Even someone who’s spent a lifetime studying religion can’t know every single sect. People are far too creative in that regard, and some belief groups are fairly small. I had never heard of Unarius, for example, before reading this book. If I had, it simply washed over me, getting lost in the noise. Part of the trouble with defining Unarius is that it calls itself a science. Words can be slippery, and Christian Scientists also use that designation in a similar way. The word “science,” etymologically speaking, denotes “knowledge.” In our materialist culture we often suppose that means the physical sciences, grudgingly allowing it to be borrowed by the “social sciences.” There is a science of religion, but this leads to its own set of discussion points. Let’s look at Diana Tumminia’s title: When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying Saucer Group. That give you an idea.
The “prophecy” part concerns a “failed” prediction, or two, of when the spaceships would land. Being a sociologist, Tumminia’s real interest is what happens then. And here’s where things get interesting. Failed predictions generally don’t lead to true believers giving up their convictions. History has played and replayed this for us—it’s happening around us this very second—and yet “rationality” supposes that when the ships don’t land, people simply move on. The Millerites outlived “the Great Disappointment,” after all, when the world didn’t end as predicted. Their heirs include a sizable Christian denomination. All this talk of AI has muddled our thinking about what it means to be human. We are emotional. More than that, we are believing creatures. Our society is living proof.
Perhaps the most important, and ill-studied facet of being human, is belief. Belief (no matter what in) is a religious phenomenon. This study of a fairly small group shows that convinced people cannot be dissuaded, no matter how many facts are presented to them. One need not look far to find the same phenomenon surrounding Trump. (I do not condone violence, but history can inform us if we allow it.) Make no mistake—he is the center of a new religion. Unarians have absolute belief that their system is right. Mistaken predictions—even very public ones—will not convince true believers otherwise. It seems to me that our society, our democracy, cannot survive without intensive study of belief and how it affects the way otherwise completely rational people think. My study is full of books exploring various aspects of belief, but we are still no closer to any kind of definitive answer. And voters, at least a great many of them, follow their beliefs.
