50 Popular Beliefs that People Think are True. By Guy Harrison. Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 2011. ISBN: 978-1616144951. 458 pp. Paperback, $18.

Many people entertain beliefs without question. These are beliefs handed down to them as traditions or doctrines purportedly revealed by God. They think these beliefs are true and are not ready to subject them to critical evaluation. In many societies, people lack the will to doubt or to raise objections to popular claims and notions partly because they think popularity implies veracity or that beliefs held by the majority invests validity to claims. Hence many popular misconceptions exist and persist. They continue to mar people’s lives in ways they do not know and even if they know they find it difficult to acknowledge or accept. In his magnificent book, 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True, Guy Harrison, an award-winning journalist, draws attention to these popular misconceptions and their dark and destructive influence on the lives of individuals and the society at large. In a very simple, thoughtful, easy to read and entertaining style, the author exposes the faulty logic underlying these beliefs.

Harrison doesn’t use a condescending approach, something skeptics are often accused of using in addressing irrational believers and in challenging and debunking paranormal claims. Instead Harrison humbly acknowledges the cultural universality of unreason: “We all believe silly things, what matters is how silly and how many.” He makes his objective clear: “I want readers to know my motivations for writing this book. I’m not scolding, lecturing, or preaching to make myself feel important. I am only trying to encourage and inspire critical thinking and spread the word that skepticism is important.” The author is not interested in telling people what to believe or not believe as such: “Truth is, I really couldn’t care less about what someone believes. It’s only when I see unproven beliefs diminishing someone’s life or causing harm to others that I feel obligated to speak up and offer a helping hand,” he asserts. Harrison has, in this book, offered a helping hand through a poignant analysis of these popular beliefs and how they are employed by charlatans to exploit and dupe gullible folks.

Leo Igwe (Photo by André Sebastiani)

So, are you one of those who think belief in the paranormal and supernatural, near-death experiences, miracles, and reincarnation are true? Then, you need to pick up a copy of this book. Or if you are one of those who patronize psychics, faith healers, or alternative and homeopathic “medical” practitioners, before your next visit, please go through some of the chapters.

You may be one of those who think, “You’re Either Born Smart or You’re Not,” or that “The Bible Code Reveals the Future,” or “UFOs Are Visitors from Other Worlds,” or perhaps “Angels Watch Over Me,” or even “I am Going to Heaven When I Die.” If so, the author says you should think again. Harrison makes a case for skepticism, not for its own sake but for the sake of humanity. He advocates a form of caring and constructive skepticism. The author describes promoting skeptical rationality as a moral duty. “The way I see it, promoting reason and skepticism is a moral issue. It’s about caring for your fellow humans.” This unique sense of rational care runs through its pages.

This book is a must-read for skeptics and non-skeptics alike. It will excite all critical thinkers and will get believers to reexamine many popular beliefs that they think are true. I recommend it to all who are concerned and deeply worried about the “gigantic cloud of danger” looming large over our world today due to popular dogmatic and irrational beliefs.

Hinn was visibly angry because of the huge amount of money he had invested in the crusade. “Four million dollars down the drain,” he is said to have shouted on the final day of the event. The vice president of Benny Hinn Ministries, Jon Wilson, gave a breakdown of the money. He said $3 million was spent on hotel accommodations and technical infrastructure, while $1 million more was used up by members of the local organizing committee.

But the Benny Hinn Healing Crusade generated a lot of interest and debate in the local media. A Nigerian pastor, writing in The Guardian, one of the national dailies, urged the Pentecostal leaders to “bury their heads in shame,” given the “prevailing rot” in their churches. And as a face-saving measure, the Pentecostal Federation of Nigeria (PFN)-the umbrella group of most Pentecostal churches in Nigeria-had to expel Bishop Dr. Joseph Olanrewaju Obembe, the president of the PFN chapter in Lagos, General Overseer of the El-Shaddai Bible Church, and a coordinator of the Benny Hinn Healing Crusade, and other pastors who served on the local committee.

With the growing decline in religious belief in America and the entire Western world, evangelists are looking to Africa for converts, followers, and disciples. Many Pentecostal churches in Africa receive millions of dollars in aid from their American counterparts to “bring Africans to Christ.” Luis Bush, a cousin of president George W. Bush and one of the leading evangelists in the U.S., supports missionary work in more that thirty African countries. Other American evangelists, such as Benny Hinn, Todd Bentley, and Oral Roberts, as well as the German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, sponsor miracle crusades across the continent.

