# Ever been shocked at what some people believe? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 18, 2012, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369 "2012-05-18T22:14:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/141 "2012-05-25T18:32:40Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > If someone is descended from people who came to the US over 150 years ago, where _is_ that person from? No one disputes that African-Americans were born in the U.S. When someone says they came from Africa, it means they are descended from Africans. The fact that someone who was born in the U.S. speaks English isn’t evidence of where that person’s ancestors came from. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/142 "2012-05-25T18:52:15Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > No one disputes that African-Americans were born in the U.S. When someone says they came from Africa, it means they are descended from Africans. The fact that someone who was born in the U.S. speaks English isn’t evidence of where that person’s ancestors came from. Exactly. Some of my ancestors came from England, and even I speak English. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/143 "2012-05-25T19:01:10Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > No one disputes that African-Americans were born in the U.S. When someone says they came from Africa, it means they are descended from Africans. The fact that someone who was born in the U.S. speaks English isn’t evidence of where that person’s ancestors came from. A lot of US citizens, presumably some of them white, [claim American ethnicity on the US Census](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_ethnicity). I would guess that a sizable number of them are of mostly European descent but don’t know where in Europe their ancestors came from. I would say that African-Americans descended from slaves have as much right as those people do to claim to be from America. Even if you think American ethnicity implies “white” (which I don’t think it should), most African Americans have some European ancestry as well. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/144 "2012-05-25T20:48:42Z")
My BIL who is kinda “kooky” , doesn’t believe in christianity(fair enough) but professes a belief in Smith-imus(where Smith is his last name). I thought it was a joke at first, a bit like the flying spaghetti monster, but now…I think he really does believe in a god/spirit/familiar called Smith-imus enough to curse it when his daughter died. Other kookiness involves asking me if that bat is real(WTF? Yes a bat just flew by) and then later saying the bat was his friend, then killing the bat one day. He believed my son was his mother reincarnated, i wish he wouldn’t say it in public though(that is my mother right there). ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/145 "2012-05-26T01:40:35Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > This isn’t supposed to be about religion, but this is, in a peripheral way. I had a friend in the Navy. We were good friends and hung out a lot. One day we’re having a discussion about I don’t know what, and he says very matter of factly that he and his family believe that everything in the bible is literally true. I was stunned, and in fact thought he was joking. “You mean even that Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, even though it’s not possible?” “Yes.” Shocked silence. It was a “great fish”, not a whale. And “not possible” doesn’t have a meaning when you’re dealing with divine intervention. If your friend believes in an all powerful God, then his believing God could make a fish that can swallow a man is not very shocking. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/146 "2012-05-26T02:27:27Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > It was a “great fish”, not a whale. “Dammit, Yakov, I’m a writer, not a naturalist!” Well, to the ancients, a whale was a great fish. And just about anything that lived in the water was some kind of “fish.” That leaves a lot of latitude for interpretation. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/147 "2012-05-26T05:13:00Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > “Dammit, Yakov, I’m a writer, not a naturalist!” Well, to the ancients, a whale was a great fish. And just about anything that lived in the water was some kind of “fish.” That leaves a lot of latitude for interpretation. Several popular Bible translations have Jesus calling it a whale in Mat 12:40. Who are you going to believe, the Son of God, or some hippie commie biology professors? ---
**Author:** ![Bpelta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Bpelta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bpelta)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/148 "2012-05-26T06:10:51Z")
Re the OP: When I was an Orthodox Jew in Miami, I was surprised at how many of my acquaintances were birthers. For Speech class, my peers and I were told to prepare a persuasive speech on a topic which at least half of the class wasn’t convinced of, so I chose to explain the fact that Obama was born in the USA :smack: ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/149 "2012-05-26T06:51:00Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > Oh my friend believes KFC doesn’t use real chickens anymore, he thinks the meat is grown in a lab. I’ve had several people tell me that hotdogs contain no actual meat, so they’d be fine for me to eat (I’m vegetarian). At first I assumed they were joking about the dubious ingredients in cheap sausages. But on further questioning it seemed they believed they contained some kind of counterfeit meat substitute, a cost-saving conspiracy by devious food corporations. