What Does it Mean to be Gullible?:
Gullibility is an affliction which is no respecter of class, religion, gender, or race. Gullibility is a widespread product of people’s failure to properly apply reason, logic, and skepticism to a claim or idea. Unfortunately, the worse a person is at doing this, the less likely they are to realize it; indeed, they can be among those who think they do the best. As a consequence, gullibility festers and encourages the development of false, irrational, and even dangerous beliefs.Afterlife, Life After Death, Souls, Reincarnation:
A very popular form of gullibility involves the belief in an afterlife: that life goes on after the death of the physical body. Usually this involves belief in souls; sometimes it involves reincarnation (another physical life). Belief in an afterlife requires believing that some “essence” of our identity survives the death of the brain. Who we are depends upon our memories and personality; all evidence indicates that both depend upon the physical brain. When the brain dies, they die too.Ghosts & Apparitions:
Closely connected to belief in an afterlife is belief in encountering the spirits of those who have physically died. This form of gullibility includes belief in ghosts, poltergeists, and hauntings of various sorts. No investigations of alleged ghosts or hauntings have turned up any solid, reliable evidence that such spirits really exist. Lots of frauds, hoaxes, and mistakes have been revealed, though. In any given case, the chances of a fraud or mistake are higher than the truth of the claim.Astrology:
One of the oldest forms of organized gullibility is the idea that the course of a human life is influenced by celestial bodies and/or can be predicted by observing stars, planets, etc. Forms of astrology date back millennia, and all are completely worthless. There is no statistical or empirical evidence for any claims for astrology and there is certainly no logical or scientific basis for believing that our lives are connected to the movements of constellations and planets. Read More...Alternative Medicine & Faith Healing:
Disease and death are continual human concerns, so naturally human gullibility is manifested in attempts to stave them off. Some people believe that religious faith will heal them, a fact upon which many charlatans prey. Even more believe that herbs and techniques have curative powers solely on the basis of anecdotes. Scientific medicine is based upon testing and evidence; without testing and evidence, claims about a treatment’s effectiveness are speculation at best.UFOs & Alien Abductions:
In America, at least, a popular form of gullibility revolves around the idea that aliens visit Earth and, at least occasionally, abduct humans for experiments. A UFO is an unidentified flying object; gullible believers think that they can identify some objects as alien craft. There is no hard evidence for either the visits or the abductions, though. Not only would such visits be technologically implausible, but there are more mundane explanations for these claims which better fit the evidence.Psychics, ESP & Parapsychology:
Much time and effort is wasted on the gullible belief in various paranormal powers: telekinesis, telepathy, and other forms of extra-sensory perception. Parapsychology is a field devoted to the study of psychics and paranormal powers; thus far, all it’s managed to produce is a long history of fraud and hoaxes. In the rare cases where parapsychology manages to uphold rigorous scientific standards, the results demonstrate no statistical or empirical evidence for the alleged powers. Read More...Weeping Icons & Religious Visions:
A popular form of religious gullibility involves the veneration of icons that weep or bleed and images of religious figures miraculously appearing in places like on the sides of buildings or on food. The weeping and bleeding icons have been consistently revealed as hoaxes. Images of religious figures can be found anywhere so long as one looks hard enough for patterns — it’s nothing more than a religion-fueled search for faces and shapes in clouds.Alternative Archaeology & Cryptozoology:
Just about every science has pseudoscientific parasites that feed off its scientific credibility and fuel people’s gullibility. Cryptozoology is the “study” of nonexistent creatures like Bigfoot and the Yeti. Alternative archaeology is the study of ideas such as how ancient astronauts helped create ancient human civilizations or how ancient cultures actually had more sophisticated scientific knowledge than mainstream archaeology will admit.Does it Matter if People are Gullible?:
One might wonder whether it really matters if people are gullible and believe so many things without or despite contrary evidence. Even if the evidence and arguments against some of these beliefs are incontrovertible, so what? Clearly these beliefs serve some sort of need in people, otherwise they wouldn’t be so popular. Whether people derive pleasure or comfort from them, why not let them be? Why insist on critical, skeptical evaluations which make believers feel anxious and insecure?Such points might have more merit if gullibility never did any harm and baseless beliefs never had any real impact outside the belief itself. The truth, however, is that habits of gullibility cannot be restricted to just a few isolated beliefs in a person’s life. If a person develops a habit of accepting claims without requiring commensurate evidence and reason to back that claim, then such habits of thinking will necessarily influence their approaches in areas like politics and social policies — and this affects us all.
Even if we set this aside, however, gullibility can still have negative effects for believers themselves and it’s justified to be concerned about this. Belief in the efficacy of untested medicines, especially those relying on “faith,” can prevent a person from obtaining reliable medical treatment in a timely fashion. False beliefs about stars controlling one’s destiny can prevent one from trying to take personal responsibility for what happens to them. False beliefs matter because truth matters, and gullibility matters because the only reliable method for consistently arriving at the truth, or at least closer to the truth, is by relying upon science, reason, and logic.
