that comet thing

so i may be a little behind with these blogs but i wanted to write this one about what we touched on last week. we briefly brought up the group of people that followed the halebob comet in one of those sidebars that our class is so good at doing. i believe that a group of people committed suicide when this comet passed by our atmosphere in the belief that there was an alien space ship following in the wake of the comet which would take them all to a better place. there were several comments made about the stupidity of such a belief. now im not advocating this group suicide thing and i dont believe that there were aliens behind the comment but there should be some sort of understanding of faith for them. yes there ideas seem crazy and ridiculous but so do many other beliefs when viewed by someone that does not follow them. christianity was viewed as a cult when it first began, and i could say that the idea of someone being resurrected three days after their death is just as crazy as aliens. just because there are more people following a set of ideas, doesnt mean they are always right or better. this ties in with what we were discussing with the cannibals. judging others because they act different from our social norms. in japan it was common for samurai to kill themselves after dishonoring themselves or their family. there are places in africa where genital mutilation is still practiced. i dont necessarily agree with any of these practices but they are what different people believe and follow. it just seemed wrong in the way we simply dismissed these comet people as freaks in a cult.