schrodingerscat:
“MORmONs … believe a 19th Century conspiracy theory that's about 150 years overdue, but they still believe the Earth is going to turn into Armageddon, so one more crazy conspiracy theory about those prophecies being fulfilled fits the narrative.”
“And it does with White Evangelicals, who believe in the book of revelations, which also ends in the same destruction of civilization.”
schrodingerscat:
“These nihlist dangerous destructive narratives are all based upon bogus racist myths that have already been thoroughly debunked by modern science. But it doesn't matter. People believe them anyways. Despite the evidence to the contrary."
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Some Christians do believe in conspiracy theories. But it doesn’t follow that religious belief itself is a conspiracy theory. I concede though that holding certain Christian beliefs can make some people more susceptible to believing conspiracy theories. However, there are other factors at play in combining the two in a given person. The same goes for indicting the whole of Christianity.
Definitions (Wiki):
“A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.”
Conspiracy theory is “a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event.”
Article on the reasons conspiracy theories flourish:
New Scientist - Conspiracy Theories
https://www.newscientist.com/term/conspiracy-theories/Excerpts:
"Is covid-19 caused by the 5G phone network, or the product of a secret Chinese bioweapons program? No. There is no evidence that either of these claims are true, but to some people that very lack of evidence is itself clear evidence of a cover up. Welcome to the paranoid, topsy-turvy world of the conspiracy theory.
…
"Many of these “theories” – the word is used in its colloquial sense rather than the strict scientific one, they should really be called “conspiracy hypotheses” – concern matters of science or medicine.
…
"Conspiracy theories also reflect how we intuitively understand the world and events in it. The human brain did not evolve to process complex information about global politics, economics or science. It evolved to survive on the African savannah where threats and hostile intentions were a daily reality.
…
"Under these circumstances it pays to assume that unseen threats are lurking everywhere, that “outgroups” have malign intent, or that coincidental events are causally related. The cost of holding these assumptions was minimal, but the cost of not holding them was often death. Natural selection favoured the conspiratorial mindset.
"The theories are also endorsed across the ideological spectrum. They are literally left, right and centre. More conservatives than liberals believe the Obama “birther” theory – promulgated by Donald Trump – but many liberals believe 9/11 was a government plot to drum up support for invading Iraq.
"Why do so many people believe? One reason, say psychologists, is that it is perfectly reasonable, because conspiracies sometimes happen. Consider the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, when senior US officials conspired to sell weapons to Iran – then under an arms embargo – and channel the proceeds to rebels trying to oust Nicaragua’s socialist government.
"Conspiracy theories also reflect how we intuitively understand the world and events in it. The human brain did not evolve to process complex information about global politics, economics or science. It evolved to survive on the African savannah where threats and hostile intentions were a daily reality.
"Under these circumstances it pays to assume that unseen threats are lurking everywhere, that “outgroups” have malign intent, or that coincidental events are causally related. The cost of holding these assumptions was minimal, but the cost of not holding them was often death. Natural selection favoured the conspiratorial mindset.
"Our brains have other cognitive biases that make us susceptible to conspiracy theories. One is proportionality bias, a belief that major events have major causes.
"Intentionality bias makes us assume that events are planned by somebody or something. Confirmation bias means we seek out evidence that supports our beliefs. And the illusion-of-understanding bias makes us overestimate our knowledge of how things work.
"Conspiracy theories can also paradoxically be emotionally reassuring. They provide truthful-sounding explanations for events that otherwise seem inexplicable, random or capricious, and often make your political opponents look bad. They can also give believers a pleasing sense of superiority because they – and sometimes they alone – have seen through the lies and cover-ups to reveal the “truth”.
"Personality type also plays a part. People who are naturally suspicious of received wisdom and authority are more likely to believe.
"Conspiracy theories are often utterly preposterous and totally lacking in credible evidence, but they are almost impossible to disprove, at least in the minds of believers. No amount of counter-evidence can refute them, and in fact this evidence often reinforces them because it can be dismissed as part of the conspiracy.
"In this respect conspiracy theories have much in common with pseudoscience, which superficially resembles science but lacks its crucial epistemological feature, falsifiability – meaning that hypotheses must be structured such that they can be disproved by new evidence.
"The conspiratorial mindset may have been an asset in the past, but is now a liability. When it comes to dealing with important issues such as climate change or the cause of covid-19, conspiracy theories are a major obstacle to reasoned debate and evidence-based action."
