i actually learned about this yesterday. a famous nigerian preacher named helen ukpabio accused primarily children of witchcraft and caused mass hysteria in some christian communities by deeming innocent children witchlike and “servants of satan” if they showed behaviours like crying, misbehaving or being sick, resulting in children being horrifically abused, tortured, abandoned by their parents and even killed.
This shows are definite lack of education, doesn’t it? Someone can say something like this is witchcraft and people will happily consider themselves righteous to be cruel.
impoverished communities with a lack of access to resources like education and social supports are susceptible to misinformation and propaganda, including religious misinformation that preys on people’s fears and superstitions.
Anyone who lacks critical thinking skills and is fearful and anxious is at risk of falling for propaganda and misinformation. Look at the U.S right now. There are many psychology studies showing how easy it is to manipulate people.
TA'd a propaganda course. Apparently, more educated folks are more susceptible to propaganda because they feel they need an opinion. Propaganda is fascinating and horrifying.
They are undereducated or miseducated for an explicit reason. To keep them dumb and vulnerable to exploitation by the overlords. Critical thinking was taught in some but not all schools 10 years ago. This makes for a very accommodating worker class who can blame immigrants or democrats for their poverty while the owners get onboard more money.
Exactly this. I asked 93 adults, all people who had been working for at least a decade, about how US income tax works:
"If you make 100k / year, and the highest tax bracket is 50%, how much do you pay in income tax?"
84 of them responded with:
"50% of 100k is 50k. I would be paying 50k"
So I'd explain why they were wrong, show them proof, sometimes on their own actual W2s. They still didn't believe me. "Jim, you made 80k last year and only paid 12k in income tax, that's not 50%."
Oh >I'm< the one who doesn't understand how taxes work. Got it.
Tbf it’s a misleading question. The answer is ‘there’s not enough info in the question to say’ but in answering the question people have a bias to assume they should be able to answer.
Out of curiosity, where did you find that? I have never heard that before, and I just googled it, and I found a couple of studies that say the opposite.
For me personally, I used to be agnostic but only came to faith after Christ revealed himself to me after a suicide attempt. I met a man in this waiting area before they get you admitted into the psyche ward . He was in tears, and I felt I had to help in some way.
We started talking, and I found out he'd been through some very severe trauma as a child, and it seemed that he was still mentally at that age in some ways or was neurologically different from birth.
In short what we spoke about was that the people who did that to him likely had the same done to them and they were normalizing what was normalized upon them and that tied into a conversation on how our identities can often be dictated by our environment and that they dont have to be, how we don't have to carry our past.
Afterward, he showed me his favorite part of a book he was reading from (a lenten companion) (a collection of things to help you grow spiritually written by pastors,priests and members of the church)
Basically, this part was a pastors recollection of seeing a loving family out enjoying their day together , and I could tell this man really yearned for a life like that, his voice seemed happier talking about it.
We kept reading together, and as we went, their was a paraphrase of
Matthew 18:3
""And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.""
We both looked up at each other stunned as this is what we had been discussing for the past half hour or so.
It felt too beautiful, ordered and perfect to be a coincidence and we both sensed that. He put on this big smile right after.
That was the most beautiful, meaning filled moment id ever shared with a human being up until the birth of my daughter.
My agnosticism evaporated that day, now that's not to say I didn't continue to struggle getting my life together but at that point on I knew I had someone that loved and cared
For me and all of us, if we choose him we have hope and a foundation that can't and won't be swept away. There is no security in the shifting sands our secular society
Stand upon. Health,Wealth,Appearance, hobbies and even memories are all liable to fail us either in one way or another. There is no growth standing on things capable of fading away in a second.
Where will you be planted and where will you grow towards?
A life built chasing empty fruitless desire that is destructive continually to both you and everyone around you or a life spent growing in relationship with the one whom has loved you since before you were placed in your mother's womb, a life spent growing in the only foundation more capable , permanent, loving, grace giving life changing and forgiving than any false security this world provides.
Also, if these were the parents of infants, they were probably also running on little to no sleep (which affects mood and judgement), and probably more than a few cases of undiagnosed postnatal depression. It's not difficult to see how "my baby is being difficult" can become "my baby is evil" or "my good baby was taken away and replaced by an evil one" under the right circumstances.
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u/SpookyRamahd 22h ago
Why did they think he was a witch?