Here in Findlay, a Rust Belt town of 40,000, false rumors about Obama have built enough word-of-mouth credibility to harden into an alternative biography. Born on the Internet, the rumors now meander freely across the flatlands of northwest Ohio
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Faced with polling that shows about one in 10 Americans thinks Obama is Muslim, the candidate's campaign has launched an aggressive effort to discredit rumors and clarify Obama's past.
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"I think Obama would be a disaster, and there's a lot of reasons," said Pollard, explaining the rumors he had heard about the candidate from friends he goes camping with. "I understand he's from Africa, and that the first thing he's going to do if he gets into office is bring his family over here, illegally. He's got that racist [pastor] who practically raised him, and then there's the Muslim thing. He's just not presidential material, if you ask me."
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Said Jeanette Collins, a 77-year-old who lives across the street: "All I know for sure about Obama is that we're not ready for him."
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So far, those who have pushed the truth in Findlay have been rewarded with little that resembles progress. Gerri Kish, a 66-year-old born in Hawaii, read both of Obama's autobiographies. She has close friends, she said, who still refuse to believe her when she swears Obama is Christian. Then she hands them the books, and they refuse to read them. "They just want to believe what they believe," she said. "Nothing gets through to them."
They want to believe what they want to believe... *finish the thought* ...because they are racists. One in ten!? The guy in the story with most of the bullshit is a cop by the way.
"They just want to believe what they believe," she said. "Nothing gets through to them."
ReplyDeleteIf you think about it, you see this in a thousand ways every day about almost everything.
THIS is why so many people are rendered stupid by their own inability to look at evidence and adapt / adjust their world view as a consequence.
THIS is why unfounded belief truly IS the root of all evil, whether belief is in a deity, or the absolute efficacy of markets, or the utility of overwhelming force as a solution to any problem.
Never tell your kids about the tooth fairy. Fsck Santa Claus. You're conditioning your kids to swallow any damn lie from people they trust "just because".
"Never tell your kids about the tooth fairy. Fsck Santa Claus. You're conditioning your kids to swallow any damn lie from people they trust "just because"."
ReplyDeleteWell truthseeker, you are either not a parent, or a parent who wants their children to be adults before their time.
There is nothing wrong with letting children believe in Santa Claus.
When they get older, they become aware that he doesn't exist, and they still grow up well balanced.
Adults who think children should think like an adult do more harm to their children.
anon: Think about it. Is lying to your children the ONLY way to have fun or allow them to be children? You missed the point of comment. However "well-balanced" they may be, I do not want them growing up with the idea that someone they trust and respect has the right to ask for unquestioned belief / faith in anything for which there is no evidence.
ReplyDeleteHow you distort that into wanting kids to be adults from birth is not at all clear. They can have fun with pets, toys and imagine whatever they please. But I'm sorry I implanted the "unfounded belief" meme in my kids heads heads for others to access later and deceive them.
Truth seeker, The point which I agree with you about is that human beings are excellent at coming up with bullshit, and at believing it too. I think that by and large bullshit is tolerated far more in our society than it ought to be. But I also agree with anon when he takes issue with your point about raising children.
ReplyDeleteMy five year old son, since the age of three, has intermittently had episodes where he has burst into tears saying "I don't want to be dead forever". I believe the reason he became so fixated on this is because he has occasionally had arguments with his best friend and his friend has said "I'm going to kill you and then you'll be dead forever". Kind of funny, but not to him. Kids will be kids. They argue and always make up but the idea that entrenched itself in my son's head was that he would eventually die (true) and that then he would be dead forever (also true). And for a long time this thought made him utterly miserable. He would wake up in the night crying. He would burst into tears in the back seat while we were all driving together as a family. And saying "there there, cheer up, be happy" didn't help at all. "But I'm going to be DEAD!!!!"
Now me, I'm a hard-core atheist. I have no time for any sort of bullshit. I want him to grow up to believe that the truth is a thing of value and for me to tell him untruths is nothing but hypocritical. However I'll be damned if I'm going to see him miserable because I'm so pedantic I can't engender some positive spin.
I told him not to worry because I was still alive (and my father too) but being young he is focused on himself and it didn't stop him waking in the night and coming out in tears. Then I told him that some people honestly believe in heaven and an afterlife and I told him that we can't be sure about what happens after death. This gave him pause, and stopped the tears for a while. Well, what I said was the truth, if somewhat evasive, and I don't regret saying that for a second.
