Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jcoq 1548 days ago
It wouldn't be very difficult to find a senior lecturer of Christian theology in any American university with borderline insane beliefs.

I wonder how much of this is lazy journalism coupled with the fact that non-believers might not want to speak out.
1 comments
daenz 1548 days ago
What does "but what about Christians?" have to do with the question of how we should address magical thinking in academia? Unless you are saying it's not a problem because Americans have the exact same problem?
link
vidarh 1548 days ago
It's relevant to point out that there's a certain element of "look at the ridiculous natives" to this when the article does not even mention that this is not a problem isolated to juju, but one that is found everywhere, including with Christian groups. Especially when talking of the difficulty of challenging such beliefs, which is something many of us here will have if not faced directly, then at least grown up with it being a consideration even in relatively secular societies.
link
lostgame 1548 days ago
I absolutely don’t believe that’s what the commenter here was saying.

What I got from the comment is that it’s a problem everywhere, not isolated to this area or set of beliefs.

The commenter was simply providing another example of this, not stating this isn’t an overall bad thing. Of course it is.

link
daenz 1548 days ago
To me, it feels kind of like the poster is agitated that the article focuses another country's problems, which elicited the kneejerk response about "Americans", "Christians" and "lazy journalism", as if to say "focus on your own problems." This response is confusing I never stated this was a problem specific to Nigeria, but instead I asked a general question about magical thinking in academia.
link
galaxyLogic 1548 days ago
This is the problem with "cultural relativism" in general, which states that we cannot, must not, judge the beliefs and customs of other cultures because who are we to condemn them?

We should condemn magical thinking wherever it happens because truth is truth and falsehoods are falsehoods regardless of in which culture(s) they occur. And they pretty much occur in every country.

Another way of saying that is we should NOT condemn magical thinking in other cultures UNLESS we also condemn it in our own culture.

It is not like its impossible to tell what is magical thinking and what is not, we have science for doing just that.

link