False witnesses

In my past life as an evangelical for social action, I had a much-photocopied dossier in my desk drawer from the Procter & Gamble corporation. This surreal document was the company's sadly necessary response to the urban legend that the manufacturer of Tide, Crest and Dawn was some kind of satanic cult.

Briefly, the idea was that the CEO of P&G had at some vague point in the recent past appeared on some talk show -- Phil Donahue, or Sally Jesse, or Oprah, the story mutated and adapted over time -- and declared that he was a Satanist and that a portion of the company's profits were donated regularly to the Church of Satan. (If you're not familiar with it, Snopes has a good rundown of the history of this sordid, stupid lie.)

This is a mind-bogglingly silly story. It's not just implausible, but inconceivable, impossible. It is unbelievable on its face for dozens of reasons that become clear from even a moment's consideration, and it's based on factual claims that are easy to check on and quickly disproved. But we don't need to get bogged down here in the ridiculousness of this malicious rumor, so bracket that for now, that's not the interesting part.

Procter & Gamble had prepared the dossier to combat this zombie rumor. The company had put together its own documents disproving the story and disavowing any connection to the Evil One or to his church. They had collected letters from Donahue, Sally Jesse, Oprah and several other talk show hosts attesting that no one from the company had ever appeared on their programs, much less attempted to use such an appearance to spread the unholy gospel of Satanism. P&G had also collected an impressive array of letters from religious leaders -- the archbishop of Cincinnati, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, among others -- all of whom urged their followers not to believe this stupid, stupid lie.

In retrospect, this desperate, shotgun appeal to religious authority demonstrated why the dossier itself was probably futile. It was an acknowledgment that the people they were attempting to convince were beyond the reach of mere fact or reason -- people who did not find reality compelling. The only hope of persuading them, then, was to call upon religious leaders from across the spectrum in the hopes that the pronouncement of one of these random bishops and evangelical pseudo-bishops might be regarded as trustworthy.

If you're forced to resort to such an attempt then you've got to realize that it's not likely to work either. Any audience so far gone as to require this sort of argument is also likely to have already adopted the mechanisms of self-reinforcing stupidity. Thus if they read that Billy Graham denies the rumor, their response won't be "Oh, OK, Billy Graham. I trust him," but rather "OMG! Billy Graham is in on it too!" (cf. "biased media")

So the dossier was hopeless, but I had yet to come to see that. Thus whenever I came across some group of evangelicals choosing to believe this rumor and spreading it to others, I would photocopy the dossier and send it to them in the hope that good information would correct their misinformation.

That was an old-school, pre-Internet method of doing something that I'm sure everyone reading this used to do via e-mail. You would receive one of those chain e-mails from a parent, friend or coworker, containing some breathless warning against a nonexistent threat. It'd take you a handful of clicks to find the Snopes page debunking the rumor and you would cut and paste the URL back into the e-mail and then hit reply-all.

I say this is something you probably used to do because, I'm guessing, you eventually realized that this approach doesn't work. It didn't work for me either when I sent out those photocopies of that slam-dunk, undeniable dossier from Procter & Gamble.

The dossier/Snopes approach doesn't work because it attempts to apply facts and reason to people who are not interested in either facts or reason. That's not a nice thing to say, or even to think, about anyone else, which is why I was reluctant and slow to reach that conclusion. But that conclusion was inevitable.

In trying to combat the P&G slander with nothing more than irrefutable facts proving it false, I was operating under a set of false assumptions. Among these:

1. I assumed that the people who claimed to believe that Procter & Gamble supported the Church of Satan really did believe such a thing.

2. I assumed that they were passing on this rumor in good faith -- that they were misinforming others only because they had, themselves, been misinformed.

3. I assumed that they would respect, or care about, or at least be willing to consider, the actual facts of the matter.

4. Because the people spreading this rumor claimed to be horrified/angry about its allegations, I assumed that they would be happy/relieved to learn that these allegations were, indisputably, not true.

All of those assumptions proved to be false. All of them. This was at first bewildering, then disappointing, and then, the more I thought about it, appalling -- so appalling that I was reluctant to accept that it could really be the case.

But it is the case. Let's go through that list again. The following are all true of the people spreading the Procter & Gamble rumor:

1. They didn't really believe it themselves.

2. They were passing it along with the intent of misinforming others. Deliberately.

3. They did not respect, or care about, the actual facts of the matter, except to the extent that they viewed such facts with hostility.