Pentecostalism has therefore become a thriving business in Africa. In fact, it has become the shortest route to wealth and affluence for the continent’s teeming population of unemployed youths. Local pastors employ all sorts of tricks and techniques to extort money from gullible folks (as well as foreign friends). They use this money to build magnificent churches, erect costly dwellings, buy luxurious cars and aircraft, and live ostentatiously, while their church members languish in poverty, misery, and squalor.

In most cases, pastors tell the faithful to give money to God so that God will bless them in return. They tell the people of the divine favors that come to those who pay their tithes and make offerings regularly. Or they use the biblical injunction that says, “givers never lack"-though in Africa, they often do-to squeeze money out of the people. In Nigeria, there have been instances where people have even stolen money to give to their pastors and churches. In March 2003, a cashier in a hotel in Abuja was arrested for allegedly stealing nearly forty million naira (about $40,000) from his employer. The man later confessed to the police that he gave the money to his church, Christ Embassy. And in another case of theft for God, a bank clerk stole forty million naira from his employer and gave ten million to his church as seed money, in the belief that the seed would germinate and yield several times that amount in return, as promised by his pastor. The man, according to the BBC’s Focus on Africa magazine, got appointed to the office of assistant pastor. But before his seed could germinate, the crime was detected and he was arrested.

Miracles in Africa

Africans are suckers for magic, miracles, and paranormal claims. Generally, among Africans, there is a deep-seated belief in supernatural forces that intervene and alter human destinies for good or ill. These spiritual forces are believed to work in magical and miraculous ways, through signs and wonders that confound the human mind. And the evangelical churches are capitalizing on this superstitious element in African thought and culture to peddle and propagate their paranormal services. They promise divine healing and instant solutions for problems and diseases.

Pentecostal pastors claim they have the power to make the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk, and the infertile give birth. Recently, Gilbert Deya, a self-proclaimed archbishop from Kenya, got himself into trouble: he said he could make infertile black couples give birth to miracle babies. But police investigations revealed child theft and baby trafficking. (See my article “The Kenya Miracle Babies Scandal,” in the September 2005 Skeptical Briefs.) Some years ago, a Nigerian pastor, Temitope Joshua, of the Synagogue of All Nations, announced to the world that he could cure HIV/AIDS.

In 2001, German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke was reported to have raised a person from the dead. There have been a lot of such indiscriminate claims of miracles and divine healing by Nigeria’s televangelists and end-time preachers-Chris Oyakhilome, Enoch Adeboye, David Oyedepo, Helen Ukpabio, Matthew Ashimolowo, et al. These faith healers use the money from miracle seekers to put up billboards and sponsor radio and television programs advertising their miracles. Last year, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission had to ban the broadcast of miracles on national television.

Faith healing is the greatest threat to scientific medicine and health-care delivery in Africa. Miracles have no basis in science, reason, or common sense. All claims of divine cures and healing cannot be reconciled with the dire health situation in Africa. Africa has the highest infant-mortality rate in the world. And millions there are still dying of preventable diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. According to the United Nations, 6,000 African children die from-and 11,000 become infected with-HIV/AIDS every day. And if there are indeed people with supernatural powers to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cure all ailments, why are human beings suffering and dying? It is quite obvious that all claims of miracles and faith healing are fake. As the French philosopher and writer Ernest Renan rightly pointed out, “No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept.”

Experience shows, without exception, that “miracles” occur only in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe in them. So, faith healers are just taking advantage of the African predicament. They are cashing in on the desperation and gullibility of Africans to enrich themselves and to promote their churches.

Africa needs science, not superstition; critical thinking, not dogma; open mindedness, not blind faith; reason, not revelation; and industry and technological advancement, not the Holy Spirit and miracles. Africa needs skepticism, not Pentecostalism.

In September 2001, the mutilated body of “Boy Adam” was found by the British Police floating in the River Thames, near Tower Bridge in London. A top police source suspected that Adam might have been a victim of a style of ritual killing practiced in west and southern Africa. And forensic examination revealed that Adam lived in southwestern Nigeria.

So, early this year, British detectives arrived in Nigeria in search of Adam’s killers. Both the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and Nigerian soccer player Nwankwo Kanu, made passionate appeals for clues and information leading to the arrest of Adam’s killers.

In July, Police arrested a 37-year-old Nigerian, Sam Onogigovie (in Dublin), and twenty-one other Nigerians in Britain in connection with the murder of Adam. Generally, ritual killing is a common practice in Nigeria. Every year, hundreds of Nigerians lose their lives to ritual murderers, also known as headhunters.