When it comes to Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, I have gone through with the charade because it makes him happy. So I am a hypocrite? Perhaps. The thing is, he is quite insightful himself, and he is very good at recognising what is fiction. Eventually I believe he will work out for himself that they are just stories, and learning that something you believed was true is, in fact, false is exactly what I would like him to learn. A lot of adults need to learn that themselves.
The upshot is that I can't blame people who tell their children this is heaven or an afterlife, and I think that if there was a death in the family (parent, sibling) that "lies" of that sort can help with a lot of hurt. It is not stories that cause adults to believe untruths. Problems occur when people don't grow up enough to realise truth from fiction to differentiate between them themselves. My advice is, if you are concerned about children not growing up to be naive and gullible, read them more stories. They will learn the difference between fantasy and reality on their own.
I would leave it there but I've left out a pretty important piece. For whatever reason it wasn't long before he asked me "But do YOU believe in an afterlife daddy?" and I had to say "well, no, I don't, but a lot of people do... take Grandma for instance!". But he decided, and it's probably because I didn't believe it, that he didn't either. And the teary episodes recurred and all the "well nobody knows for sure"s didn't help.
The problem only came to an end when I told him that that medical science might advance to the point where disease and aging (a type of disease anyway if you ask me) are eradicated so that people might live forever, barring accidents, until... well, the little bugger learned that the sun won't last forever and when it does we are all toast but a bit of "who knows what we might have achieved by then" stopped that particular path of concern!... and that it may happen in his lifetime (although I actually think we're several hundred years too early for it, and even then it won't be for everyone, but it is possible). He was quick to figure that it might not happen, but thinking that it also might was enough to help him get over the issue. At least it seems that way - here's hoping.
Feel free to tell me what else I should have done.
My 2c.
Sorry for monopolising this thread by the way. To get back on track, I am personally surprised that it was only 1 in 10. Racism was rife in the US when I was there. If I were Obama I would be very concerned about terrorist attacks... homegrown lone gunmen, not the Al-Qaeda kind.
ReplyDeleteMy 2c.
Truthseeker,
ReplyDeleteDid you teach you kids about Israeli-Palestine relations while you where at it?
Never can be too young to know about the real world.
Did you let them go to school, or did you refuse on the basis that schooling, not education, is just a way of the capitalist system indoctrinating the children into becoming unthinking workers following rules solely based on some arbritrary decision set about by the "authority"
My kids believed in, then grew out of Santa Claus.
They are well balanced with lively imaginations.
They know right from wrong, real from fantasy, and are better people for it.
Imposing your worldview on your young children may make you feel that you are saving your children from being decieved in the future, but who really wants children to grow up with such cynicism.
My 2c - what an excellent and insightful post.
ReplyDeleteAllowing your children to believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the possiblity that dinosaurs may exist undiscovered somewhere on earth, fairies at the bottom of the garden, jesus being born again or extraterrestial life doesn't set up them to believe anything they are told as adults AS LONG AS YOU PROVIDE THEM WITH FACULTIES FOR INQUISITIVE THINKING and nuture such faculties as they are growing up. This is different to a hardcore religious upbringing (or a highly politicised one) where children are taught one version of the truth and not given any mechanisms to question it.
Back on topic...
The USA is much like NZ. Outside of the East (Auckland) and West (Wellington) Coasts and a couple of notable pockets e.g. Austin (Nelson) and Chicago (Dunedin) most the population of the US (NZ) is uneducated, overly religious and hardly the urbane liberal thinkers that Obama appeals to.
^^^ Argox.
ReplyDeleteanon re Israel / palestine: You're off on your own in suggesting I tell wee tots about Israel / Palestine.
ReplyDeleteThere is quite a bit of wriggle room between conditioning kids to believe things that aren't true and inappropriately hot-housing them in geo-political conflict.
Not sure why you're having trouble seeing that.
Sorry truthseeker, but it is you who have trouble distinguishing between harmless childhood beliefs, and religious indoctrination.
ReplyDeleteAnd Santa may have his roots in religion, and even earlier, but chilren really don't care about that, as long as they get presents.
"There is nothing wrong with letting children believe in Santa Claus.
ReplyDeleteWhen they get older, they become aware that he doesn't exist, and they still grow up well balanced.
Adults who think children should think like an adult do more harm to their children."
There is nothing wrong with LETTING them believe in Santa, any more than letting them believe in Elmo.
But there is something greatly wrong with actually lying to your children, at any time. Lying to them about something as needless as the existence of Santa is not only harmful, but sets them up to become bitter atheists.
If the people you trust most can spew bold-faced lies about ONE supernatural entity associated with Christmas, why not the other one?