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/150 "2012-05-26T06:56:10Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > I’ve had several people tell me that hotdogs contain no actual meat, so they’d be fine for me to eat (I’m vegetarian). At first I assumed they were joking about the dubious ingredients in cheap sausages. But on further questioning it seemed they believed they contained some kind of counterfeit meat substitute, a cost-saving conspiracy by devious food corporations. The really strange thing about this is that imitation meats are almost universally more expensive than actual meat products. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/151 "2012-05-26T07:53:48Z")
Jeff Lichtman, your blanket insistence on one definition of “from” is unusual, even bizarre. In most conversational contexts, “I’m from…” will be followed by the town or state where one spent most of one’s life, often one’s early life, or recent years (if one has just moved to, or is visiting, a different place – and if that new or visited place is in a different country, then one’s home country will be named, instead of or in addition to the state and/or town). I’m surprised you were unaware of this. You must drive people nuts whenever they ask you where you’re from, and you whip out your list of 256 ancestors going back (arbitrarily) seven centuries, and you start giving percentages of Burgundians and Jutes and Proto-Cherokees and Picts and Proto-Ghanians (yes, I said “Proto-Ghanians”…don’t think you can avoid including that hanky-panky down in Alabama in the 1750s!). ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/152 "2012-05-26T18:28:51Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Jeff Lichtman, your blanket insistence on one definition of “from” is unusual, even bizarre. > > In most conversational contexts, “I’m from…” will be followed by the town or state where one spent most of one’s life, often one’s early life, or recent years (if one has just moved to, or is visiting, a different place – and if that new or visited place is in a different country, then one’s home country will be named, instead of or in addition to the state and/or town). > > I’m surprised you were unaware of this. You must drive people nuts whenever they ask you where you’re from, and you whip out your list of 256 ancestors going back (arbitrarily) seven centuries, and you start giving percentages of Burgundians and Jutes and Proto-Cherokees and Picts and Proto-Ghanians (yes, I said “Proto-Ghanians”…don’t think you can avoid including that hanky-panky down in Alabama in the 1750s!). JKellyMap, it’s possible to argue semantics without the snark. Cool it. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/153 "2012-05-26T18:55:49Z")
> [@tellyworth](#): > > I’ve had several people tell me that hotdogs contain no actual meat, so they’d be fine for me to eat (I’m vegetarian). At first I assumed they were joking about the dubious ingredients in cheap sausages. But on further questioning it seemed they believed they contained some kind of counterfeit meat substitute, a cost-saving conspiracy by devious food corporations. I remember several people saying the same thing to me when I was a teenager, although IIRC all of them were teenagers too so maybe that explains their idiocy. I didn’t get the impression that any of them believed in a fake meat conspiracy, they seemed to feel it was common knowledge that hot dogs weren’t made out of “real” meat. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/154 "2012-05-27T05:37:50Z")
I understand the logic of thinking hotdogs contain no meat. I spent a year living without electricity, when I was young and had nothing better to do. Live without electric light and yes, the full moon has a strong effect on you – it’s light outside at night! You feel wakeful and restless, and a little weird because, you know, it’s night time. Plus moonlight is odd and tricky light to be out and about in. And maybe I was nineteen, but still. I can see where this experience, over fifty or a hundred thousand years, would create a certain embedded belief about the full moon that is resistant to our briefly lived experience of artificial light, and mere statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/155 "2012-05-27T12:50:35Z")
I still run into a very large number of “average people” who are shocked that coal is used for electricity production in the US. What’s most worrying is science teachers who don’t know this. When I used to do a mini lecture circuit in Junior High and High Schools to talk about energy in the US, probably 75% of the science teachers I met had no idea where energy comes from. I can understand ignorance but what gets me is that they’ll argue with me about it. “No, I don’ think that’s right” said one science teacher who it turned out had no college degree at all, and doubled as a football coach. And because natural gas is colloquially referred to as “gas” a lot of people believe that gasoline and natural gas are the same thing when it comes to power plants. And despite my best efforts there are still a lot of people who believe that a significant part of our energy generation is oil-fired. And let’s not forget that ANY power plant with a hyperbolic cooling tower is a nuke. I’ve actually driven into coal power