Education. Some of that would be nice right about now. Yeah.
Though some of the ID folks would likely point out here that it would be arrogant to privilege materialist assumptions over any other unprovable metaphysical system of explanation, and that we shouldn't be in such a hurry to "correct" anyone.
Although the people who started the Nigerian scam have moved on to selling internet brides, now that their routine has attracted too much publicity. It still ends the same way, though: with kidnapping and blackmail.
It's been said that the alternative to religion isn't atheism but a random belief in anything that happens to come along. Earnest, life-or-death conviction in memes with all the utility and substance of lolcats or Cockmongler. In parts of Africa this ugly picture plays out for real.
Education won't help. I mean, it will eventually, after a generation or two, but the people who believe in this nonsense right now won't be discouraged by being told it's not the case. The only thing I can think of that might help is some even more frantic form of Christianity to denounce the witch-finders as greedy fraudsters.
One could make a fairly good case that the evangelists themselves are witches by all meaningful definitions. They bring evil into the community, suck the money out of it, make people kill and abandon their children, and spread their madness by breaking bread with the uninfected.
If this argument took root and displaced the existing belief it could lead to vigilantism, but given the circumstances I'd only find the resulting murders moderately upsetting.
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lederhosen
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Date: 2007-12-12 06:59 am (UTC)Though some of the ID folks would likely point out here that it would be arrogant to privilege materialist assumptions over any other unprovable metaphysical system of explanation, and that we shouldn't be in such a hurry to "correct" anyone.
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Date: 2007-12-12 07:18 am (UTC)Salem. 1692.
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Date: 2007-12-12 07:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-13 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-12 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-13 08:50 pm (UTC)Education won't help. I mean, it will eventually, after a generation or two, but the people who believe in this nonsense right now won't be discouraged by being told it's not the case. The only thing I can think of that might help is some even more frantic form of Christianity to denounce the witch-finders as greedy fraudsters.
One could make a fairly good case that the evangelists themselves are witches by all meaningful definitions. They bring evil into the community, suck the money out of it, make people kill and abandon their children, and spread their madness by breaking bread with the uninfected.
If this argument took root and displaced the existing belief it could lead to vigilantism, but given the circumstances I'd only find the resulting murders moderately upsetting.