Wrath of titans?

Although sceptics like to think otherwise, we tend to believe things that people tell us; whether they are true or false. In Seven Laws of Magical Thinking, author Matthew Hutson asserts, for example, that we just tend to take people at their word, whether it’s on “facts” like the earth is round or “fictions” like Santa Claus exists.

This might explain why messages such as the one linking the recent calamity in Uttarakhand with the shifting of an 800-year-old Devi image have suddenly gone viral.

Curiously, the same people who gave credence to the “wrath of the goddess” theory also had access to the emphatic denial issued by the priest of the Dhari Devi temple located on a rock in the river Alaknanda. Still, the believers chose to put their money on the urban legend that said only a few hours before the catastrophic cloudburst in Himalayas, the idol of the guardian deity of Uttarakhand was moved from its original site.

This was done ostensibly to make way for a 330 MW hydel project that now lay in ruins! Is this because we are hardwired to find meaning in the world, as Hutson suggests?

Does that predisposition leave us with less control over our beliefs than we are willing to admit? For, as Hutson told CNN, “Even if you’re a hardcore atheist who walks under ladders and pronounces “new age” like “sewage”, you’ll (still) believe in magic!” Even more significantly, experts said emotional stress and amilieu full of personal grief or sacrifice tends to push people towards magical thinking.

Under trying circumstances, people tried to look for hidden meanings more easily.