Scientific American – re Conspiracy Theories and Religious Beliefs:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/what-do-conspiracy-theories-religious-beliefs-and-detoxifying-proteins-have-in-common/Excerpts:
"Why do people believe in God, ghosts, goblins, spirits, the afterlife and conspiracy theories? Two common threads running through these belief systems are what skeptic Michael Shermer in his insightful book “The Believing Brain” calls “patternicity” and “agenticity”. As the names indicate, patternicity refers to seeing meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Agenticity refers to seeing mysterious but palpable causal ‘agents’, puppet masters who pull the strings and bring about unexplained phenomena. God is probably the perfect example of an agent.
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"Patternicity and agenticity can both be seen as primitive evolutionary features of our brain that have been molded into instinctive behaviors. They were important in a paleolithic environment where decisions often had to be made quickly and based on instinct. In a simple example cited by Shermer, consider an early hominid sauntering along somewhere in the African Savannah. He hears a rustle in the grass. Is it a predator or is it just the wind? If he assumes the former and it turns out to be the latter, no harm is done. But if he assumes it’s just the wind and lets down his guard and it turns out to be a predator, that’s it; he’s lunch and just got weeded out of the gene pool. The first mistake is what’s called a ‘Type 1’ or false-positive error; the second one is a ‘Type 2’ or a false-negative error. Humans seem more prone to committing false positive errors because the cost of (literally) living with those errors is often less than the cost of (literally) dying from the false negatives. Agenticity is in some sense subsumed by patternicity; in the case of the hominid, he might end up ascribing the noise in the grass to a predator (an ‘agent’) even if none exists. The important thing to realize is that we are largely the descendants of humans who made false-positive errors; natural selection ensured this perpetuation.
[Interesting discussion here re reactions of molecules and proteins that demonstrate the above]
…
"To me the observation of patternicity and agenticity at the level of human brains as well as individual proteins is a testament to the enormous power and elegance of evolution in molding living organisms across an incredible hierarchy of molecules, cells, organs, individuals and societies through common mechanisms. It occurs to me that if evolution had to pick favorite lines from poems, one of them would probably be “Two roads diverged on the way to life, and I took the one which made me commit a false positive error”.
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As stated above, I do not accept the convergence of Christian belief and belief in conspiracy theories. Here are excerpts from an interesting discussion on this topic:
ABC Religion and Ethics - …is Christianity part of the Problem? (by Aden Cotterill):
"Why are so many Christians to be found in the ranks of today’s conspiracy theorists? Just consider the popularity of a movement like QAnon... As is apparent from the testimony of Lorrie Shock, the very language of evangelical Christianity is amenable to adherence to QAnon:
"I feel God led me to Q. I really feel like God pushed me in this direction. I feel like if it was deceitful, in my spirit, God would be telling me, “Enough’s enough”. But I don’t feel that. I pray about it. I’ve said, “Father, should I be wasting my time on this?” … And I don’t feel that feeling of I should stop."
"But this is not just an “evangelical right” thing. As Joseph Uscinski argues, the “propensity for conspiracy thinking is [not] predictable along ideological lines.” This is a problem for many Islamic communities too. And though QAnon has a distinctly evangelical flavour, other worldviews and traditions are susceptible to their own forms of intellectual erosion. The proliferation of conspiracy theories is a shared phenomenon, and everyone who inhabits our epistemically fragmented world is susceptible to their allure.
"How, then, might Christianity help and hinder the spread of conspiracy theories? And by “Christianity”, I mean its ideas — its theology. The relationship between church attendance and conspiratorial thinking, for example, is not the being addressed here. Instead, I want to offer an honest self-examination of Christian belief. To this end, I want to explore a number of “epistemic skeletons” in the Christian’s closet — those beliefs that might predispose Christians to embracing conspiracies — and a number of “epistemic treasures” in our tradition — those beliefs that might help inoculate Christians against conspiracy theories.
"The Christian believes there is more to reality than meets the eye. The apostle Paul wrote to an early church community, “we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And Jesus taught his disciples, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 19:29). I cannot see or observe God as I might a cell under a microscope, and so I live by faith or trust in God’s previous revelation in history.
"On account of such beliefs, David Robertson argues that conspiracy theories and Christianity are evidentially equivalent: “from a philosophical point of view, there is nothing inherently more irrational about any of these [conspiratorial] claims” when compared to Christian belief. The reason QAnon is deemed odd, but not Christianity, is purely contextual — the result of a developed acceptability over time.
