What is the biggest hoax in history that people still believe today?

.

That the US was not aware that 9/11 was going to happen.

Religion

~ ~ ~ Trump graduated from sixth grade before going to military academy (juvenile detention school for RICH delinquents)!

Theism.

It’s hard to beat the whole “Christ died for your sins and now you have to submit to Church authority or else your soul will burn in hellfire forever” as literal message thing. Evidently there’s an Islamic version as well.

It’s also hard to beat compound interest and unbacked currency and letting one group of inter-owned international banks and related corporations own most of the wealth on earth.

There’s also the related one about the moral weight of our economic systems.

And the one about how a nation is “democratic” even when you only get one vote and the only viable candidates are the two mediocre-at-best offerings of the two big-money-owned party candidates, even when they both have negative approval ratings.

These are all good but I was looking for historical events which are considered true but that aren’t.

Columbus being a good guy.
Mother Theresa being a good guy.
Egyptians using slaves to build the pyramids.
Jesus’ existence.

Global warming…no…Climate Change…no…global….oh never mind.

@seawulf575 You believe that global warming or climate change is a hoax?

Clearly a global conspiracy involving every single scientist and politician on earth, that makes the moon landing and roswell conspiracy look like a secret between toddlers.

That the Allies could not stop Hitler before millions died.

Mormonism
Scientology
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Vaccines cause autism
Every magical diet plan – low carbs, low fats, etc.
Trickle down economics
Higher crime rates among immigrants

The belief in an afterlife.

That the United States was not founded on the genocide of a people.

That nothing can be done in Syria to stop the genocide there.

Most of the political belief systems that ideological people rally behind.

except yours, of course.

I don’t really have any

of course not.
Only others do.

There are a large number of people who don’t go along with socially constructed belief systems unless directed by force.

@ARE_you_kidding_me: “There are a large number of people who don’t go along with socially constructed belief systems unless directed by force.”

What does this even mean?

It means that when given the choice and the proper environment many ( but not most) people will make decisions based on facts and observation rather than on tradition, trends, tribalism or dogma. It’s not really a collection of traits you see with people who are highly ideoligical.

That people deserve their station in life.

That animals don’t have any kind of feelings, experiences, consciousness, spirit or soul, so we can feel a-ok about raising them in industrial conditions for maximum corporate profit, using them in test experiments we would never perform on humans for moral reasons, eat them without having to accept that there was killing involved, etc.

@ARE_you_kidding_me: “It means that when given the choice and the proper environment many ( but not most) people will make decisions based on facts and observation rather than on tradition, trends, tribalism or dogma. It’s not really a collection of traits you see with people who are highly ideoligical.”

I think this is a fantasy. The celebration of reason and decisions based on facts and observation is how everyone feels they make decisions and live their life. Everyone. To each of us, those that believe differently are simply caught in some delusion and they just need to find their way to the light.

We are social mammals that grow up collecting beliefs and an understanding of the world that is directly related to the culture and time we were raised.

@flutherother Yes, I really believe global warming/climate change is a hoax. Not really the thread to discuss it further, but it is the biggest scam I’ve ever seen.

Right after the 9/11 inside job, planned by Bush.

And the fake Dinosaur bones, that Satan planted in the ground to deceive people.

Ok..here are some from the site..
Napoleon wasn’t short.
Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets.
Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America.
Hitler couldn’t win WW2 if only this or that was done differently like invasion of Russia…

@thisismyusername
Most people just follow the herd and are tribal. There are plenty of people who are not like this. It’s not fantasy, it’s genuine behavior. There is a hard difference between having the delusion that you are being objective and actually being objective. Again, most people fall into the delusional category but there are plenty who don’t.

^ ok

Oswald acted alone.

It is questions and answers like this that make me consider leaving the site.

Napoleon wasn’t short.
Ok, he was 5’7”... I didn’t know there was a big idea he was any smaller, and how’s that a big hoax?

Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets.
Right, though again – a big hoax.

Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America.
I almost answered this. Also the part the kids often get told about how people supposedly thought the world was flat and he was out to prove it wasn’t, etc.

Hitler couldn’t win WW2 if only this or that was done differently like invasion of Russia…
That depends on what you mean by “win” and how much one is allowed to have Germany do differently.

@filmfann Why/how does your own answer to this question have you considering leaving the site?

The five second rule If you eat something with invisible poop on it (pick up from the ground floor before 5 seconds it’s okay. Or if the poop is invisible it’s not there.

Global warming. It is global climate change now.

Also that the solar system and galaxy are flat.

@RedDeerGuy1 Global warming and global climate change are different names for the same thing. One name is derived from the cause, the other from the symptom.

@JeSuisRickSpringfield actually, it was global warming right up until the predictions failed to come true and people started ridiculing those spouting it. Then it changed to “Climate Change” so that any anomaly with weather could be attributed to it. Part of why I say it is a hoax.

Who remembers Y2K?

@seawulf575: “actually, it was global warming right up until the predictions failed to come true and people started ridiculing those spouting it. Then it changed to “Climate Change” so that any anomaly with weather could be attributed to it.”

You’re not really interested in understanding things, are you?

@seawulf575 the name climate change began to be used because global warming had become a measurable reality and was affecting rainfall patterns and wind strengths across the globe and not just temperatures.

As I mentioned originally, I don’t care to hijack this thread. I will start a new question on climate change.

@seawulf575 The prediction models regarding global warming have in fact been quite accurate, especially when taken as a group. As long as one understands what scientific models actually are, and that no single model claims to provide more than a probabilistic projection, the existence of minor disagreements among the projections (which have to account for the wide variety of human behavior, including efforts to combat climate change) will be neither surprising nor concerning. The fact of the matter is that the average of projections is remarkably close to the actual history it was predicting (once again giving support to aggregative methods of statistical projection—the same methodological approach that went against the media herd and suggested that Trump had a very real chance of winning the presidency).

And as for Y2K, the systems people were most worried about were all replaced before the date change. The main threat was thought to be facing the financial industry, which upgraded to so-called “Y2K compliant” hardware and software way in advance. While there were people who worried about other systems going haywire, most experts were willing to take a wait and see approach to anything that didn’t make calculations based on the exact date. (And for the record, there were a handful of minor incidents that have been attributed to the Y2K issue, including one at a nuclear facility in Ishikawa, Japan that had some of its primary equipment fail during the date change. But most of these were handled without public incident. In the case of the Ishikawa facility, for instance, the Y2K compliant backup system took care of it.)

That if you read it on Fluther, it must be true.

@Yellowdog Does anyone actually believe that?

How can anyone really answer that? If people still believe a thing, they aren’t going to call it a hoax. How many people are likely to tell you that they believe in things they know are false? The biggest hoaxes in history are probably still considered real.

I also think it’s a bit weird that “hoax” is currently being treated as synonymous with “false.” A hoax is a deliberate deception, and it’s often used to refer to a prank or practical joke. If people are lied to or misled for some ill purpose, or of they just have a mistaken understanding of things (such as that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around it), that isn’t a hoax. Nobody tried to trick people into believing that the earth was the center of the universe. It was wrong, but it was still science, according to the best that people knew at the time.

Marijuana is a gateway drug.

The Bible and the Quran are two top contenders for that title! So are all other holy books, but Bible and Quran are especially insane and destructive.

Yes, only Capital by Karl Marx is true wisdom, rush b cyka blyat!