Why People Believe Weird Things- Elissa Wilcox

This was another class that I took this semester. It is interesting to think about why people believe what they do. For example, why do people believe in alien abductions or that they see Virgin Mary in a grill cheese sandwich? The callus part of me wants to say that they just need something to believe in and therefore lose all rational and believe in the first thing that they find. The problem there is that most of the reasons that people believe in these so called “weird things” are reasons that most people have faith in religions that are accepted as a viable option. So what makes those beliefs different from the ones that are deemed “weird?” This class was a very interesting one because we looked at many different things that people accept as truth that do not actually have any validity to them. The most shocking one was the study of the paranormal. People actually have instruments that they use to find ghosts and such. It’s very interesting in itself, especially the fact that they are so sold on their beliefs that they cannot see the madness behind it.