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"The Christian’s belief that even the “wise” are often foolish is another belief worth assessing. The “deep state” is a concept central to many conspiracy theories:
[They believe] "Our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places. Although we ostensibly live in a democracy, a small group of people run everything, but we don’t know who they are. When big events occur — pandemics, recessions, wars, terrorist attacks — it is because that secretive group is working against the rest of us.
"The Conspiracy Theory Handbook similarly notes that a defining feature of conspiratorial thinking is an “overriding suspicion” of any “official account”, that all such accounts are based on “deception.” Those in power — the elites — cannot be trusted: there is more going on behind the scenes.
"The Christian belief in the folly of the wise risks producing such thinking. For instance, Jesus prayed: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” (Luke 10:21). For Jesus, those in-the-know were often out-of-the-know: the realities of God are “hidden” from them, “the wise and learned”.
"For [Apostle] Paul, the teacher or philosopher is not actually wise, after all. It is the humble disciple — the “fool” — that has access to the hidden things of God by the Spirit.
The “overriding suspicion” of conspiratorial thinking could be easily instigated or perpetuated by this theology, encouraging as it does the rejection of “official” accounts of things.
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"The demonologies that often spring up from … biblical themes can be conspiratorial and violent.
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"[David] Frankfurter’s observation of these reoccurring phenomena led him to ask: “To what degree might Christianity itself, as a transregional ideology, be particularly responsible for religious violence …?” He concludes:
Christianity brought unique attention and articulation to the definition of evil in societies … [its] explicit attention to the absolute evil of the Satanic host preoccupies its earliest scriptures and pervades its historical negotiations with non-Christian cultures … Social and terrestrial purity, utopia, apocalyptic cleansing, combat with Satan in multiple arenas — these fundamental ideals of Christian scripture, practice, and community provided a latent ideological predisposition to a myth of evil of varying scale.
"Frankfurter is particularly interested in religious violence. But the idea that certain Christian beliefs produce a “latent ideological predisposition” to believing “myth” is relevant for my argument. And his analysis points to a trend: certain demonologies gone awry can make someone vulnerable to believing a “myth of evil” and its corresponding conspiracy theories.
These demonologies are often interwoven with beliefs about an apocalyptic “end times”. For a recent article in The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance spoke to Arthur Jones, director of the documentary Feels Good Man:
"QAnon reminds him of his childhood growing up in an evangelical-Christian family in the Ozarks. He said that many people he knew then, and many people he meets now in the most devout parts of the country, are deeply interested in the Book of Revelation, and in trying to unpack “all of its pretty-hard-to-decipher prophecies.” Jones went on: “I think the same kind of person would all of a sudden start pulling at the threads of Q and start feeling like everything is starting to fall into place and make sense.”
"This is a profound connection to make, between conspiratorial thinking and millennialist interpretations of the Book of Revelation. The term “millennialist” refers to a complex amalgam of ideas about a final salvation and day of judgement. These are central themes in Christian theology, but millennialism places particular emphasis on the belief that the coming “end times” are both terrestrial — “this is playing out on earth now, it’s time to act, can’t you see?” — and imminent — “trust me, it’s just around the corner!”
"There is, I believe, a demonstrable link between millennialist theology and conspiratorial thinking: “Catastrophic thinking amongst millennialist groups is also often reinforced by their frequent embrace of various conspiracy theories.” It is thus unsurprising to find millennialist language among QAnon devotees like Shelly:
"There are QAnon followers out there who suggest that what we’re through now, in this crazy political realm we’re in now, with all of the things that are happening worldwide, is very biblical, and that this is Armageddon.
"Is Christianity simply a problem, then? Is Christian belief unhelpful in an age of conspiracies and disinformation? To answer these questions in the affirmative is too hasty. For there are more than just skeletons to be found in the Christian tradition — there are some valuable “epistemic treasures”. Indeed, Christian belief can act as an effective buffer against the harmful spread of conspiracy theories. It thus plays the role of both vaccine and antidote: it can both preemptively “prebunk” believers, inoculating them against harmful conspiracy theories; and it can “debunk” conspiracies once they have gained traction among Christian believers.
"The most dangerous lies are often those that are mostly true (See Genesis 3:1–4). A number of the epistemic skeletons I’ve identified, though widely adopted and closely associated with orthodox Christian belief, nevertheless amount to subtle distortions of their proper articulation. It is important, therefore, to carefully distinguish Christian belief proper from its mutated forms.
