Thanks everyone, you bring up some good points.

So beliefs can be dangerous if they cause undue harm or grief to people. Certainly any belief that advocates suicide or murder is at best morally suspect and at worst unethical or unlawful. (I try to leave the law out of belief as much as possible though... now that can get pretty scary) But what about positive beliefs that are not supported by science, for example, the teachings of Jesus or the Buddha. Now I have never seen anyone on this board try to debunk the words of Jesus or the beliefs of mainstream christians and buddhists but what about the many new age beliefs that don't involve taking drastic measures to prepare for some kind of pole shift thingamajig. Would you debunk the works of Rudolph Steiner, not including the modern woldorf schools. Or what about say the writings of Gurdjieff who believed that the sun, moon, and earth are alive and that humanity is food for the moon. (no more paranoia inducing than the fear of eternal damnation for the unsaved) If you would debunk these people, why, simply as an excercise, or because you don't believe people should think that way?

Also, if someone is seriously scared about planet X, while a good debunking can work wonders, if this fails, wouldn't it be more productive to explain to them why they shouldn't fear things they cannot control. After all an asteroid could kill us all tomorrow and there wouldn't be a thing we could do about it. One could point out that while planet X may exist, there is no more reason to believe that it will kill us in our lifetime than any other natural kind of disaster. What is the need for debunking in light of these alternatives?

Also, the healthcare industry would consider a genuine fear of planet X a sign of mental illness and would probably prescribe either an antipsychotic (if the Dx was schizo) or an SSRI (if the Dx was OCD). How do you treat the act of debunking in light of this?

__________________
~SS