4. Being told that the Bad Thing they were purportedly upset about wasn't real only made them more upset. Proof that the 23rd largest corporation in America was not in league with the Devil made them defensive and very, very angry.

Again, I'm not happy to be saying such things about anyone, and I'm only doing so here reluctantly, yet this is the appalling truth.

Maybe you're also a bit reluctant to accept this. Maybe you're thinking Hanlon's/Heinlein's Razor should apply -- the axiom that reminds us to "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

I wish that applied here. As I said above, I spent a long time distributing that dossier on that assumption that I was, in fact, dealing with stupidity rather than malice. But the spreading of this rumor cannot be adequately explained by stupidity. Stupidity alone doesn't make one hostile to irrefutable facts. Stupidity cannot account for their vicious anger when the rumor is debunked -- anger at the person doing the debunking, and anger at the whole world for not turning out to be the nightmare they wanted it to be.

But in any case, no one is stupid enough to really believe such a story. The coworkers or relatives who fill your inbox with urban legends and hoaxes may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but none of them is stupid enough to believe this. And neither are those people who claim that they do believe it.

Go back and unbracket all of the implausibilities and impossibilities of this story. It just makes no sense. Why would a member of a secret evil society of evil go on national TV to tell the world about it? And why would this proudly evil company now deny the very same thing? Why does the name of the TV host keep changing while the CEO himself is never named? And how come no one can seem to find anyone who actually saw this alleged broadcast? And ...

And why are we even bothering to discuss the holes in this story? It's nothing but holes. Any one of those holes should stop the hearer short, preventing them from passing this ridiculous story along and adding their approval to it.

If a person is smart enough to comprehend this story and then to repeat it, then that person is, by definition, not stupid enough to really believe it.

I used to believe that maybe some people were that stupid. They were acting that stupid, so I went along. I believed that the people I was sending that dossier to were merely innocent dupes.

But in truth they were neither innocent nor dupes. The category of innocent dupe does not apply here. No one could be honestly misled by such a story. The only way to have been misled by it is dishonestly -- which is to say deliberately, willingly and willfully. They are claiming to believe a foolish thing, but they are not guilty of foolishness. They are guilty of malice.

They are just plain guilty.

Which brings us to the interesting and complicated question: Why? Why would anyone choose to pretend to believe such preposterous and malicious falsehoods? What's in it for them?

For some few of them, the answer to that doesn't turn out to be all that complicated or all that interesting. They did it for money.

The P&G rumor seems to have originated among rival soap-sellers -- people affiliated with a giant multilevel marketing scheme with roots in the evangelical subculture (it rhymes with "Spam Ray"). Their marketing model is based on old-fashioned social networking, which partly accounts for why the rumor remains so widespread among American evangelicals. It also explains why the rumor seems to have been tailored to appeal to evangelicals in particular -- with the CEO allegedly declaring his allegiance to the Church of Satan rather than to, say, the American Nazi Party or the Klan or communism.

The people who created this rumor, in other words, employed it as a way of convincing prospective buyers to purchase their detergent instead of Tide because Tide worships the Devil. That seems hamfisted and over-the-top doesn't it? A vaguer, less extreme rumor might have seemed likelier to work better -- something subtler than the ultimate trump card of claiming that P&G was literally in league with Satan.

But the rumor was effective. Spectacularly effective. It went viral years before most of us had ever thought to use that term that way. And it lives on, still surfacing and resurfacing after decades spent trying to kill it through truth-telling dossiers and aggressive litigation.

Confronted with the runaway success of such an absurd and over-the-top claim, the reflexive response is to think something like, "Wow, a lot of people really are gullible and stupid." But again -- and this is my point here -- this has nothing to do with either stupidity or gullibility. The widespread promotion and pretend-acceptance of this rumor cannot be adequately explained by stupidity. It can only be attributed to malice.

This story, as with the many others like it, is spread maliciously. The people spreading it are not fools. They are not suffering from a mental defect, but from a moral one. They have chosen to bear false witness, and they do so knowingly.

So money was one motive for those who first created and began to spread the P&G rumor. Theirs is the easiest case. Greed is relatively mundane and uncomplicated. But what of the others, what of those who pretend to believe this rumor and enthusiastically spread it to others without the possibility of financial benefit?

Theirs is a far more complicated, and more interesting, situation. Too complicated to get into this morning, so this post will have to have a Part 2.

Comments

[Otter]

Wow--I never considered Spam Ray as the origin of the Atwater/Rove school of political campaigning. You're definitely on to something here.

