Building a mystery

I've seen numerous examples of people that apply a religion-like faith in healing devices. One person I know will avoid going to the doctor like it was fatal, yet he wears a copper bracelet and takes about a dozen pills every day, mostly non-prescription nutriceuticals. Another person I know tried to sell me on the benefits of taking "enzymes" in pill form. She felt great and swore by them. She did not know what enzymes really were or that the body generates them. Another guy wanted to talk to me about an electronic machine that somehow put electrical currents through you and healed everything that was wrong with you. He was convinced that it worked because it was invented by a man that was nominated for a Nobel Prize (I didn't tell him that dozens of people get nominated every year and that being nominated was no measure of merit).

Most of the time, the people that approach me with the latest diet or medical device are religious people that believe in all issues of faith, but believe evolution is a lie that deceptive scientists are trying to foist on the public to destroy their faith. The other faction is a group of people that believe nonsense political theories, but think that the scientists are in cahoots with left wing liberals to destroy our way of life with a preposterous global warming fabricated scheme.

I recently began to figure out where they are coming from. Their understanding, belief, and faith depends on not understanding. They believe the kind of things that are mysterious. If you can't explain it, you have to have a leap of faith to accept it, then in must be correct.

If you can fully explain a phenomenon, the faithful believe that you must be wrong, because we can't know everything. They believe that people that have a complete explanation for something are more likely to be deluding themselves.

It's a crazy situation when you've convinced yourself that proof and logic can't be trusted, but a leap of faith is what you want to put your faith in. It's a mystery.