> Well, I don't know how much developed intellectual
> capacity they had, but as far as I can tell blood
> libel was almost universally accepted (among
> Christians anyway) in Medieval Europe as a fact of the
> world, like the sun rising in the east, water being
> wet, and the existence of dragons. If your society has
> a consensus about x, 95% of the time the members of
> the society are going to agree with the consensus.
>
> Look at the example of the Beilis trial (the Russian
> Empire's last blood libel trial, in 1913, in which a
> Jew was accused of ritually murdering a Christian
> child). The jury was composed of Ukrainian peasants.
> That they were not fanged, raving anti-Semites out for
> blood is shown by the fact that the accused was in
> fact found not guilty. However, everybody in the jury
> did believe that blood libel was a reality and did, in
> fact, conclude that the child had been a victim of
> Jewish ritual murder, but not by this guy.
The fact that superstitious beliefs are almost universally accepted by a population doesn't demonstrate they're not paranoid.
Where the life conditions of the vast majority of individuals are those that lead to the development of an individuality characterized by paranoid superstitions, the vast majority will be characterized by such superstitions.
The working of group psychology will reinforce this.
Similarly, though it's an advance when individuals become to some degree open to rational critique as in your Ukrainian peasant example, this too doesn't demonstrate that they do not remain to some significant degree irrationally superstitious.
Hegel points out that Hamlet is more rational than Macbeth because he's not completely convinced by his delusions, i.e."'The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.'" Hamlet, however, is still to a significant degree delusional.
Ted