And you're right; I've given up on debunking. The current response is, "Wow that's funny! Who would be stupid enough to believe such a thing?"

[emjaybee]

Can't wait to read part 2. I still Snopes these types of things despite the fact that no-one ever really responds or seems interested in the truth, because it dramatically cuts down on my email spam--people think twice before sending me stuff anymore (except Mom, who likes to push my buttons). And if there's one person on reply-all who really was too naive to not know something was an urban legend, then I've done something worthwhile in telling them so.

[Froborr]

I've managed to debunk a couple of rumors by recourse to Snopes, but they were much more plausible. Mostly to do with fad diets.

There *are* innocent dupes in the world, and I think the fact that some people are willing dupes doesn't mean we're absolved of responsibility to help out the innocent dupes.

I'm not sure a separate part 2 is necessary. It's pretty simple. People believe what they want to believe. I want to believe the world is bigger than our ideas about it, but ultimately comprehensible by the rigorous application of empirical experience, reason, and the scientific method. Thus, I am happy to embrace the debunking of widely held or deeply felt beliefs by those methods. Most people want to believe that the world is simple and works the way they think it does, so they resist debunking.

Anyway,

[Sarah Jane]

I remember hearing that story while I was a teenager in the mid-90s. I even heard it at a time when I WAS gullible enough to fall for it, because I was still young enough to believe that church authorities always told The Truth.

I remember the jolt of realizing, sometime early in my college years, how much of what I'd heard in church was demonstrably untrue. And if the pastor lied to a bunch of children about men having one rib fewer than women, what's to say he was telling us the truth about God?

[Lauren]

O nooooooz! Not another of those Part 2s that are supposed to come the next day but don't show up for ages and ages! What shall we do?

[harmfulguy]

...what of those who pretend to believe this rumor and enthusiastically spread it to others without the possibility of financial benefit?

I'm betting this comes down to fearmongering. Looking forward to the sequel.

[Romulus]

People of faith do not require proof or evidence to define their beliefs.

Any attempt to provide people of faith with proof or evidence that is contrary to their proof-less beliefs is futile, because to allow proof or evidence to modify their beliefs would be to deny faith.

BTW YFTM that even if this were all true, the Church of Satan doesn't really worship a deity named Satan, or any deity for that matter, certainly not the Satan of the Bible -- well, not of the Bible actually, but certainly presumed to be of the Bible. Again, faith, proof, etc.

[Geds]

There *are* innocent dupes in the world

I agree. I've known a few of them, specifically the ones who forward the current vogue message about the government trying to take Christian programming off of the TV and radio waves.

The problem with the innocent dupes in this situation, however, is that they'll tend to thank you for the de-bunking and then send you the next one that comes along about how the Democrats want to remove the non-tax status of churches or whatever.

Frighteningly, one of the worst offenders in the innocent dupes category I ever met was in college for journalism.

[MikhailBorg]

I had a co-worker who tried the "American war against Iraq was predicted in verse 9:11 of the Koran" and "Mr. Rogers was a Navy Seal" rumors on me. Directing her to Snopes did seem to help for a while.

I gave up completely, though, when she informed the office that the dinosaur bones in the museums of the world were part of a hoax perpetuated by the Godless to attack the Biblical Genesis story. I think my response was something along the lines of, "Wow," followed by a rapid exit.

[Susan Wilbanks]

Long-time lurker, first-time poster...

Like Sarah Jane, the first time I heard this rumor, I *was* gullible enough to believe it. I was 16, it went around my high school, and for awhile there I tried to avoid P&G products.

Fast-forward six years. I'm a senior in college, and the same rumor is making its way around my college Christian fellowship group. Everyone is all anxious, poring over the list of P&G products and figuring out how to replace their Tide, Crest, Always, etc. But I thought, "Wait a minute. Didn't I hear this six years ago? And wasn't it a different talk show? This doesn't smell right." So I went out and did some research. The internet wasn't so comprehensive as it is now, so IIRC I actually went to my university's library to get onto LEXIS/NEXIS. At some point I found P&G's dossier that slacktivist mentioned, and I printed a bunch of copies and distributed them to my small group and our dorm's prayer group. They believed me, and that was that.

But I didn't choose to bear false witness when I was 16 and believed the rumor and spread it to my friends and family. I genuinely didn't have the sophistication that enabled me to spot the holes in the story when I encountered it again six years later. And if you've heard all your life that you're living in an Us vs. Them world, and that They want to mock and persecute you, you're going to be predisposed to believe anything that fits that frame.

