Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
We can’t go on together with suspicious minds

We can’t go on together with suspicious minds

Last updated on: August 1, 2021 at 7:51 am by Fred Clark

We can’t go on together with suspicious minds 2021-08-01T07:51:26-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Mark Evanier notes the big difference between “Elvis is alive” conspiracy theories and COVID-denialism:

We are all familiar with people who stake out positions and say, in effect or for real, “Nothing will ever convince me otherwise.” Back when I was way too interested in the Kennedy Assassination, I ran into them at every turn. J.F.K. was killed by Lizard People from the planet Reptilon and no evidence of any kind could ever convince them otherwise.

Or Man never walked on the Moon or 9/11 was an inside job or Donald Trump really won every state, etc. We’ve all heard these set-in-stone beliefs. But here’s the thing: COVID Denial — it’s a fake disease or it’s nowhere near as bad as they say or it’s all a plot for Mind Control — is the first time people are literally betting their lives. You couldn’t die by believing Elvis is still alive but you could by refusing to take the coronavirus seriously. You and someone close to you could.

That’s a good point, but the words “beliefs” and “believing” call for a lot of unpacking here.

Evanier’s point involves a kind of implicit spectrum of conspiracy theories that’s easy to recognize but hard to describe. Toward one end we have the kind of conspiracy theories that seem relatively harmless and low-stakes for “believers” — Elvis sightings, Bigfoot, cryptozoology, Mothman, some forms of UFO enthusiasm and ghostly phenomenon. It’s possible to “believe” in such things without becoming deeply invested in them. Such belief can be a kind of hobby that doesn’t require any changes in a person’s lifestyle or in their interactions with others. It’s possible to approach such subjects with a kind of carefree “Yeah, could be, why not?” attitude.

Toward the other end of the spectrum things get darker and more paranoid, with “beliefs” that logically entail and demand greater investment and that can be life-altering. This includes QAnon, 9/11 truthers, chemtrails, belief in nefarious 5G effects, Satanic baby-killerism in all its forms, and UFO stuff that focuses more on the terrestrial Men in Black than on the little green men.

I think what distinguishes the two ends of this spectrum is “Them.” You can “believe” in Bigfoot without needing to explain the lack of evidence by positing the existence of a dark and powerful conspiracy shaping all of our lives to cover up and repress the “truth” about elusive ape-men deep in the woods. The paucity of evidence for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster can simply be attributed to these creatures being rare and averse to human attention. You don’t need to conclude that the evidence is all being suppressed by Them — by the government and Bill Gates and Harvard and “the media” and all the other nefarious actors who must surely be “in on it.”

“Them” is what makes most conspiracy theories far from harmless. Once you commit to “believing” in Them, you start to see those around you as enemies or collaborators. And it’s always — always, always, always — a very short leap from any form of “Them” to uncoded, explicit antisemitism.

At the less harmful end of the conspiracy theory spectrum, where no Them is required, belief in something like Bigfoot can be an expression of a kind of humility and sense of wonder that are, in some sense, admirable.

“Elvis is still alive” is, like Bigfoot, a “belief” that generally doesn’t require a nefarious Them. For many devotees of this theory, the magical, mystical, inscrutable nature of the King himself is all the explanation required. “Because he’s Elvis” is, for these folks, a sufficient answer to all of the whys and hows of this mystery.

Others, taking a more “realistic” view, suggest that Presley’s faked death and miraculously successful disappearance involved him going into the witness protection program. That variation involves a “them” of secretive government agents, but in this case they’re benevolent, not nefarious. It involves murmurings and whisperings of some vague criminal plot, but the criminals are not still out there, orchestrating their plots and controlling the world. In this scenario, the villains have already been stopped and punished — their schemes foiled by Elvis himself. Long live the King. (It’s kind of Christus Victor, if you think about it.)

UFO enthusiasm can take a similarly benign form. It is possible to believe that we have caught fleeting glimpses of intelligent extraterrestrial visitors who, like Elvis, have purposes of their own, a desire not to have their presence widely proven, and a preternaturally superior ability to avoid detection. Such a belief does not, in itself, require the existence of an evil cabal of Them secretly controlling the world and repressing this forbidden truth.

