Last week, I posted a podcast about Tribalism and how it can cause fractures in our church and world. One of the signs indicating you are practicing tribalism is whether you are developing conspiracy theories. Don’t scoff. Conspiracy theories have been with us since days of old and we find a number of them in our scriptures. Conspiracy theories were rampant in the 1960s and 70s. It was widely rumored that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a conspiracy of political and corporate leaders. Some believed that the moon landing was a hoax. It got so bad that a public backlash against conspiracy theories occurred. But COVID changed everything and conspiracy theories have made a new appearance into public discourse. But conspiracy theories allow emotion to overrule reason in your mind and is something that should be fought against, as will be discussed.
Email – ScottRFrazer@gmail.com
Website – ScottRFrazer.com
S2E20 – Conspiracy Theories
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures, Season 2, Episode 20, or “Conspiracy Theories”
Hello everyone. This is Scott Frazer of the podcast Science and Scriptures. Last week, I posted a podcast about Tribalism and how it can cause fractures in our church and world. Tribalism is pulling the world apart, causing us to suspect those whom we should consider brothers and sisters. In case you missed that episode, let me emphasize that tribalism is not unhealthy because we divide into different interest groups – it is harmful because we reject, sometimes forcefully, those who are not in our tribe. Today, I would like to discuss a companion piece to that episode. One of the signs indicating you are practicing tribalism is whether you are developing conspiracy theories. Don’t scoff. Conspiracy theories have been with us since days of old. We find a number of them in our scriptures.
Jesus Christ was executed because he was considered to be committing treason against the Roman Empire. The Romans thought that the Savior was conspiring with His disciples to overthrow their rule of the Holy Lands. After the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem arrested Jesus, they took him to Pontius Pilate and accused him of forbidding to give tribute to Caesar and declaring that He was the King. On the cross, a sign above the Savior’s head read “This is the King of the Jews”. In a real sense, the sign was correct. However, the Savior posed no threat to Rome. Nonetheless, Rome saw any hint of rebellion as a conspiracy against it and reacted violently. They should, of course, have been more concerned with internal conspiracies, since that is what caused their empire to fall.
In the Book of Mormon, we read about conspiracy theories as well. A man named Korihor was traveling around the Nephite nation, trying to convince the people of a conspiracy within the church. Speaking of Korihor, we read in Alma 30.
“And it came to pass that when he was brought before Alma and the chief judge, he did go on in the same manner as he did in the land of Gideon; yea, he went on to blaspheme. And he did rise up in great swelling words before Alma, and did revile against the priests and teachers, accusing them of leading away the people after the silly traditions of their fathers, for the sake of glutting on the labors of the people.”
Alma then takes three verses to repute Korihor’s accusation of conspiracy. He tells Korihor that “behold I have labored even from the commencement of the reign of the judges until now, with mine own hands for my support”. He tells him that “notwithstanding the many labors which I have performed in the church, I have never received so much as even one senine for my labor”. Then Alma concludes,
“Then why sayest thou that we preach unto this people to get gain, when thou, of thyself, knowest that we receive no gain? And now, believest thou that we deceive this people, that causes such joy in their hearts?”
It appears to have been common knowledge that neither Alma nor other church leaders received payments for their labors. Alma accuses Korihor of knowing that already. Given such evidence, Alma asks Korihor straight out if he thinks there is a conspiracy within the church. In verse 36, we read,
“And Korihor answered him, Yea.”
Despite the evidence, Korihor refuses to recognize it. He believes that Alma led a conspiracy of church leaders who “usurped power and authority” over the people, took their money, and “kept them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads”. No data nor the opinions of others would change Korihor’s conclusions. Korihor, of course, had other false perceptions about the existence of God, which led to him being struck dumb and becoming a beggar. Korihor was a conspiracy theorist who was trying to lead others to believe in his unsupported opinions, however false they were. Conspiracy theories help blind you to the truths that surround you.
In fact, the Book of Mormon had a number of evil conspiracies throughout it. Secret combinations afflicted the Nephites almost from their landing in the New World. One group known as the Gadianton Robbers were especially troublesome.