[Hellsau]

Do the other portion of malicious dupes do it for the lulz? Or just to prove that they're smarter than all their acquaintances?

[M Groesbeck]

I wonder if we might need an extension to the Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."...or by the profit motive.

[McWyrm]

...certainly not the Satan of the Bible -- well, not of the Bible actually, but certainly presumed to be of the Bible...

Piffle - if you and I agree that there is one (and only one) entity called "Satan" then regardless of any differences in how that entity is described we are talking about the same entity. Same logic that says all monotheists worship the same god.

Also, are you suggesting that Satan isn't referenced in the Bible? That simply isn't so.

I worked for P&G for a short while in the 90s answering angry consumer letters. Inquiries about the company's alleged Satanism weren't common, but did occur often enough that there was a form letter ready for it. I believe I only had to deploy it two or three times in the months I was there.

[cjmr's husband]

O nooooooz! Not another of those Part 2s that are supposed to come the next day but don't show up for ages and ages! What shall we do?

I can't believe that some people believe that Part 2 never arrives. It's a vicious rumor, that. Let me send you a snopes link about it...

[Karen]

My guess is that people need to have their bad ideas justified. Don't like Obama because you're 65 years old and were raised to think black people are dumber than white people? Decide he's really a secret Muslim in the pay of Osama bin Laden. Don't like Hillary Clinton? Decide against all evidence that she murdered Vince Foster and fired the White House travel office staff for no good reason. When Sarah Palin comes along and admits to firing people for no good reason, well, that's okay because she's A Good Person and Member Of My Tribe. Confronting people with this will feel to the confrontee like an attack, because said person really knows deep down she's wrong,

[Evan]

I have not given up debunking, and I'll tell you why.

Years ago in college I took a class in computer-simulation design. The final project was a simulation on the subject of our own choosing, and I decided to simulate the spread of rumors through a population. I essentially used an epidemiological model, and included controls to configure various probabilities--the odds that someone who believed a given rumor would relay it to someone else; the odds that the someone else would believe it, and so on. I did my best to put these values into ranges that matched real-world behavior, and then I twiddled the knobs to see what would happen.

One of the knobs controlled the probability that someone who knew a story to be false would forcefully debunk it whenever s/he heard it. And that knob turned out to be astonishingly sensitive and powerful. In the hundreds of scenarios I ran, I found that a tiny shift in the probability of that one factor--a difference as small as one part in ten thousand--could be the difference between a rumor being universally believed (except for a handful of skeptical cranks) and a rumor being universally forgotten (except for a similar handful of credulous cranks).

Sometimes it took quite a long time for false rumors to be completely quelled. And the simulation didn't take into account a change in the odds over time, as debunkers grow demoralized and give up challenging the rumor when they hear it. But it seems to me that just strengthens the argument for debunking--there should be as many people linking to snopes and hitting "reply all" as possible, so that there'll still be enough as their numbers dwindle. Every little bit helps.

Yes, of course there are malicious actors out there. Of course there are people who want to infect everyone's brains with viruses and then exploit their symptoms for financial or political gain. Being an antibody is (I'm not religious but I can think of no other way to convey this) a holy cause, requiring faith.

[Drew Habits]

I find the debunk-reply-all method pretty effective if not for education, then at least for getting far fewer chain emails.

[Froborr]

That makes no sense, Sarah Jane. Even if the second* Genesis account of humanity's creation is literally true, the removal of Adam's rib is an environmentally acquired characteristic with no effect on his genetics, so Adam's descendents would still have the full number of ribs. I mean, it's not like having a leg amputated causes your descendents to be born with one fewer leg!

Romulus: People of faith do not require proof or evidence to define their beliefs.

Actually, *everybody* has beliefs they hold in the absence of proof or evidence. For example, most people believe that they are not brains in jars being fed sensory data by a sophisticated computer simulation (teenagers may pretend to believe this in an attempt to seem "deep", but they still avoid walking off cliffs).

The only difference is what those beliefs are, and what your attitude is towards counter-evidence if it appears.

Even the most fanatical True Believer, however, is capable of changing their minds about matters not connected to their core beliefs. For example, if Rabid LaJenkins Follower #689 believes that the corner drug store does not carry her favorite brand of iced tea, but then one day sees a bottle in the soft drink aisle, she'll probably buy it rather than refuse to believe it exists.

