Look back in time to past ages, where history records human beliefs as bizarre, cruel, and stupid. The people who held such beliefs held to them just as dearly as we cling to the things we believe are true. Things like witchcraft, demon-spirits, elixirs of eternal life, that the earth rested on a giant turtle.

We are tempted to believe that we are free from superstition and misconceptions, because scientific authority and government have assured us that we are not laboring under any kind of falsehoods. The truth we hold to now is regarded as absolute. But, in reality, church and government have ALWAYS given exactly these assurances to all people in the past.

At this website, you will see that suprisingly little has changed. Under critical analysis, you will see that many, or even most, popularly held beliefs, are just as bizarre, ignorant, and false as they have been at any time in the past. We are most assuredly NOT free of mass hysteria, confusion, and superstition. In fact, the rise of science and technology has tended to concentrate more factual knowledge in the hands of a smaller percentage of the population than ever before, separating the masses from the facts they need for critical evaluation of their most important beliefs. Most people simply do not have the time or inclination to take a critical view of what they hear in the mass media, let alone time enough to study the disciplines that reporters and writers do not.

Let us take a look, then at cherished beliefs of our modern age - and just how strange and false they really are....

Choose a modern belief;

There is a hole in the ozone layer, and it is growing.:
A nuclear war will destroy the planet.:
The world is getting hotter - mankind is responsible:
What you hear on the evening news or read in papers is true.:
It is the job of my police department to protect me.:
Doctors can / will heal my body when I am sick.:
Lawyers and judges provide justice:
Time travel is impossible:
Women make better parents than men:

What does it all mean?

How does this happen?
Will this ever change?
How do I deal with myths and falsehoods?
Where can I find out more?

Free Book Download

The Crowd - A study of the Popular Mind (zip)
The above book as a simple text file.

IN THE NEWS - The nuclear processing accident in Japan;
an example of ignorant and hysterical reporting.

This page last updated 1 October,1999.
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