Why a Conspiracy-Theory Mindset is Anti-Christian

Jim
Fundamentalism & Evangelicalism
Conspiracy Theories

A conspiracy mindset is different, though, because it is based on a certain view of the world: dark forces are at work, and only I and a select group of my fellow believers know the truth. Everyone else is buying into a falsehood. There’s an elitism going on here, mixed in with the glee that comes from being a member of an exclusive club. Once you have this viewpoint firmly entrenched, you are an easy mark for every silly idea that comes along masquerading as truth, as long as that silly idea confirms what you already think. The person with the conspiracy mindset buys into “’motivated reasoning’–a psychological term for the way we bend facts, observations and reason itself to fit our emotions. Conspiracy theories are among the purest forms of motivated reasoning because they not only yoke disparate and often unconnected facts to an overarching theory, they even invoke the absence of facts as further evidence.”

Discussion

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Bert Perry
Fri, 08/17/18 2:11 pm

Interestingly, I didn’t join not primarily because of the conspiracy issue, but because Robert Welch said that Birch’s baptistic theology did not matter. So bad theology seems to correlate very interestingly with conspiracy theory in this case.

Another side note; Noel Fitch’s biography of Julia Child, Appetite for Life, discusses Child’s service in the OSS in China at length, including several passages which do show exactly what Joseph McCarthy alleged—that intelligence personnel and the State Department were significantly influenced by Communism, to the point of either not knowing or caring that Mao was getting his support from the Soviet Union, and to the point of ignoring that our supposed allies (e.g. Mao) were not supposed to be killing U.S. personnel who had helped them in the war with Japan.

Word to the wise; real conspiracies tend to have trouble keeping quiet about the matter.

Another note: Weird Al has a great song about this called “foil”.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

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Ron Bean
Fri, 08/17/18 2:43 pm

When I hear people discussing the devil and/or his organizations “conspiracies” I’m usually left thinking that these people have a God who’s on the defensive rather than one is totally sovereign over the acts of men. By that I do not mean that God makes them sin but that they cannot sin without His permission and that He uses the wrath of men to bring praise to Himself.

Even Satan had to get permission to persecute Job.

"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan

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Darrell Post
Fri, 08/17/18 4:00 pm

I think it was Ben Franklin that said a secret can be kept if its known only to two people and one of them is dead. If he didn’t say that, he should have.

The problem with many conspiracy theories involves the number of people who are supposedly “in on it” and yet restrain themselves from coming out to expose it. Human nature being what it is, someone with actual data would eventually reveal the plot, but they never do. In their place are innumerable unnamed sources, who have made claims, you know, their neighbor’s co-worker’s spouse who heard it from a friend at the gym whose mail carrier got it directly from an unimpeachable source!

Probably the greatest kept secret—conspiracy theory—of modern times was the Project Azorian in 1974. Hundreds of people had to keep secret the fact that the ship portrayed as mining minerals from the ocean floor was actually being used to raise a lost Soviet nuclear submarine. But even with this conspiracy, by the time they tried to go back for round two, word leaked out.

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CAWatson
Sat, 08/18/18 6:42 pm

[John E.]

When I was in fourth grade, during a week of “revival” meetings, the evangelist preached that aliens are demons and that the government has proof of their existence but is hiding it because it would prove that the Bible is true. He had several examples, and some film and audio clips. His proof text was Ezekiel 1:4-14. That’s only a taste of the weirdness he preached about aliens that week.

For the longest time, I doubted my recollections of that week. I mean, the things he said were so bizarre that surely I was remembering incorrectly, I thought. Well, about two years ago, I asked my oldest sister, who was in high school at the time of that “revival” meeting, if she remembered evangelist so-and-so.

Before I got the man’s name out of my mouth, my sister’s eyes got big and she exclaimed, “Yes!” That’s the crazy preacher who said that aliens are demons!”

My memory was vindicated. Although, I kind of wish it hadn’t been.

Mike Heiser, over at Faithlife/Logos has written about this, as well as made a documentary on the whole alien/demon thing. And he’s a well-trained scholar.