These head hunters go in search of human parts-head, breast, tongue, sexual organs-at the behest of witchdoctors, juju priests, and traditional medicine men who require them for some sacrifices or for the preparation of assorted magical potions.

Recently, there have been several reported cases of individuals who were kidnapped, killed, or had their bodies mutilated by ritualists in Nigeria. The most notorious of them is the one associated with one Chief Vincent Duru, popularly known as Otokoto.

It happened this way: In 1996, the police in the southern Nigerian city of Owerri arrested a man, Innocent Ekeanyanwu, with the head of a young boy, Ikechukwu Okonkwo. In the course of the investigation, the police discovered the buried torso of Ikechukwu on the premises of Otokoto Hotel, owned by Chief Duru, and uncovered a syndicate that specialized in ritual killing and the sale and procurement of human parts. The horrifying discoveries sparked off violent protests in the city of Owerri which led to the burning and looting of properties belonging to suspected killers. Otokoto and his ritualist syndicate were arrested and put on trial, and in February 2003, they were sentenced to death by hanging.

Apart from the Otokoto incident, there have been other instances of ritual murder and mutilation in other parts of the country. For instance, in Calabar, two men plucked out the eyes of a young lady, Adlyne Eze, for money-making ritual. And in Ifo, Ogun state, a businessman inflicted the same harm on his younger sister. In Ibadan, the police in December arrested a taxi driver, Abbas, who used his fourteen-month-old baby for rituals. Abbas killed his child in order to secure a human head, which was one of the materials listed for him by a local witchdoctor for a money-making ritual.

And in another act of ritual horror in Onitsha, Anambra State, two young men, Tobechukwu Okorie and Peter Obasi, seized a boy, Monday Emenike, and cut off his sexual organ with the intention of delivering it to a man, who allegedly offered to pay 1.5 million naira ($11,000) for it. In Kaduna, Danladi Damina was arrested after he exhumed the corpse of a 9-year-old boy, plucked out his eyes and cut off his lips, intending to use them for charms. Recently a woman was caught in a bush in Warri, Delta State, decapitating a four-year-old boy for ritual purposes. And while writing this piece, I read in The Guardian (Nigeria) a report of the murder of an 18-year-old girl, identified as Chioma, by suspected ritualists in Mbaise, Imo State.

The question is: why do Nigerians still engage in such bloody, brutal, and barbaric acts and atrocities even in the twenty-first century? For me, there are three reasons:

1. Religion: Nigeria is a deeply religious society. Most Nigerians believe in the existence of supernatural beings and that these transcendental entities can be influenced through ritual acts and sacrifices. Rituals constitute part of the people’s traditional religious practice and observance. Nigerians engage in ritual acts to appease the gods, seek supernatural favours, or to ward off misfortune. Many do so out of fear of unpleasant spiritual consequences if they default. So religion, theism, supernaturalism, and occultism are at the root of ritual killing in Nigeria.
2. Superstition: Nigeria is a society where most beliefs are still informed by unreason, dogmas, myth making, and magical thinking. In Nigeria, belief in ghosts, juju, charms, and witchcraft is prevalent and widespread. Nigerians believe that magical potions prepared with human heads, breasts, tongues, eyes, and sexual organs can enhance one’s political and financial fortunes; that juju, charms and amulets can protect individuals against business failures, sickness and diseases, accidents, and spiritual attacks. In fact, ritual-making is perceived as an act of spiritual fortification.
3. Poverty: Most often, Nigerians engage ritual killing for money-making purposes. Among Nigerians, there is a popular belief in a special kind of ritual, performed with human blood or body parts that can bring money or wealth, even though such a belief lacks any basis in reason, science or common sense.

For example, there has never been a single proven instance of any Nigerian who became rich through a moneymaking ritual.

And still the belief in “ritual wealth” or “blood money” remains strong among the people and features prominently in the nation’s media and film industry. Most times, what we hear are stories and speculations founded on ignorance and hearsay. For instance, Nigerians who enrich themselves through dubious and questionable means, like the scammers who swindle foreigners, are said to have indulged in money-making rituals using the blood or body parts of their parents, wives, children, or other close relations.

So driven by ignorance, poverty, desperation, gullibility, and irrationalism, Nigerians murder fellow Nigerians for rituals. But ritual killing is not a practice limited to Nigeria. Ritual sacrifices also occur in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, like in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Uganda, etc. In fact in some parts of Uganda, a child is sacrificed before a major building is erected. There is therefore an urgent need for an international campaign to end this murderous practice and other horrifying traditions and superstitions in Africa. Personally, I am recommending that the United Nations’ Inter-Africa Committee includes ritual killing in its programs and campaigns as a harmful traditional practice.

