevention including social distancing, washing of hands, minimizing indoor exposure, and receiving vaccinations as soon as they were available. In my city, which has a high percentage of elderly, compliance with recommended anti-virus protocols was nearly 100 percent and the disease did not get a foothold.
My neighbor Marcus is the only person I know who died from Covid. He and his wife, who were early pandemic-deniers, went to a superspreader event in Arkansas in 2020 in which most of the crowd wasn’t being safe, ninety percent of them got Covid, and several died.
The Covid-19 experience revealed that many people have a proclivity for “believing” wacky conspiracy theories and, therefore, justifying non-cooperation with disease prevention measures. Many people wanted to believe that there was a magic pill, already available, that could cure the coronavirus and return society to normalcy without further ado. Hence, the Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin “miracle cures” that were pushed by impatient folks, President Trump included. That these drugs weren’t effective for Covid-19, according to scientific study, didn’t matter to the proponents, because it gave the people who wanted to believe in magic one more excuse to adhere to their conspiracy theories about the pandemic simply being an elaborate hoax. “The medicine’s out there and Dr. Fauci won’t let us use it! We could reopen the economy today, dammit!”
One million Americans died from the Covid-19 me the “hoax”, according to death records. Then, of course, comes the “belief” by the conspiracy folks that the toll was much less because, theoretically, every person dying in hospitals were claimed to be victims of the coronavirus. Historical records on mortality in the U.S., going back a century, prove this to be false. However, contrarians can believe whatever they want, particularly when politics is involved.
Belief can be gamed by charlatans and grifters. Non-skeptical folks, who really want to believe, are often manipulated by clever salesmen, con men, politicians and spiritual leaders. P.T. Barnum, a very successful huckster and circus promoter, said, “There’s a sucker born every minute!” They are suckers because they are willing to suspend disbelief to get the supposed deal of a lifetime or such. I think P.T. also admitted that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.
When a politician is campaigning, for example, he may claim that his election will result in lower taxes (for whom?), increased law and order (at who’s expense?), and draining the swamp in Washington D.C. (exchanging the current lobbyists with his favorites?). White lies, all of them, but hey… these are politicians, and the only thing that a Doubting Thomas needs to see is the guy’s lips moving to know he is being lied to.
Serial believers (diehard Party loyalists) only need to see what party the guy represents to convince them of “the truth”. I am an Independent voter, so I take with a grain of salt any promise made by any politician of any party.
As the old saying goes, “If something seems to good to be true, it is”. I recall a televangelist who did big events with thousands of followers (believers) in attendance. He claimed, among other things, that he could cure medical problems like blindness, cancer, lameness, and so forth by calling forth God’s assistance. Of course, he was a salesman intent on getting lots of donations to his ministry (supposedly God told him that he needed a new Gulfstream). One of the Reverend’s tricks, which was revealed in a CBS documentary, was to seat some of the overflow crowd (healthy folks) in wheelchairs up on the stage. At some point in the sermonizing, the televangelist commanded that one or more of the wheelchair-bound individuals (presumably healthy) “get up and walk “… which they miraculously did. Donations poured into the ministry thanks to the phony miracle and the gullible believers watching on TV.
Gullibility seems to be inversely proportional to education. Religion, in particular, seems to be strongest in areas of poverty and minimal education. For the unwashed masses, with lack of funds or crappy schools limiting them, the future is daunting, with the economic success deck stacked against them. Moving up in society and enjoying the fruits thereof is a pipe dream for these people. Religion tells these folks, “No problem. When you die, you will go to Heaven and everything up there will be wonderful.” Some believers, particularly cult members, have actually committed suicide to hasten the process.
It’s no wonder that the Deep South, the so-called Bible Belt, is also the least-educated region in the United States. Unfortunately for America, our politics is driven by issues near and dear to the hearts of Southern believers, like the perceived threats to religion (“they’re trying to outlaw Christianity”), White supremacy (“wokeness”), the Second Amendment (“they’re trying to take away my guns!”), and border security (“Mexicans illegals are rapists and murderers”).
In politics, these supposed threats don’t have to be real; they only need to incite the rage of the audience (the true believers) to get people to the polls and vote out the incompetents, the Communists, and the satanists who are out to ruin God’s country.
My own beliefs are based on research, experience, and common sense. And, they’re changeable when some new information surfaces to prove me wrong. “Beware the man of one book” is an old proverb that warns against beliefs based upon scanty, and possible tainted, information. The latter is a big problem nowadays, as some media outlets (Fox News, for example) have purposely exchanged shock-value entertainment for actual news. Viewers are fed propaganda which, in turn, affects their political beliefs. The more they follow this version of “news”, the more indoctrinated they become, questioning why anyone would have a different opinion.
This is how the “stolen” election got traction. True M.A.G.A. believers, watching Fox News and chatting up the conspiracy theories with their peers, weren’t aware of anyone they knew who voted for the other guy. Therefore, when Biden won the election, there had to have been a flawed electoral process and/or cheating by the other political party.
I have overdosed on “news” for a long time, partly because my career involved information analysis which I used to help elected officials make good policy decisions. I used to read five newspapers per day, but in retirement, with the help of the Web, I now peruse articles from scores of news sources every day. Personally, it is not hard to detect bullshit trying to pass as real news. I particularly don’t follow know-it-alls who bring so-called experts on the broadcast to pound home a point of view. That’s not news, it’s opinion, it’s belief, it’s second-guessing, and it may be pure speculation backed up by zero facts or experience.
If belief is based on hard facts (like sugar is sweet, it is green up in Oregon, and dogs like treats), then I tend to be a true believer. For example, my wife Charlie has been living with me for the past forty-nine years. Does she love me?
I believe she does.