"For instance, one must clarify that “faith without sight” is never construed as “faith without reasons” throughout the Scriptures. The Christian ought not disregard evidential based belief, for the apostles always called for a faith grounded, not in sight, but in the evidence of eyewitness testimony (see 1 Corinthians 15:3–8; 1 Peter 5:1; 1 John 1–3), and they were happy to embrace the falsifiability of the faith, declaring “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14).
"Likewise, the Christian antidote to conspiracies will include teaching that “the folly of the wise” does not amount to “the folly of all the wise.” For Jesus knew that even wise and learned elites could still answer “wisely” and be near the kingdom (Mark 12:34, see also John 3:1–15; 7:50; 19:39). Paul knew that even the philosophers and poets of his age could discern theological truth (Acts 17:16–34, see 1 Corinthians 15:33; Titus 1:12).
"Moreover, any antidote will address where Christian “demonology” diverges from “pop-demonology”. For the forces of evil in our world cannot be arrogantly presumed to be so obviously evil or clearly discerned: “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). This will include emphasising that “the apocalypse” is neither terrestrial nor predictable. For as Jesus Christ taught, the day or hour that “heaven and earth pass away … no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). It is with hopeful anticipation and epistemic humility that we await the dawning of his light on our darkness (Isaiah 9:2).
This is but an initial gesture towards the kind of Christian belief proper that might remedy the epistemic skeletons in the Christian closet. This is not to say that a dose of sound theology is all that is required, merely that it will be part of the solution. This form of balanced teaching — saturated with nuance and subtlety, delineating falsity from truth, distinguishing historical Christian beliefs from conspiratorial thinking — is a necessary antidote.
"The thought-world of Christianity can inoculate the believer against the proliferation of conspiracies; it can “prebunk” believers like a vaccine, building a “resilience to conspiratorial messages.” There are a number of Christian beliefs that might have this effect; I will focus on a most central one: the Christian’s belief in a God who can be trusted.
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"It’s worth taking note of the opening paragraph of The Conspiracy Theory Handbook:
"Real conspiracies do exist. Volkswagen conspired to cheat emissions tests for their diesel engines. The U.S. National Security Agency secretly spied on civilian internet users. The tobacco industry deceived the public about the harmful health effects of smoking. We know about these conspiracies through internal industry documents, government investigations, or whistleblowers.
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"Christian belief also gently affirms certain conspiratorial impulses — in much the same way that Cushing and Brotherton do. Christianity assumes there does exist a deeper reality behind what the eye can see. Christian belief posits that there is indeed a “divine conspiracy” behind our observable cosmos. There is a grand, divine story unfolding beyond our world, glimpsed in the life of Jesus Christ. …an object of a future-oriented, advent-like hope — a mystery only to be unveiled in totality once the pages of history close, as our trustworthy God descends and wipes away every tear, making all things new."
(Aden Cotterill is a postgraduate student at St. Mark’s National Theological Centre, and a Youth Worker in both church and school contexts.)
NG: Obviously, stating that conspiracy theories and Christianity are synonymous is simplistic, in my view. Unfortunately, for some people, their religious beliefs can tend to make them susceptible to faulty reasoning in other areas. This is a widespread human flaw not restricted to Christians.
I do acknowledge that it's easy for non-believers to pick Christianity apart. I have myself, a lifelong Christian, noted what would be considered thinking errors to non-Christians. This is evident even in the Cotterill quotes in the ABC article above when he "resolves" the issues by relying on the belief that God is trustworthy. If He is trustworthy, then yes the other beliefs can be relied upon. But how do we know He is to be trusted? Because the Bible says so. It seems less than airtight to rely on the positive character of God that is described in the scriptures unless you can 100% rely on, or better prove, the veracity of that description of God.
So, yeah, it can be circular.
It comes down to, it seems, what one *chooses* to believe.
All the above is only to state that I disagree that Christianity is a conspiracy theory. Some Christians are conspiracy theorists, it is evident. That does not extrapolate out to the entirety of Christianity.
Small quibble re the OP: SC said: The world will turn into Armageddon. Here is the definition of Armageddon generally understood by Christians:
(Wiki): "Armageddon, (probably Hebrew: “Hill of Megiddo”), in the New Testament, place where the kings of the earth under demonic leadership will wage war on the forces of God at the end of history. Armageddon is mentioned in the Bible only once, in the Revelation to John, or the Apocalypse of St. John (16:16)."
So, the world does not "turn into" Armageddon. Armageddon happens in/to the world. In the Christian interpretation of the Bible.
(edited several times for format and to add a few personal comments)
Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2021 05:54PM by Nightingale.