Exactly the point. But in this case there are clues.
Havenāt you heard? Alternative facts are equally if not more true.
Empathizing with Conspiracists
I suppose I can empathize with the conspiracist to a basic degree because I donāt really like people just telling me what facts I should accept. I want to understand how it is weāve come to the conclusions that we currently hold as true on different topics. For example, I would find it deeply frustrating if I was just given a list of things to accept and believe about evolution like maybe a typical high school biology textbook. But I got really excited about evolution when I read a book instead by Stephen Jay Gould who actually explained how we know what we know.
Iāve also been someone my entire life who is drawn to sometimes believe the opposite of what people around me believe. Iām not sure why this is, but Iāve taken great pride in accepting evolution in high school when many Christians around me had rejected it and were downright mean to the teacher. I also had a great pride when rejecting evolution when I first became a Christian. It was as if I knew the real truth and everyone around me had just been fooled because I was more clever than them.
Narcissism and Believing Conspiracies
This is a hard one for me to write about, because I donāt want to suggest that there are personality disorders with everyone who believes in conspiracies, but there is some research suggesting a link between narcissism and propensity to believe conspiracies. From one recent abstract:
Narcissismāa conviction about oneās superiority and entitlement to special treatmentāis a robust predictor of belief in conspiracy theories. Recent developments in the study of narcissism suggest that it has three components: antagonism, agentic extraversion, and neuroticism. We argue that each of these components of narcissism might predispose people to endorse conspiracy theories due to different psychological processes. Specifically, we discuss the role of paranoia, gullibility, and the needs for dominance, control, and uniqueness. We also review parallel findings for narcissistic beliefs about oneās social groups. We consider the wider implications this research might have, especially for political leadership. We conclude by discussing outstanding questions about sharing conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation.
Summarized in this chart various pathways:
I personally took the uniqueness path at times in my life:
High need for uniqueness likely increases the appeal of conspiracy theories because they promise access to privileged information, making one feel special.
Itās a pretty good article that I recommend reading if one is interested in the topic. It can be helpful to highlight some of our blind spots that are driving what we believe to be rational thinking. This statement is painful for me to hear:
Although narcissists are typically overconfident in their abilities, judgments, and intelligence, they tend to be naive and less likely to engage in cognitive reflection.
That sounds like something Iāve done and seen many around me who have embraced conspiracies do as well. Ironically, I was confident that others were the āsheep,ā or the gullible ones, while uncritically swallowing conspiracies without much thought. Conspiracies are very empowering to individuals for many reasons, including the validation that YOU are smarter and better than the person next to you. Remarkably, I honestly thought I knew better on a variety of topics than actual experts on those topics. Never mind the fact that I couldnāt even make it through an abstract in one of their academic papers without not knowing half of the words.
My Christianity made me more likely to accept conspiracies
This is another hard one to think about, but itās true for me at least. I believe itās because believing one conspiracy theory makes you more likely to believe more. Some things I think contributed to my acceptance and belief of conspiracies (I was close to accepting pizzagate in 2016):
- beliefs about Satan and demons: if these invisible entities are constantly influencing me and others, this was an easy transition into believing there are unknown malevolent forces at work controlling world events and people
- beliefs that I can now see the light/truth - implies everyone else is āblind to realityā but the ārealityā they were blind to wasnāt just spiritual things like the nature of the cross, but it began to easy spill over into all areas of life like science, politics, etc. This point really helped me follow the narcissistic way as in the chart above.
- maybe more but Iām tired
Scientific thinking is the opposite of conspiracy thinking
I liken conspiracy thinking as a pseudo version of real science. It has the appearance of science, but is definitely not! It lacks in many areas like rigor, testability, falsifiability, cohesion with other areas of reality, and biggest of all in my book: humility. It is a humbling thing for me to say, āyou know, Iām most definitely not the smartest person in the roomā¦ Or Iām not qualified to address that but this other person could much betterā¦ Or I think a good place to start is the scientific consensus.ā
I like this quote from Richard Feynman:
Physicist Richard Feynman once said, āThe first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.ā
One way we fool ourselves is by imagining we know more than we do; we think we are experts.
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Some of that is reminiscent of (at least it reminded me of ; - ) Psalm 15:2ā¦
[Blessed is the one who]ā¦speaks truth IN his heart.
Psalm 15:2
Most conspiracists donāt entirely?
Excellent post, Matthew. In expounding on why it seems Christians are more susceptible to conspiracy theories, there seems to be a strong element of Gnosticism in the evangelical church these days. A sense that the physical world in bad, that we are only here in a holding pattern waiting for the new creation, I think the rapture theology plays into that a lot. Also, the idea that we have special knowledge, hidden from others. Hum, sounds like conspiracy theories as well.
It is frustrating, as church people also seem to be susceptible to scams and such as well for similar reasons.
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That is, misinformation that was convincing people to not get a vaccine that was saving lives. Twitter has the right to remove nonsense from their site, such as the nonsense of the āinventor of mRNA therapyā saying anything.
Which they are fully in their right to do as a company.
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And here is another possible implication of various theologies that might affect oneās predilections towards conspiracy: what is your ādefaultā appraisal of the human race?
If humanity is seen as utterly depraved and fallen, then the holder of such a view may be predisposed to always assume the worst of everybody in power or anybody disseminating education. To these folks, the default view of humanity would look more like low-life scum, maybe with the occasional exemplar of virtue thrown in (who will nearly always be the persecuted underdog of the ever-vigilant and controlling evil powers of course.)
If humanity is seen as mostly decent, of course always with a few bad eggs thrown in, but they are more the exceptions than the rule - then you might be less predisposed to think in terms of widescale malevolent conspiracy.
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I donāt think this is the case. For the conspiracy theorist, they judge people by their beliefs. If someone believes in the conspiracy theory then they are trustworthy, no matter what the actual facts are. I have seen numerous conspiracy theorists claim they donāt trust scientists, and then in almost the very next breath cite a scientist that they think supports their conspiracy theory.
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Ditto, here.
I appreciate your humble approach to the parsing of conspiracy theory. Narcissism appears to be putting our faith and security in the temporalāwhich we all do!
Hereās 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 āgo with their gutā 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
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Meteorologists are getting harassed, and it is not just an American phenomena.
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āLikingā that is a non sequitur. It is not just an American phenomenon, itās an internet and social media phenomenon?
Not as a company that is a platform not a publisher.
Why? Shutting someone down and not giving them a platform is the responsible thing to do if they are promoting dangerous falsehoods.
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Platforms have legal protections that publishers donāt have. That is the distinction.
And, unfortunately, much censorship of truth has occurred, falsely labeled.
Citations please. How about conspiracism and Pizzagate? Sandy Creek? Jade Helm? Germanwings 9525? The Boston Marathon bombing? Alex Jones. Antivaxxers. COVID deniers. Ivermectin. Clorox IV. 
And on and on.
āThe lab leak is a debunked conspiracy theory.ā
āThe Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation.ā
And so on.
Thatās only two, and weāve beaten the lab leak issue to death, you have apparently forgotten, only to bring it up again.
You asked for citations.
You did not ask for ones you like.
And neither issue is dead. Both continue to be very important.
You are absolutely right.
Iām going to guess sometime in the 1980s.