On 5/12/2011 12:59 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 11/05/2011 19:55, Warp wrote:
>
>> It's not surprising. Conspiracy theories have all the same features and
>> symptoms as fundamentalist religions. So much, in fact, that I do not
>> only
>> consider a conspiracy theory *like* a religion, but more over *a*
>> religion.
>
> I was expecting this to end with "because religion *is* a conspiracy
> theory"... ;-)

Well.. What was it one of the characters by Mark Twain said, something 
like, "Things are always run by a minority. The reason is that most 
people either find, or convince themselves that there exists, benefit in 
it for themselves (even if that is only that they are not currently the 
victims), or are afraid of the consequences of apposing those with the 
power (because they know they can easily become such)." It doesn't take 
much of a conspiracy to control people, if people never wake up and 
realize that they are losing as much as what the people you where a 
afraid to stand up for are, and that they really do outnumber the ones 
that are doing it. Since religion's purpose tends to be to control what 
people do, think, say, etc., of course it is a conspiracy, but its the 
sort of loose type, that can start out by accident, and not always with 
negative intentions.

In such cases, you simply have to hope its a benign one, and gets 
replaced, before it becomes malignant, sort of like cancers.

Both are attempts to build, while generally failing, a consistent, and 
plausible, structure, around which ideas, beliefs, and semi-random, 
unconnected, facts are framed. Its Rube Goldberg, without the 
plausibility that the result would actually work, from the stance of an 
actual engineer. But, as someone once said, I don't remember which one, 
paraphrasing, "Humans have a need for answers, and will be satisfied 
with bad ones, if they don't have good ones."

So long as people refuse to look for the good answers, or believe them 
when found, we will have a mess. But, another commonality between 
conspiracy theories and religion is that most only survive well if they 
present, and one of their premises, that good answers, which fail to 
support the original premise(s), cannot be trusted, nor can those that 
suggest them.

Post a reply to this message