M Groesbeck: I wonder if we might need an extension to the Razor

I had always assumed that "stupidity" in the Razor extended to cover deliberate self-deception. The profit motive is a good addition, though. Remember, though, self-deception and profit are not necessarily mutually exclusive. People believe what they want to believe, and oftentimes that means self-deception for profit.

Piffle - if you and I agree that there is one (and only one) entity called "Satan" then regardless of any differences in how that entity is described we are talking about the same entity. Same logic that says all monotheists worship the same god.

Not true. For example, Satan in Jewish folklore is a servant of God, not a rebel; his role is as a sort of prosecuting attorney of divine judgement, to try to prove that people are evil by tempting them. Satan in Christian folklore is a rebel angel that defied God and was punished by being made lord of Hell.

Satan cannot be simultaneously both a servant of God in Heaven and a rebel against God who cannot enter Heaven. At most one description can be currently true, or else there are two separate entities named Satan.

Likewise, the Christian conception of God is (in at least one of his aspects) equally divine and human. The Jewish and Muslim conceptions of God are entirely divine in all aspects. Christian doctrine often preaches that Jews (and, less often, Muslims) are worshipping the same God as Christians, they just don't know about or refuse to acknowledge his human half. Jews and Muslims believe Christians are at best telling a false story about a real (but utterly non-divine) prophet, at worst worshipping a false god.

So no, not all Satans are the same Satan, and not all monotheists worship the same God.

Also, are you suggesting that Satan isn't referenced in the Bible? That simply isn't so.

This is true. The Book of Job has several mentions of Satan by that name, and other books of the (Jewish) Bible reference entities which some interpret to be Satan. Satan is also mentioned in the New Testament a number of times.

*Yes, second. Genesis describes the creation of humanity twice, and the first time (Genesis 1:27-29) it says man and woman were made together on the sixth day. In the second account it says that man was created (Genesis 2:6) *after* God rested on the 7th day (Genesis 2:2) and then recounts the familiar story about Eve being made from Adam's rib (Genesis 2:15-22).

[Bruce in South Florida]

Yes, the Amway people were huge spreaders, if not the originators, of this one. A few of the higher-ups were caught talking about this on a system they used which allowed you to tape a message and have it sent to thousands of people - this isn't too rare now is was a decade ago. There was a huge lawsuit and the Amway higher-ups LOST to the tune of $19.25 million.

I got into Amway (or "Quixtar", what they started calling themselves in North America in '98) before I quite realized how over-the-top the company is. I would guess 90%+ of Amway distributors are of the "well, McCain's OK, but I'm really psyched about Sarah Palin!" variety. So says former Amway Corp. President Dick DeVos: "From what I've seen, I think the American people are going to find [Palin] a very straightforward woman who has lived in real life and will bring the real world to Washington," DeVos said.

I haven't quit quite yet, but I haven't been active. It's hard to convince people to join a business when you feel like an outcast most of the time...

[Hot_Pecs42]

"I find the debunk-reply-all method pretty effective if not for education, then at least for getting far fewer chain emails."

Another real fun way is to sign up the person sending them to you to email lists from the opposite ends of the political spectrum. When you've told someone you haven't seen in years to stop sending you those "Hilarious" pictures of John Kerry side-by-side Eddie Munster and "U know ur a Republican when," telling them to stop doesn't always cut it. Added humor is sending them trannie newsletters.

[hapax]

Even if the second* Genesis account of humanity's creation is literally true, the removal of Adam's rib is an environmentally acquired characteristic with no effect on his genetics, so Adam's descendents would still have the full number of ribs. I mean, it's not like having a leg amputated causes your descendents to be born with one fewer leg!

True story: My husband spent ten years teaching anatomy in medical school. Every semester, he asks the question: "what's the easiest way to distinguish males from females in adult skeletons?" (Correct answer, not that anybody here didn't know this, is to examine the pelvis). Every semester, at least one student answers "Count the ribs." So he has the class go through all the bodies in the lab, has a huge file of data, including thousands of x-rays, all demonstrating that while rib count in human beings is slightly variable, it has no relationship to sex.

And every single semester, at least one student refuses to believe the evidence before his or her eyes. It doesn't matter what they see or touch themselves. It doesn't matter that, as Froborr points out, even if the story were true, Lamarckian evolution rules it out among Adam's descendents. Some stories, for whatever reason, simply trump reality.

[MikhailBorg]

Added humor is sending them trannie newsletters.

Hoping you're kidding about that. My transgender and transvestite friends take enough static from conservatives as it it without that kind of thing.

