The Human Will-To-Believe, Even In The Face Of All Factual Evidence.

I heard that meme has been officially added to the dictionary.

A meme is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. An Internet meme is a concept that spreads via the Internet. Balloon boy hoaxor Ancient Aliens

Know Your Meme

Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature is a study by L. Sprague de Camp_[1]. It is considered one of his most popular works. It was written in 1948, and first published serially in the magazine Other Worlds Science Fiction in 1952-1953; portions also appeared as articles in Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, Natural History Magazine, and the Toronto Star. It was first published in book form by Gnome Press i n 1954. I never noticed this about Sprague de Camp_[1] when I first blogged him in 2011.

L. Sprague de Camp_[1] enjoyed debunking doubtful history and pseudoscientific claims. The work provides a detailed examination of theories and speculations on Atlantis and other lost lands, including the scientific arguments against their existence.

He explains the origins of the Atlantis legend in Plato's Timaios and Kritias dialogues and how it has been continued, developed and imitated by later theorists, speculators, scientific enquirers, enthusiasts, occultists, quacks, and fantasists throughout history. Major speculative locales as Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria are covered in depth, with the origins of lesser-known ones such as Thule, Hyperborea and Rutas also treated. The work shows how the misinterpretation of Mayan writings created the Mu-myth, and how the name Lemuria originated from the geological hypothesis about a land bridge between India and South Africa. Modern usage of the concept in speculative fiction_[2] is gone into, as are the various attempts to discover the "real" Atlantis.

Reviewer Groff Conklin described the original edition as "a monument of scholarship [and] a richly documented and entertaining survey of how crazy the crackpots can get." Boucher and McComas praised it as "a marvelously and terrifying history of the human will-to-believe, even in the face of all factual evidence."

De Camp's work is still one of the most reliable sources on the lost continent theme. Lost continents or ancient civilizations sunk by a deluge are a common theme in the scriptures of doctrines of many modern pseudoreligions_[3] or cults. Well-known instances include James Churchward's books on Mu, or the Theosopical portrayals of Hyperborea, Lemuria and Atlantis, and even the Nazi mythologizing about Thule.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Continents

This is a good example of books, riddled with logical and factual errors, that are largely rejected by scientists and academics, who categorize the work as pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken I remember this from the 60’s.

 [1] Ghost-writing

[2] Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts.

[3] Pseudoreligion, or pseudotheology, is a generally pejorative term applied to a non-mainstream belief system or philosophy which is functionally similar to a religious movement, typically having a founder, principal text, liturgy and faith-based beliefs.

Professor James Carmine, chair of Carlow University's philosophy department, proposes a three-pronged test to distinguish "authentic" religions from pseudoreligions:

1.      Any religion lacking a guiding coherent theology is a pseudo-religion.

2.      Any religion entirely self referential is a pseudo-religion.

_3.        Any religion whose only fruit is adherence to itself is a pseudo-religion_{.[ Carmine, James (14 December 2005). "Bad Religions and Good Religions"]}

Examples of marginal movements with founding figures, liturgies and recently invented traditions that have been studied as legitimate social practices include various New Age movements^{,[ MacDonald, Jeffery L. (December 1995). "Inventing Traditions for the New Age: A Case Study of the Earth Energy Tradition". Anthropology of Consciousness 6 (4): 31–45.]} and millennaristic movements (any belief centered around 1000-year intervals)such as the Ghost Dance and South Pacific cargo cults._{[ Errington, Frederick (May 1974). "Indigenous Ideas of Order, Time, and Transition in a New Guinea Cargo Movement". American Ethnologist 1 (2): 255–267]}

Why People Believe Weird Things.

If you can make the reader believe anything no matter how absurd it is,

 Forgive yourself for having read and believed it. Forgive those that wrote it recognizing that we are all one with God.