And driven by the scientific enlightenment and discoveries of the 20th century, most of us, like it or not, hunger for proof. We may wish it were otherwise. And quite probably, we suspend that hunger when we really desire something or someone, or when we descend into magical thinking. Of course, that's always easier to see when it's someone else's beliefs. Astrology seems silly to me, for example, but I know level-headed people who talk of it all the time.
Psychoanalysis is another example, or just plain psychological counseling.
There's science in it, but how much and what kind is not strictly provable. Then there's homeopathy, far from proven but clearly believed in by the people who feel helped by it. But it is far from clearly proven in the sense that you and I learn from our teachers what proof really means. Part of the reason people listen to him, other than his clarity of thought, is his honesty. Wolpert's theory about human believing is simple.