The correct term is crackpot. Let’s not mince words in the fight against ignorance and superstition.
There are all forms of ignorance and mocking others is one of them. We can just as easily show that we are skeptical without being ignorant to people. If we really wish to fight ignorance, why would we start by insulting the target audience? Surely this will only close down any opportunity to reach them?
One (well, compound) word: comb-over.
I’m the least “spiritual,” woo-woo person I know, and most of my female friends are also hard-headed cynics who laugh at horoscopes, crystals and such banana oil.
Elvis is the Anti-Christ? That’s a new one on me.
And I’ve heard the one about Prince Charles being the anti-christ.
No doubt: atheism and agnosticism.
It’s funny, but the atheists on this board see themselves as champions of Reason and Truth (and give each other high fives, etc.), but society as a whole views atheists as embittered, flakey creche-haters.
Of course, owing to human nature, it’s fun to play the victim no matter what one’s worldview, and the atheists enjoy a self-image of “elite warriors for reason fighting against the numerous but inept hordes of the irrational majority.”
That said, I support atheists in much of what they think and say as to philosophical approach (yes, reason is good and irrational “faith” is bad), but as to final conclusions and the overall feel of their approach, yeah, atheists often come across as embittered, flakey creche-haters.
Are they woo-woo? First off, I hate that term. It’s bigoted and self-serving: anything you don’t believe in can be put in a convenient catch-all category and derided with equal force? I think not. Second, it’s the word Mel Brooks used in High Anxiety to mean “vagina,” so that’s what I always think of when I hear it.
As for the OP, I think that men and women have different approaches to reason and spirituality, as many here have noted. But you can’t rule out the “oboe and chef factor.” That is, a lot more girls than guys play the oboe and get into cooking, but still most of the best oboe players and chefs in the world are men (mostly because men have the ambition and drive to try to be the best in anything they do). Hence, some of the biggest experts on Tarot, psychic phenomena, etc. (anything that the skeptics should choose to deride) have been men.
Among New Agers, however, there seems to be a consensus that more women are psychic and have mediumistic powers. Still, there are many great men, too. I read Tarot a lot and feel I am pretty good at it.
With an erection, I hope.
I didn’t get that joke, so I don’t know what to make of it. If you’d care to be insulting, I recommend you go to the Pit.
Thanks.
Ooo, jeez, must have been the bitter talking.
June 8th, 2001 Gallup Poll Results
Michael Shermer in his book Why People Believe Weird Things says that meetings of Creationists, Holocausts revisionists, UFOlogists, and people who believe in monsters such as Big Foot and Loch Ness are overwhelmingly male.
He says:
I never thought of hippies (at least the ones I hung out with) as being believers in “stuff”. In fact, most of my hippy friends were ultra realists (except for when they were tripping and nothing was real).
Funny, you’re the one who sounds bitter. :dubious:
Why don’t you go ahead and open that Pit thread up now? It seems as though you have a lot you’d like to express.
Why do you keep asking me to do that? Expending more effort on this exchange isn’t worth the calories.
Ouch. At my place-of-servitude, the comb-over is held in high regard as a method of concealing one’s aging and incipient decrepitude, as is the possession of a brightly colored car that seats only two persons. As further evidence of dissociation with reality, none of these blokes actually gets any woo-woo (the biblical kind, not whatever it is the OP is referring to); nontheless, these guys are taking up every sink in the bathroom, carefully tending to their elaborate coiffures.
Mmmmm…banana oil. What, sorry, uh, you were saying?
It’s all a part of the conspiracy to enslave those with IQ’s of 139½ and below.
Bob…er, I mean Stranger
You seem intent on getting the last word here. In your reply to this post, you get it!
I don’t have that book, and probably should get it. Did he mention if and what meetings were overwhelmingly female?
Now that I think about it, I’ve never seen a Bigfoot hunter on TV who wasn’t a guy. I guess if we can’t hunt down mastadons we’ve got to got chasing other hairy things through the woods.