Also, skeptics groups should strive to expose the ignorance, superstition, and unreason that underlie the belief in and practice of ritual killing by organizing public education, awareness, and enlightenment campaigns on science education, critical thinking, and rational inquiry.

The case of Adam underscores the need to internationally confront and combat religious obscurantism, dogmatism, and occultism in Africa and the world at large.

In 2001, there were so many cases of ritual killing in the Lagos metropolis that one of the nation’s major newspapers, The Punch, published a scary headline: “Ritualists Lay Siege to Lagos.”

Personally, I think that caption would have better read: “Pseudoscience Lays Siege to Nigeria.” Because that was the case. And that is still the case.

According to press reports, some of the victims were clubbed to death based on their confession while others were killed simply because of suspicion by their relatives.

The killing of suspected witches started after some members of the Christian Pentecostal churches accused their congregation’s parents and relatives of allegedly practicing witchcraft and being responsible for poverty, diseases, business failure, infertility, and other calamities.

As a result, some children attacked their parents and other relatives to elicit confessions for their alleged participation in witchcraft. In one of the communities, Itam, there was so much chaos and confusion that the village head had to shut down churches accused of making anti-witchcraft prophecies and pronouncements. Reacting to the whole incident, the governor of Akwa Ibom state, Obong Victor Atta, denounced the belief in witchcraft as superstitious and without rational or scientific basis.

Witchcraft is a common belief in Nigeria and throughout Africa; cases of witchkilling have been reported in other counties including Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic People’s Republic of the Congo.

These charlatans claim to have divine powers-the power to bilocate and predict the future, the ability to heal all diseases-even AIDS-and the power to make people rich or live longer.

All of this happens despite the fact that these beliefs and claims have not stood the test of time, science, and reason, and that contradictory evidence emerges every day. We have yet to see an organized and coordinated attempt to challenge and unmask these scientific pretensions and irrationalisms.

Instead, our schools, colleges, and universities as well as the local newspapers and film industry have continued to misinform the public by distorting science and packaging and presenting pseudoscientific beliefs as genuine science. In fact, some of our scholars have gone to the extent of defending these paranormal claims as “African Science,” taunting skeptics as Western apologists.

There is an enormous need for skepticism in Nigeria in order to identify, separate, and distinguish the pseudoscientific from the scientific in the so-called “African Science.”

Skepticism will provide an antidote and a counterbalance to superstition and fringe science. It will help critique local paranormal and supernatural claims, and critically examine age-old myths, fantasies, illusions, and errors that support various (sometimes harmful) traditional practices. Skeptical viewpoints would help expose the tricks and fakery of godmen and make the local media more balanced, objective, scientific, and responsible in their reporting and programming.

They would empower people to develop the courage to think, and through thinking liberate themselves and their communities from mental slavery, dogmatism, and religious claptrap.

The skeptical viewpoint is critical to the future and promotion of science education in our schools, colleges, and universities. It would motivate students to think rationally and scientifically about controversial topics and equip them with the necessary skills to evaluate and distinguish between scientific and pseudoscientific ideas.

Furthermore, skepticism will help reduce ignorance and gullibility and protect people against deception, manipulation, indoctrination, exploitation, and death. For instance, skepticism will provide hope to many innocent old women who are routinely targeted, tortured, or burnt to death in the name of witchcraft and bring succor to a number of girls and ladies whose social and marital prospects are in great peril because they are believed to be Ogbanje (a child that comes and goes) or mamiwota (a mermaid or water spirit).

The skeptical view will therefore help improve the quality of life of the people by improving the quality of what they know, what they believe and accept, and facilitate the process of change and secularization of our society, particularly in this era of African renaissance.

At the last World Humanist Congress, I participated in the session on combating superstition. I was delighted with the spirited efforts being made by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) in America and Asia to promote the cause of reason and science. Inspired by their noble and courageous initiatives, I have, since my return to Nigeria, been trying to reach out to skeptic-minded individuals who must stand together in other to wrest our nation from the fangs of superstition and pseudoscience.

Science and technology remain the touchstones of modern civilization and development, and if Nigeria-and in fact Africa as a whole-hope to become economically developed and technologically advanced come next century, these issues must be addressed.

There is an urgent need to raise the level of critical thinking, scientific literacy, and understanding. African skeptics must see this as their primary responsibility. African skeptics must rise up to this great challenge now because all that is needed for superstition to thrive and triumph is for skeptics to do nothing.

Afroskepticism, why not?