But even if belief in UFOs* starts there, it tends to head toward the other end of the spectrum, positing a vast and powerful Them standing between good people and the truth. If we “believers” have collected all of this tantalizing “evidence” of these extraterrestrial visitors, why hasn’t the government learned all of this? After all, the government has more resources and better technology. Maybe they already know, far more than we know, and maybe they’re using all of those resources and all of that technology to hide the truth. Maybe they’re in on it — maybe they’re Them. And just that quickly “Wouldn’t it be cool if aliens showed up?” turns into shadow governments run by secret cabals, feverish paranoia, blood libels and Satanic baby-killerism.

I still love The X-Files, but the mythology of that show was squarely far off on the Them side of the conspiracy spectrum of paranoia. That wasn’t because Chris Carter was himself a paranoid conspiracist, but because he recognized that the fantasy world of paranoid conspiracists makes for a more exciting story. It provided a host of villains and antagonists to prove the mettle of our heroes.

And that, I believe, is also what motivates most “belief” in conspiracy theories and pushes them further and further along the spectrum toward the more paranoid, more harmful end. It’s a search for excitement and a way to create villains that will make “believers” seem or feel or pretend to feel like more of a hero.

It’s this need and desire for meaning and excitement, the need to feel like a hero, that accounts for much of the anger, resentment, and hostility that conspiracy theorists demonstrate when they react to evidence that debunks the existence of their longed-for villainous “Them.” This is not the courageous anger of a hero boldly standing up against evil despite overwhelming odds. It is, rather, the whining anger of someone upset that you’re threatening to spoil their game.

And it is a game — a kind of fantasy role-playing game or LARP. QAnon is, essentially, an MMPORG — a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. To participate is not to become a “believer,” but to become a “player.” And no player is ever quite fully able to immerse themselves in the make-pretend reality of the game to such an extent that some part of them is not aware of that.

This, again, is why trying to debunk paranoid conspiracy theories with facts and evidence and logic tends not to work. The game provides an in-game explanation for all of that, dismissing inconvenient facts and evidence as the work of “Them.” But more importantly, all those facts do not and cannot address the deep need for meaning and excitement — or, at least, for a passable imitation of them — that the player first turned to the game to find. They “believe” in the game because, even if they semi-consciously know it’s not real, they believe it’s the closest they’ll ever get to meaning and excitement and being able to think of themselves as heroes.

This is what accounts for the indomitable “Nothing will ever convince me otherwise” aspect of their commitment to pretending to believe in the game. And I fear that even the possibility of catching, spreading, and dying from an undeniably real pandemic virus won’t change that.

They’re stuck in the game, stuck in preferring the game to reality, until and unless we can convince them of some other meaningful source of meaning. They want and need to be heroes. If we’re going to convince them to stop playing games, we have to show them that’s possible here in reality.

That’s why the sermon preached by the Rev. Mojo Nixon here is relevant as more than just a psychobilly joke about Elvis sightings. We’ll never be able to debunk all the bogus claims of Elvis sightings until we first teach people to look inside themselves and realize, as it were, that there’s a little bit of Elvis inside all of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpb4ZAAP6Z4

* As we’ve noted before “belief in UFOs” usually means the opposite of that. It means the belief that one has already identified these otherwise unexplained flying objects, that one already knows what they are, with great certainty. If someone tells you they believe in UFOs, what they usually mean is that they believe in IFOs. And they will often proceed to identify them for you with extravagant precision, going beyond “I think that weird light in the sky may have been an alien spacecraft” to claiming to know which specific aliens were piloting the craft, where they’re from, and what they’re planning.

I think this is part of what the Pentagon was trying to avoid by replacing “UFO” with “UAP,” reasserting that (as-yet) “unidentified” and (as-yet) “unexplained” are the defining aspect of the category. Or maybe that’s just what They want us to think.

Uncategorized

Satanic baby-killers

Previous Post

July 29, 2021

When the one-way ratchet goes local (and other news)

Next Post

July 31, 2021 The sin of despair

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who had a coat of many colors?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Joseph Jacob Esau Benjamin