# Weirdest belief/idea you've encountered **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 22, 2021, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485 "2021-12-22T18:09:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/41 "2021-12-28T01:59:24Z")
I’ve heard this twice from my life from completely different people so I don’t know if it’s a semi-common belief or if those two people were just weird enough to somehow cross minds. But the reason why black refrigerators exist is because appliance companies wanted to expand their clientele in the 70’s so they marketed these new black refrigerators to African-Americans as a contrast to the “honky white refrigerators”. Which is why when you go to a black persons house they will always own a black refrigerator. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/42 "2021-12-28T02:25:13Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > The increase in tornados is because of cars and trucks on the expressway whizzing past each other at high speeds causing the air to spin. You have reminded me of a letter some lady sent to The Philadelphia Inquirer and the paper printed claiming that the increase in storms was caused by trucks pulling bad weather through the PA Turnpike tunnels. This would have been around 1950 when there were 7 such tunnels. I believe they have been mostly–or all–eliminated since. What astonished me at the time was not that she believed it as that a reputable newspaper would print it. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/43 "2021-12-28T02:45:04Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > There was a guy who lived in my dorm, who was an asshat in so many ways (an overt bigot, extremely misogynistic, etc.), but he also stated, as fact, his belief that AIDS came into being because gay American men traveled to Africa, and had sex with monkeys. That reminds me of a roommate I had one year in college. He was extremely conservative, both politically and religiously. I remember him mentioning that his family was part of a group that had left their Southern Baptist church to found a new church, because they felt their former church had become “too liberal”. But anyway, he once espoused the idea that rather than focusing on the economy, the government should instead work on fixing what he saw as “social problems”, namely the existence of gay people. Because if we got rid of all the gay people (or he probably believed that they could be made straight), that would please God, and then God would take care of the economy. Come to think of it that pretty much sounds like an extension of the prosperity doctrine, just applying it to the entire nation rather than individuals. The scary thing is that he was a political science major and had aspirations of running for political office. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/44 "2021-12-28T06:45:00Z")
I’ve heard other people say that before but it was less focused on God and more “ALL corruption in the US is the fault of gay, feminists, and liberals. If those people were brought in line we would no longer have to pay any form of welfare or social assistance which would triple economic efficiency” ---
**Author:** ![QMatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/aeb1de/32.png) [@QMatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QMatic)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/45 "2021-12-28T11:03:45Z")
They used to make golf balls with a liquid core tightly wound in rubber bands. They Cut into them and the liquid could shoot out and the rubber spew out, all reminiscent of Dr Pimple Popper. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/mqGWzklShqA/maxresdefault.jpg "What's Inside your Golf Balls? Old Liquid Core Titleist") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqGWzklShqA) ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/46 "2021-12-28T12:11:03Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Serious addition to the topic: > I worked with a writer who had a Ph.D and taught University-level English Lit. Brilliant guy. Well, one day he said “Bet you’ve never met a Pantheist before. Well, I am one… This chair? It’s God. Dan from Accounting? He’s God as well. This chewed-up pencil? It’s God, too.” I don’t find this weird at all; it seems to be fairly mainstream theology to me. God, if She exists at all, is often reckoned to be omnipresent, and inside both Dan from Accounting and a chewed-up pencil. Some belief systems think that God is not omnipresent, and that sort of belief may lead to some surprising conclusions. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/47 "2021-12-28T13:21:03Z")
Years ago I was told by a JHV Witness that Catholics own the movie industry and a priest must appear in at least one scene in every movie… Could be a face in the crowd, but there has to be a priest. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/48 "2021-12-28T13:56:58Z")
Hm, I wonder where the priest was in Gravity? ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/49 "2021-12-28T17:25:15Z")