[Queequeg]

People knowingly pass along false rumors because they want to transmit (and reinforce) their notions of moral superiority.

They want to show that they are morally superior to a consumer-products corporation, or to a popular president. So they spread false rumors. Knowing that the rumors are false, they feel self-loathing for their moral culpability, so they double down and become True Believers in their lies.

I am convinced that literally -- LITERALLY -- some people look at Bill Clinton wearing a business suit, and they see a shaggy-haired hippie smoking a doobie and wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt. They MUST have this delusion, to protect their internal notions of their moral selves.

[Cliffman]

You need to read John Dean's book - Conservatives without a Conscience. Those people really _are_ wired differently - they are know to science as Right Wing Authoritarians - and they just don't process stuff according to logic... a very, very scary book, but it's really helped me understand why there is just no point trying to convince some people with facts...

[YetAnotherKevin]

Froborr @ 1:04

re: ribs
Even if you take the rib story as allegorical, it still works as a 'just so' story for why men have fewer ribs than women. That is, supposing men _did_ have one fewer rib then women, you could imagine a primitive folklorist making up the story to "explain" why. Conversely, since the story seems to have a 'just so' purpose, I always sort of assumed that men did have fewer ribs than women, until I found out otherwise.

Recently I heard that "rib" was a mistranslation of "baculum". Which would make more sense for something that was notably missing in humans. (notably for people who are carving up sheep and goats every other month)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculum

[victoria]

Thank you for this post, Fred. Last week during the RNC convention protest I was driving myself crazy trying to refute the latest resurgence of the "angry protesters stockpile urine and feces to throw at police" urban legend. It's really not a question of lack of information. It's a deliberate lie spread by law enforcement before large scale demonstrations in order to justify insane amounts of spending for riot gear and assorted new toys (See Miami 2003, New York 2004, etc). It has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with dehumanizing protesters.

[Leigh]

Why do people pass on stuff like this? Don Henley said it: we want dirty laundry.

It's juicy, it's nasty, it's fascinating; it makes our listeners' eyes widen. Yeah, it's probably bullshit, but if not, what a story, eh?

I mean! Corporate Giant Worships Satan! Whoo! And besides, they're a huge and successful company, and we always hate people who are richer/more successful than we are, anyway, a little bit.

Just like how that story that went around high school about the prom queen was... yeah, probably a total lie, but it was WAY too good a rumor not to pass on, c'mon. And she's so pretty and popular, she probably deserves to be taken down a peg or two even if it isn't true, right?

(Some days I totally hate people.)

[Praline]

Stupidity cannot account for their vicious anger when the rumor is debunked -- anger at the person doing the debunking, and anger at the whole world for not turning out to be the nightmare they wanted it to be.

In some cases, perhaps, we might be looking at the anger of people who feel they're being called stupid by being contradicted? A kind of, 'I believed this, and I'm not the kind of person to believe things that are wrong! Are you calling me stupid or something?' Nobody likes being made to feel foolish; I certainly tend to feel embarrassed when it's pointed out that I've believed something untrue, and embarrassment can turn to anger with the other person for embarrassing you pretty quickly if they aren't tactful about disabusing you. It might be a response to social discomfort rather than intellectual preference.

More generally, I fear I have to disagree (an unusual experience), because I think there are other motivations at play. I have no doubt the rumour was spread maliciously, but I find it hard to believe that everybody who believed it did so disingenuously. We all have our blind spots, and certain kinds of narrative are good at gaming them. That's why people bother to read fiction as well as non-fiction, and can come away from a novel feeling like they've learned a lesson about the real world when all they've seen is the antics of some non-existent people. Certain narrative structures slot neatly into our brains, and a malicious person can devise good ones to get people believing something advantageous. The question is why the listeners believe and pass on the story.

When an untrue story circulates, it's generally because it expresses some kind of social unease. There may not be razors in the Halloween apples, but it's a way of expressing the concern that your precious children are going out knocking on the doors of people who may not wish them well. There may not be rat poison in the Mars bars, but it's a way of expressing the sense that they're definitely not good for you. Not every Bridezilla story may be true, but it's a way of expressing the sense that the wedding industry is too high-pressured and perfectionistic. There may not be Satanic abuse going on at day care centres, but it's a way of expressing a sense of discomfort at women going to work and leaving their children in the care of others. And so on.

