More thoughts on battling irrational beliefs

We have often pointed to the comments section on our blog as a source of intelligent insight and excellent ideas, and the responses to yesterday’s post about attempting to control the spread of toxic conspiracy theories was no exception. 

MC Spanner pointed out that SRA claimants bear an uncanny similarity to those who fake illness or personal tragedy online to gain attention or financial reward: 

Child abuse is bad enough. Why do these clowns have to try and make is worse by adding SATANIC to it? Anyone who claims to gave been “satanically sexually abused” is the absolute worst kind of attention whore there is…..and they deserve just as much venom spitting as a child molester…..if not more so.
Imagine countless vloggers and bloggers claiming they had had cancer but they were making that up! …..
Or maybe claiming they had a family member knifed to death….just to jump on the latest knifecrime hashtag…..
it really is beyond revolting…..and i wish nothing but pure misery on such pigs who spout this nonsense.
When you have been sexually abused as a child…..the last thing you want to do is exagerate it for attention….let alone vlog about it.

It’s an excellent analogy, though we would note that some SRA claimants do genuinely believe their own stories. This is almost invariably the result of incompetent, poorly trained, or agenda-driven therapists, who use discredited techniques such as hypnosis or EMDR to create what amount to false memories in their unfortunate clients. Sad to say, the psychotherapy field is littered with these practitioners, who create incalculable damage to their clients, as well as contributing to ongoing belief in SRA. 

Containing the spread of a social disease

Justin Sanity pointed out that while it’s not really possible to stop people from promoting belief in irrational things, some practical steps can be taken to contain and dampen belief in SRA in areas like Scotland, where promoters seem to have gained a foothold:

Practical steps I’d recommend, unfortunately best suited for sympathetic mass media (journalists) and since Scotland seems to be targeted it would be helpful if they were Scots.

1) Talk more about the anti-Christian origin of the mythical sacrificial, baby-eating, orgiastic “cult” – as revealed by Justin Martyr.
2) Emphasize Scotland’s proud tradition of rationalism, national heroes like David Hume. Not necessary to go into detail about his philosophy – suffice to discuss the numerous contributions that Scots made to the triumph of reason over superstition.
3) Research and talk about the tragic murders of innocent Scots during the “witch-hunting” era – there were many Scots victims, and..
4) Remind people about the on-going tragedy of child abuse & murder under the guise of “exorcism”.

All excellent points, and yes, we agree that involving Scottish mass media in coming to grips with the recent SRA outbreak in that part of the UK is critical. 

We would add, too, that adopting a “disease control” approach might be more practical than attempting to “stop” belief in conspiracy theories in general, and SRA in particular. 

If the spread of conspiracy and SRA myths can be seen as a type of disease, spread via social contact with others who are susceptible, then perhaps we shouldn’t be looking at stopping the disease, but rather containing it—that is, controlling its ability to spread. 

We know that mocking and deriding those who believe irrational things doesn’t work; it just makes people dig in their heels more deeply. And sad as it may be, there will always be some people who will gravitate toward the irrational and strange, abandoning rational thought in favour of imagination, intuition, and belief. 

So Justin’s suggestions—focusing on Scotland’s proud legacy of rational thought and its undeniable contributions to education, for example—could be a sound way to help keep SRA/conspiracy belief from spreading any further than it already has.