An old friend of my wife’s is a woo-woo of cardinal order, and has run a business taking people on nature retreats where they all gather to meditate and do whatever other new-agey woo-wooing they do (I don’t ask). She claimed attendance was pretty evenly split among the men and the woman, but according to her, that was often a problem. Seems the women were primarily there to actually get something for themselves out of the woo-woo voodoo, while the guys were there to get something of their own into the ladies. Mostly it was harmless hippy types who hadn’t figured out the free love thing was, like, over, maaan; but a couple of these dudes were real freaks, and I guess it led to some stalking.
Yes, women tend to prefer things like psychic readings and communication with the dead. Now, this is just on American women. AFAIK, there have been no studies done on gender divides in other societies.
I’d like to point out that attending a meeting for something and believing in it are not in any way equitable. I suspect that more men than women attend meetings on most things simply because in general men are more inclined to being active rather than passive participants.
It seems a really crummy way to judge difference of belief amongst the genders when we include intensely political things like creationism, holocaust denial and government conspiracies under the woo woo banner that men believe in. The fact that these things are so inherently political and almost demand that people take action mean that they will produce more meetings or at least more of the believers will attend meetings when they are called. It’s not an indication belief levels, merely an indication of commitment or activity levels.
Consider something spirit communication vs. creationism, or psychic readings vs. holocaust denial. There are no political movements linked spiritsim or psychism anywhere in thre world AFAIK, nor are there any laws/legal challenges involving specifically or primarily spiritsim or psychism. In contrast both holocaust denial and cretaionsism arethe focus of political movements and are the subject of numerous legal challenges worldwide. The beliefs that males attend meetings for are, in large part, beliefs that demand or at least request active participation and meeting attendence. I’ve never heard of a spriritism or psychism group calling for a rally.
Basically meeting attendence is a really cruddy way of judging involvement or belief when no attempt is made to weed out essentially active vs. essentially passive beliefs.
Which kinda brings us to the next probelm I see, which is what qualifies as woo woo anyway. To me holocaust denial isn’t woo woo. Or at least it’s no more woo woo than being a Climate Change denier. It’s a highly variant view of history/sociology and it’s often tied strongly to other political agendas. It’s often seen by particpants as opposing another ‘greater evil’. Just as Greenhouse deniers often won’t concede because they see it as a slippery slope to rampant leftist environmentalism so many holocaust deniers won’t concede because they are essentially fascists who see it as a slippery slope to Zionist historcal revisionism etc. In many ways Holocaust revisionism is an intrinsic part of neo-Fascism. It’s part of a political stance and while it’s ignorant and even hurtful so is saying that the actions of Stalin were justifiable for world Communism. IMO holocaust denial isn’t woo woo, it’s just fringe politics.
Woo Woo to me can’t include things that are inherent to a political platform or politically expedient. It can’t therefore include holocaust revisionism, Greenhouse denial, or Mao/Stalin excusing. It can’t include Black Power or White Supremacy or anything essential to those things. The Black Panthers aren’t woo woos. They’re political nutters but that’s very different. To many people G.W. Bush is political nutter, but he’s not a woo woo.
Woo woo also can’t be inherently linked to any ‘mainstream’ religion * provided it is recognised as inherently religious*. If we say that then anyone who isn’t an atheist is a woo woo. That includes pretty much all our politicians for example. It certainly includes most of the world’s population. So belief in transubstantiation isn’t woo woo no matter how bizarre, unscientific or unsupportable it may be. Belief in reincarnation by people who are genuine Buddhists or Hindu isn’t woo woo. Belief in spritism by voododo practitioners isn’t woo woo.
What is woo woo IMO is a belief that is held up being areligious. So a middle-aged Christian believing in tarot cards is woo woo if that person believes that there is some sort of logic or testability behind it rather than simply being a display of divine providence. Belief in Bigfoot at any level more than “I’m undecided’ is woo woo. UFO abduction is woo woo and so forth. Basically to me woo woo required that the belief be pseudoscientific, not simply politically palatable or religiously inspired.
YMMV
I was with you at feng shui, crystals, and tarot cards, but lost you at God and the Apollo missions. The former I understand, the latter, I believe there’s an equal spread. For every feng shui & tarot card loving lady there’s a diehard battlestar galactica fanboy who knows the moon landing was all Rupert Murdoch’s idea.