The Tide-is-Satanic story sounds like one of them. To non-Christians, it expresses a discomfort with the fact that our homes are full of products from large companies that we really know nothing about and who may not be trustworthy; they may not be Satanic, but they certainly are more interested in our money than our welfare. To people who believe Satan is abroad, it could express a sense of fear that secular capitalism is a stronger force in America than Christianity.

I've spent some time talking with people who were suffering from various brain dysfunctions, including paranoia, and what I realised after a while was that, while the stories they told weren't literally true - nobody was actually plotting against them - you could understand a lot about their inner lives by treating their stories as metaphorical. A guy says, 'My landlord wants to kill me'; think about how you'd feel if that were actually true, and it becomes clear that he's saying, in a scrambled way, 'I'm afraid of my landlord.' A woman says 'Everyone is part of a conspiracy'; she probably means 'I feel afraid a lot and don't feel safe around anyone.' The human tendency to express ourselves in metaphors can get exaggerated when the brain throws a few cogs, but we all do it to a certain extent.

That would explain, I think, why people felt angry when challenged over the Satanic Soap story. The two speakers are in different conversations. The skeptic heard:

Believer: Tide is Satanic!
Skeptic: No it's not, here's some proof.

The Believer heard:

B: Satan is abroad and I'm scared! Join me in fighting him!
S: No he's not. I don't respect your belief and won't help you avert the dangers.

Fearful people can get angry when you disagree with them because fear is emotional, not rational. You're not so much challenging their opinions as their emotions: you're telling them to stop being scared, and they can't. As a result, they believe you don't see the dangers of the world and can't be trusted to help protect it. It's natural to be angry with people who won't help when there's a crisis, and someone who denies the crisis's existence is certainly refusing to help.

This doesn't mean we should do everything a frightened person says, of course, but I do think there's more to it than stupidity and malice.

[McWyrm]

So no ... not all monotheists worship the same God.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims (and any other monotheists) can disagree on the nature of god all they like. What they can't do (and remain monotheists) is imagine that each worships a different god.

[Jim]

I think that one of the reasons this story proved so popular (and was spread by people other than Amway distributors) is that it serves as a vessel for unfocused anxiety over the consolidation that occurred in the American economy in the 20th century. P&G's products aren't made in your town or your state or even, in many cases, in the United States. I mean, who's to say that Vitucon Enterprises is not really headed by some evil madman intent on taking over the world.

You can see a similar phenomenon at work in the "Obama is a secret Muslim" meme. Whether because of his race, his background or even just his name, Obama represents The Other to a lot of people. The Barack Obama article from Conservapedia (a wiki run by one of Phyllis Schlafly's sons) is a good example of this.

Combine innuendo ("Hussein"), a few out-of-context quotes and abysmal ignorance about !America (any school in a predominantly Muslim countries is a madrassah just like the Wahabis run) and you can "prove" anything. I'm not sure if the author of this article is lying to himself or simply trying to fool a gullible audience. (From what I understand, Conservapedia is intended primarily for home-schooled middle-school students.)

[AH Silverman]

The widespread promotion and pretend-acceptance of this rumor cannot be adequately explained by stupidity. It can only be attributed to malice.

It can, instead, be attributed to laziness, which is the mentally disabled second cousin of malice.

[Jim]

I am convinced that literally -- LITERALLY -- some people look at Bill Clinton wearing a business suit, and they see a shaggy-haired hippie smoking a doobie and wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt. They MUST have this delusion, to protect their internal notions of their moral selves.

That was in a skit on Saturday Night Live during the 1992 election. At one of the debates Poppy Bush looked over and saw Clinton as precisely that.

[Phirazo]

I'm not entirely convinced that everybody who pushes rumors like doesn't believe in them. People have a tendency to ignore evidence that disagrees with their beliefs. There is even a name for this: the confirmation bias. It isn't about the truth, it's about being right. This is what keeps psychics, 9/11 conspiracy nuts, moon landing hoax nuts, creationists and other assorted scum in business. They are right, you are wrong, and no amount of evidence will convince the rumor-mongers otherwise.

[schism]

I'm going to have to side with the "innocent dupes exist" crowd. I recall this one user on another board I used to frequent who would latch on to any old urban legend that was posted. He wasn't stupid per se (though he certainly wasn't that bright), he just lacked any capacity for critical thought and would automatically believe anything anyone linked to. That made debunking easy, obviously; he'd believe Snopes as immediately as anything else. It just never occurred to him to question anything he read, or even poke around Snopes to see what else they'd shot down.

