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Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

>These beliefs are not just held by the uneducated, they exist even at the highest level of Nigeria's academia. Dr Olaleye Kayode, a senior lecturer in African Indigenous Religions at the University of Ibadan, told the BBC that money-making juju rituals - where human body parts mixed with charms makes money spew out of a pot - really work.

Are the "uneducated" people basically screwed until the academics are willing to challenge this kind of magical thinking? How do you even go about starting that process?

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Maybe he doesn't even believe this, maybe he just doesn't want to alienate certain (groups of) people. People do the same thing with religion all over the world.

That possible, and why I said "willing to challenge." There isn't much effective difference between proclaiming something because you believe it, and proclaiming something because you're afraid of repercussions or alienating people. You could even argue that the latter is worse.

It's not enough if they secretly believe it, they also need to be willing to challenge it publicly.

Would you say the same is true about speaking out regarding Critical Theory or social justice?

I think if people hold secret beliefs in their hearts, and those beliefs have been carefully introspected and are not coming from a place of ignorance or hate, then people need to express them, no matter what they are.

> and those beliefs have been carefully introspected and are not coming from a place of ignorance or hate

No one ever thinks they’re the villain of the story.

Even if they're wrong, the careful introspection implies good faith, and this should become apparent by how a person talks about their beliefs, especially wrt to their acknowledgements about other peoples beliefs and feelings.

I think the risks of that person being or becoming a villain are quite low, and certainly not high enough to justify self censorship (not saying you were suggesting that).

This could have to do with something called preference falsification. [0]

[0] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580

TIL! Thanks for the resource.

Right, challenging people's deeply held AND common beliefs is dangerous because it is "blasphemy", punishable by ... see the map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#:~:text=A%20pros....

Thank God United States has constitution which forbids blasphemy-laws, not blasphemy.

No, but if you challenge people's deeply held beliefs they'll wage a long and complicated protest against you often including harassment, DOXing, and attacks against your livelihood. So I don't think it's so simple that anyone here can speak their minds without worry

I totally agree

>Questioning the existence of supernatural powers is considered taboo in much of Nigerian society.

>To be openly expressing such thoughts, as Mr Adewoyin was doing in a market, was risky. He could just as easily be arrested for blasphemy or lynched by an angry mob.

I think it's a little credulous to take anyone's on-the-record statements as reflective of their actual internal beliefs in this kind of environment. No doubt some people believe these things -- that does not mean any particular person claiming to believe these things actually does.

>Questioning the existence of supernatural powers is considered taboo in much of Nigerian society.

Questioning the existence of the supernatural power God is considered taboo in much of United States .

>money-making juju rituals - where human body parts mixed with charms makes money spew out of a pot

Rituals like this never really existed pre 1600s. They are relatively modern and came with west africa's foreign relations. No serious indigenous spiritualist believes this. It may exist but it's most certainly not indigenous. That lecturer's a joke.

Your comments imply a lot of knowledge - are you from Nigeria? Have you studied these things? I wish you would tell us more.

It wouldn't be very difficult to find a senior lecturer of Christian theology in any American university with borderline insane beliefs.

I wonder how much of this is lazy journalism coupled with the fact that non-believers might not want to speak out.

What does "but what about Christians?" have to do with the question of how we should address magical thinking in academia? Unless you are saying it's not a problem because Americans have the exact same problem?

I absolutely don’t believe that’s what the commenter here was saying.

What I got from the comment is that it’s a problem everywhere, not isolated to this area or set of beliefs.

The commenter was simply providing another example of this, not stating this isn’t an overall bad thing. Of course it is.

To me, it feels kind of like the poster is agitated that the article focuses another country's problems, which elicited the kneejerk response about "Americans", "Christians" and "lazy journalism", as if to say "focus on your own problems." This response is confusing I never stated this was a problem specific to Nigeria, but instead I asked a general question about magical thinking in academia.

This is the problem with "cultural relativism" in general, which states that we cannot, must not, judge the beliefs and customs of other cultures because who are we to condemn them?

We should condemn magical thinking wherever it happens because truth is truth and falsehoods are falsehoods regardless of in which culture(s) they occur. And they pretty much occur in every country.

Another way of saying that is we should NOT condemn magical thinking in other cultures UNLESS we also condemn it in our own culture.

It is not like its impossible to tell what is magical thinking and what is not, we have science for doing just that.

It's relevant to point out that there's a certain element of "look at the ridiculous natives" to this when the article does not even mention that this is not a problem isolated to juju, but one that is found everywhere, including with Christian groups. Especially when talking of the difficulty of challenging such beliefs, which is something many of us here will have if not faced directly, then at least grown up with it being a consideration even in relatively secular societies.

That is the great question. We have a similar situation in United States see

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stella-immanuel-trumps-new-cov...

I think part of this is political, they want people to believe in crazy things and not look for the rational truth because that might expose those who are trying to hoodwink the public in other ways. Like giving huge tax-cuts to billionaires. Give huge tax-cuts to billionaires and money will appear in your clay-pot.

I'm trying to understand your response. Are you saying that most magical thinking, here and elsewhere, is a result of "them" (rich people?) trying to keep the population under control? Is there no grassroots element to magical thinking that can be addressed?

No I'm not blaming rich people here in particular, but the fact that people having certain crazy beliefs is often advantageous to some other people.

A (witch-) doctor is a good example. It is good for them that people believe they can deliver the cure. It may sometimes be even good for the patient because of the placebo effect.

People having non-scientific mind-set (i.e. people believing crazy things) is beneficial to people who try to hoodwink them. Snake oil!

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