spiritual fallacies

I am no preacher, but after getting to know more about hindu culture and traditions, I am getting increasingly fond of it. Having said that, I don't believe that we should preach Hinduism for increasing the number of followers. But at the same time, it is disappointing to see many otherwise educated and accomplished individuals doing things for the sake of some personal gain which makes no sense.

Recently, I happened to visit an acquaintance of ours who is a saibaba devotee. Saibaba is a spiritual guru who is known to have performed many modern miracles. Having faith in someone is not bad at all. In fact, faith alone can bring in a lot of positive things into life like self confidence, well being and strength. But it is appalling to see how so many people believe into something that is not free from logical fallacies! For instance say this person worships saibaba for a whole 2 hours per day and believes even saibaba is present in their home from certain "signs". Now think of it, it may sound strange but nothing is wrong in it. Sometimes you imagine things and start to feel things that is non-existent. That is fine absolutely. But I could not digest it when they said they do some "puja" every thrusday for 9 thursdays to get their wishes fulfilled. Not only that, they also believe Saibaba enters into somebody every weekend and that person even walks and bends like the baba. And that same person does some miracle every weekend. For example this person once called upon a little boy who had no hair on his head due to some medical problem and smeared Baba' prasad on his head. Now the next question I asked was, did he get the hair? The answer to that was not yet. I would wait longer to hear about that. Not is this believable in the present day? Sorry, I would not buy any such stories even in million years.

Now coming to the puja ritual, I don't know what to say about this. It may appear very natural for a hindu family into practicing such pujas as it is very common. But lets analyze the situation. OK doing some puja fasting/chanting and eating fruits may be beneficial for your health or may be the sanskrit Shlokas have some good vibrations that may have some beneficial effect. Or you may get increased confidence into working harder that may work out in fulfilling your goal. Other than that I see no other connection. So, what if after you did all the hard work in completing your ritual your wishes are still unfulfilled?Do you go back to your spiritual advisor asking for some other remedy? Say your spiritual guru asks you to do something which may be slightly tougher or he may suggest you to do something which is completely immoral. At that point what you do? Do you think from your head and reject his suggestions or your desire to achieve your goal is so strong that you completely switch off your logical thinking and do whatever is asked? That is exactly what is happening in many parts of India or elsewhere where people have certain wishes and don't think logically before jumping into the rituals suggested by some spiritual guru. In Delhi few years back there was certain person called pandher and his servant that killed small children and even practiced Cannibalism to get their desire fulfilled!! Sometimes back in Delhi and Mumbai educated parents practiced incest to get their desire fulfilled. We get to see news on witch craft every now and then from various parts of the country. Are these not manifestation of practicing certain rituals to get wishes fulfilled? So, I would say practicing some ritual without realizing its health or any other benefit and doing it for the sake of achieving some unrelated goal is spiritual fallacy..