[Michele my bell-flower]

Recently I heard that "rib" was a mistranslation of "baculum". Which would make more sense for something that was notably missing in humans. (notably for people who are carving up sheep and goats every other month)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculum>

That's fascinating! (and also probably true)

If true, it's doubly fascinating that they devised a story in which God basically emasculated Adam so that he could have a wife....

I'll refrain from speculating about whether this is the basis for the anti-women stuff. Have to keep her in her place; woman has already cost man his "boner"....

[Geds]

The Barack Obama article from Conservapedia (a wiki run by one of Phyllis Schlafly's sons) is a good example of this.

Wow. Just...wow.

You could make a drinking game out of lies in that article and die of alcohol poisoning by the time you get to the end of that first block quote. Although I do like the way that innuendo about his Muslim-ness is then used to fuel speculation that he screws things up because he's Muslim. It's bizarro logic.

And the awesome picture of Obama standing in front of the flag without his hand over his heart while everyone else honors their country is just great. It's hard to tell, but it's also got "better than average Photoshop" written all over it...

[Michele my bell-flower]

dammit!!!

FredHelp!!

[Michele my bell-flower]

*sigh* hangs head in shame -- writes 100 times "I will not post without Preview again. I will not post without Preview again."

Someone forgot to close their italics tag

There must be some way to fix it

[Froborr]

Christians, Jews, and Muslims (and any other monotheists) can disagree on the nature of god all they like. What they can't do (and remain monotheists) is imagine that each worships a different god.

Not true at all. For example, a Jew can believe he worships the only real God, while Christians and Muslims worship a false god.

Worship does not imply the existence of the object worshipped. It implies only that the worshipper believes the object of worship exists, and I'm not even sure that's always true in every case, given how esoteric and weird some of the more philosophy-minded sub-sects of the major religions can get.

[hf]

Evan, how did you decide how debunking would affect people who believed the story?

Might as well test this:

What they can't do (and remain monotheists) is imagine that each worships a different god.

Happily, I'm not a monotheist and can entertain many theories about this.

[hapax]

The widespread promotion and pretend-acceptance of this rumor cannot be adequately explained by stupidity. It can only be attributed to malice.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's a little more nuanced than that. I think it's less a case of pure stupidity (i.e., a lack of reasoning capability) than what Lois Bujold refers to as the "deliberate Will-to-be-Stupid." It is self-deception, but a very special case; a deliberate effort to shave off the ragged edges of reality, to Photoshop out the spots and grey tones, to force a slope of best fit by tossing out the outlying data. It is, for the most part, an extremely effective survival strategy -- humans succeed and thrive on the basis of our unexcelled pattern-making skills, and for the most part "false positives" cause us little more than discomfort and inconvenience.

Alas, when the skill fails, it fails spectacularly.

To quote C.S. Lewis, as I too often do, "the trouble with making yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."

[Doctor Science]

by the power of the MOON!

[Doctor Science]

Dang. It worked in preview. Let's try again:

(I'm just dumping a bunch of close-italics tags in here, in the hopes that one will "catch").

[Mad Latinist]

The idea that what God really removed from Adam was his baculum is clever (cf. also the Rabbinic legend that it was his tail), but it would be disingenuous to say that "rib" is a mistranslation of baculum.

The Hebrew is tsela`, which does indeed mean "rib" or "side." The Septuagint uses pleura, and the Vulgate costa, both of which likewise mean "rib" or "side." Klein's Hebrew etymological dictionary lists several Semitic cognates meaning "rib."

The underlying root seems to mean "to be curved," which I suppose could apply to the organ in question, but ... well I'm not entirely sure where to look for attested Semitic terms for it. The Arabic Wikipedia seems like a good starting point; gives the name as عظمة القضيب ... but that's not a cognate, and if I'm not mistaken (my Arabic is atrocious) that just means "penis bone."

So to repeat, cool theory, but I wouldn't call that a "mistranslation."

[cjmr's husband]

At one of the debates Poppy Bush looked over and saw Clinton as precisely that.

I remember that one... the change was done a bit at a time -- the headband came first, then the beads and tiedye and Lennon glasses.

When Clinton looked over at Bush, Bush turned into The Church Lady.

And then they both looked over at Perot, who turned into a Munchkin...

I don't think this year's version would be quite as funny.

[Froborr]

I dunno. McCain slowly turns into a Muppet while Palin slowly turns into the Emperor from Star Wars. Meanwhile, Obama slowly turns into the Devil. I... honestly have no idea what Biden is being portrayed as, so I can't do that one.