Speaking of letters in newspapers, I used to have an old Ann Landers clipping where a woman wrote in who was concerned that when she died, her children would have the gold crowns removed from her mouth, and then in the afterlife she wouldn’t be able to chew her food. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/50 "2021-12-28T17:36:46Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > > [@digs](#): > > > > I worked with a writer who had a Ph.D and taught University-level English Lit. Brilliant guy. Well, one day he said “Bet you’ve never met a Pantheist before. Well, I am one… This chair? It’s God. Dan from Accounting? He’s God as well. This chewed-up pencil? It’s God, too.” > > I don’t find this weird at all; it seems to be fairly mainstream theology to me. God, if She exists at all, is often reckoned to be omnipresent, and **inside** both Dan from Accounting and a chewed-up pencil. I bolded that “inside”, because with that addition, you’re right, it’s pretty mainstream. But, Dr. Ray made it clear that the pencil doesn’t contain God, and it isn’t made by God… The pencil **IS God** , and we should worship it. (I’d worship a classic yellow Ticonderoga #2, but my kid’s Lisa Frank flying unicorn pencil coated with glitter that gets all over everything? That’s Satan.) . > [@Asuka](#): > > Which is why when you go to a black persons house they will always own a black refrigerator. Said someone like my mom, who’s never been in a black person’s _yard,_ let alone their kitchen. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/51 "2021-12-28T17:57:20Z")
> [@digs](#): > > I’d worship a classic yellow Ticonderoga #2, but my kid’s Lisa Frank flying unicorn pencil coated with glitter that gets all over everything? That’s Satan. Yeah; the deflating back wheel on my wife’s car is pretty demonic. Maybe there is a case for dualistic cosmology after all. > **[Dualism in cosmology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_in_cosmology)** > > Dualism in cosmology or dualistic cosmology is the moral or spiritual belief that two fundamental concepts exist, which often oppose each other. It is an umbrella term that covers a diversity of views from various religions, including both traditional religions and scriptural religions. > Moral dualism is the belief of the great complement of, or conflict between, the benevolent and the malevolent. It simply implies that there are two moral opposites at work, independent of any interpretation of w... ---
**Author:** ![Pabitel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Pabitel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pabitel)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/52 "2021-12-28T19:17:02Z")
We met a couple at a group activity. They had kids the same age as ours, same interest in the group, seemed articulate. So we started hanging out. We were over for dinner with them after knowing them a short while and the conversation turned to NASA for some reason. The wife announced that she was completely against NASA returning to the moon because the added weight that they would land there would throw the moon out of orbit and send it crashing into the earth. I started to explain but that was not welcome. Our kids kept playing together but we sort of inched away from try to form a friendship between the adults. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/53 "2021-12-28T21:00:00Z")
My High School History Teacher (AP American History) claimed that Planet X was real and that in the year 2012 it would pass by the Earth and toss the moon into the Earth. This was 2000 and be already told me that he had sold his house and was living much cheaper in a trailer so he could afford to build a small underground shelter in his backyard. I wonder what happened to him. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/54 "2021-12-28T21:57:54Z")
The same back-and-forth has been going on with eggs for decades, as well. I once worked with a pharmacist who didn’t know that lesbians menstruate. She later lost her license, but not because of this. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/55 "2021-12-28T21:59:20Z")
My grandmother, who died in 1990, believed, as did a lot of people of her generation, that it was because of space exploration. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/56 "2021-12-28T22:05:15Z")
My favorite weird Ann Landers letter was the woman who said, “My husband burns the hair out of his nose with a lighted match, and he thinks I’m crazy because I voted for Goldwater.” As for AIDS passing into the human population because people had sex with monkeys, I suppose that’s possible, but I figured out the “cut hunter theory” a couple decades before I saw it in print. In short, a monkey that harbors HIV is butchered by a hunter who cuts him/herself while preparing the creature for cooking, and it’s believed that some Ebola, Lassa and other hemorrhagic-fever epidemics have been started in similar manners. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/57 "2021-12-28T22:12:14Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > As for AIDS passing into the human population because people had sex with monkeys, I suppose that’s possible, but I figured out the “cut hunter theory” a couple decades before I saw it in print. In the case of my former dorm neighbor, he detested gays, and felt that they were utterly perverted, so the “gay sex with monkeys” explanation undoubtedly made perfect sense to him. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/58 "2021-12-28T22:15:44Z")
A co-worker once told me that there was “no way my son could ever be gay because I love to fuck women.” ---
**Author:** ![billy-jack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@billy-jack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billy-jack)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/59 "2021-12-28T22:40:00Z")
When NASA was getting ready to launch the Parker Solar Probe, someone expressed the opinion that this was a great mistake because if something went wrong, it could fall into the sun and then anything could happen. If I remember correctly, one concern was that it might put out the sun. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2021, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485/60 "2021-12-28T22:52:29Z")
Ah, then obviously, the lad isn’t his son. Simple. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weirdest-belief-idea-youve-encountered/956485.md?page=4)