Ditto, here.
I appreciate your humble approach to the parsing of conspiracy theory. Narcissism appears to be putting our faith and security in the temporal–which we all do!
Here’s a thread that briefly reviewed the similarities, too.
Compare and Contrast Faith and Conspiracy Theory - Faith & Science Conversation - The BioLogos Forum
Lee McIntyre also wrote this about conspiracies, which makes me think:
Various psychological theories have been offered, involving factors such as inflated self-confidence, narcissism, or low self-esteem. A more popular consensus seems to be that conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism that some people use to deal with feelings of anxiety and loss of control in the face of large, upsetting events. The human brain does not like random events, because we cannot learn from and therefore cannot plan for them. When we feel helpless (due to lack of understanding, the scale of an event, its personal impact on us, or our social position), we may feel drawn to explanations that identify an enemy we can confront. This is not a rational process, and researchers who have studied conspiracy theories note that those who tend to “go with their gut” are the most likely to indulge in conspiracy-based thinking. This is why ignorance is highly correlated with belief in conspiracy theories. When we are less able to understand something on the basis of our analytical faculties, we may feel more threatened by it