plants past anti-nuke protestors - several times, in fact. And you can’t even tell them the score - you’re just lying to them, and really there’s a secret, hidden nuclear power plant on site - “we can SEE the towers! Stop lying to us!” Seriously, that’s bark-at-the-moon crazystupid. Some of the nuttier things I’ve heard about energy: - Wind turbines don’t really work, they’re a conspiracy to funnel money to companies owned by relatives of Nancy Pelosi et al, and the crews putting up the wind turbines are all illegal immigrants Muslim Mexicans who use the money to buy guns, and to sell drugs to Christian white kids. - The noise from wind turbine blades is _proven_ to cause autism, ADHD, aspergers, or any one of a number of self-diagnosed illnesses, like lupus. - For that matter, ethanol in gasoline causes autism (the pollution products of burning it in your car, that is). So does biodiesel. And nuclear power plants. And the Easter Bunny; may as well. - Solar cells on your rooftop give kids cancer by reflecting UV light down onto the ground where it hits them. Part of Obamacare is supposed to help treat this. They can also cook birds in the air, dropping them like an avian hailstorm when a flock passes overhead. _Make sure, that your umbrella, is upside down…_ - Innumerable treatises on how AGCC is a myth which Democrats are using as back-door wealth transfer. I used to be able to say that in my industry most of the engineers and scientists believed in AGCC and felt something needed to be done. That has changed quite precipitously over the last 4 years, coincident but not definitively causal with Obama, and now an informal survey around an office of Master’s level scientists and engineers, as well as many PhD level folks I meet or work with, is perhaps close to 75% believe AGCC is a myth. I don’t argue with them; I may as well argue with Christians over biblical inconsistencies. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/156 "2012-05-27T12:59:13Z")
That is very scary stuff, **Una**. Some ignorance just isn’t funny. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/157 "2012-05-27T13:57:39Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > JKellyMap, it’s possible to argue semantics without the snark. Cool it. Okay, my bad. ---
**Author:** ![Plumpudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Plumpudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plumpudding)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/158 "2012-05-27T15:13:07Z")
I worked many seasons as a cleaner at a camp-site, so nothing really shocks me anymore. I met a middle-aged woman at the womens toilet at the camp-site, while I was cleaning. I told her to use the mens room while I was cleaning. As it turns out she didn’t want that, because she had to do the number two and that, according to her, there were only pissoars in the mens room. Me and a friend met a girl who we made believe that I was one of **the three**. One of the three men that raised the electrical poles on Røst, Lofoten, Norway, **by hand**. She was very impressed, but didn’t like the ecological consequences it must have had. Another time I met a guy who believed all holy books were written by witches, and told about how humans were once aliens with superpowers, and that messiah would be the one to remember that he/she was an alien and regain his/her powers. He also believed that jurrasic park was true, and for some reason, that the US government suppressed all this information from the public, so that they one day could claim monopoly on intergalactic tourism. He also combined **his** faith with islam, christianity and judaism. I also got quite bewildered when my grandmother told me she hated kids in kindergarden, because they steal the retirement homes of elderly people. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2012, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/159 "2012-05-28T00:00:28Z")
I just remembered another one: a couple of people I met at a school function once told me that the Soviet Union was the cause of air and water pollution in the U.S. - that somehow the communists were using mind control to cause us to pollute our own environment. When I questioned how this would be possible and what would motivate the Soviets to do this, they responded, “Who is assaulting you?” ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369/161 "2012-05-28T18:15:14Z")
> [@TOR\_Hershman](#): > > Hey! Wanna see something that I believe and MOST people find it QUITE SHOCKING! > If yes, here it is… Did you bother to read the OP before you decided to post that? > [@Alias](#): > > Let me start this by saying it is NOT my intention to discuss religious or cultural beliefs here… Or how about the “[FAQ - Rules for Posting at the Straight Dope Message Boards](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=384736)”? > [@FAQ - Rules for Posting at the Straight Dope Message Boards](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faq-rules-for-posting-at-the-straight-dope-message-boards/369395/9): > > (1) LINKS SHOULD BE DESCRIBED > When posting links, please be courteous to your fellow posters: describe what you are linking to. It does not have to be a lengthy description, but “See this political cartoon” is better than “This is funny!” Discussion of your religious beliefs belongs in the Great Debates forum. This isn’t my forum, so I’m not issuing a mod note. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ever-been-shocked-at-what-some-people-believe/622369.md?page=9)