In Doctrine and Covenants 10, the Lord advises Joseph Smith that he should not re-translate the lost 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript. If he did, a conspiracy of evil men was planning to publish the original translation with changes they had made and accuse Joseph of being a fraud.
Conspiracy theories were rampant in the 1960s and 70s. It was widely rumored that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a conspiracy of political and corporate leaders. Some believed that the moon landing was a hoax, a conspiracy by NASA and the US government. It got so bad that a public backlash against conspiracy theories occurred. Conspiracy theorists came to be considered, well… nutcases. Books that “revealed” government conspiracies (like aliens and spaceships were being stored in Area 51) still sold well. Actions films often staged government and corporate conspiracies as the bad guys in their plots. But for the past several decades, people have been reluctant to be identified as conspiracy theorists.
The COVID-19 experience of being stuck in our homes and isolating ourselves from the outside world changed… everything. Major conspiracy theories have made a new appearance into public discourse. By far, the largest conspiracy is being claimed by those who think the COVID vaccine is dangerous. We’ll talk about that in a moment. Politically, the Democrats are claiming conspiracies within the Republican Party and the Republicans are seeing conspiracies behind most everything done by the President and his party.
As we discussed last week, our natural instincts lead us towards Tribalism. We gravitate towards forming tribes with those with whom we agree and share interests. The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a tribe. So is the National Rifle Association, the Socialist Party, and your trailer camping group. The tendency to form interest groups is not a bad thing – as long as you don’t let your tribes separate you from the rest of the world in an “us-versus-them” scenario. That attitude leads to finding conspiracies to justify your conclusion that the world is out to hurt you.
Like tribalism, finding conspiracies is one of those cases where your brain can be your own worst enemy. It naturally does two things that lead you to believe that you have uncovered a conspiracy among your enemies.
First, your mind is constantly looking for patterns. That tendency has served us well in the past. As hunter-gatherers, we found patterns in the movements of our prey. By finding patterns in the weather, we can predict when it is going to rain. By finding patterns in traffic flow in our cities, we can better determine when gridlock is going to occur. But there really are patterns in weather and traffic waiting to be found. Our brains try to find patterns even where none exist.
We even have a word for it. “Apophenia” (apofee’nia) or patternicity refers to the human tendency to see patterns and meaning in random information. The term was coined in 1958 by German neurologist Klaus Conrad, who was studying the “unmotivated seeing of connections” in patients with schizophrenia. Maybe you see the shape of a horse in the clouds or a face in the swirls of your bathroom ceramic tiles. In the speeches of candidates of an opposing political party, you may detect undertones of dark and sinister plans to drive the country to ruin.
The second tendency of the brain which leads to conspiracy theories is “cognitive bias” or sometimes “confirmation bias”. Simply put, your brain does not like admit that it has been proven wrong. So, it overemphasizes the importance of news or findings that agree with your already-established beliefs - and shrugs off reports that contradict those beliefs.
By imagining sinister patterns in your opponent’s statements and having a cognitive bias that only highlights the evidence that supports your beliefs, you can become more and more convinced that conspiracies exist. But the Effects of Conspiracy Theory can be very dark indeed.
In the 1300s, a particular virulent strain of Bubonic Plague, or the Black Death, made its appearance in Europe and Asia. Somehow, a rumor was started that Jews were purposefully contaminating water wells with the plague. The Jews are a unique “tribe” that has received much persecution throughout history. This rumor made no sense at all of course. Those who made their accusations could see that their Jewish neighbors were dying from the disease at the same rate as Christians. But reason did not squelch the rumor or dissuade the persecutors. Thousands of Jews were hanged, burned, or forcibly evicted from their homes, mostly in France, Switzerland, and Western Germany. Though such hostility went against all of the teachings of their Savior, faithful Christians concluded that the Jews were conspiring to kill them by spreading the plague and decided to kill or banish them first.
Global Warming
But let’s look at conspiracy theories in our modern day. During the past 20 years, we have endured the reports of conspiracy theorists who have told us that global warming is a hoax. Climatologists have been accused of creating the myth of global warming with the hope of forwarding the agenda of liberals and environmentalists. This accusation is absurd of course. Climatologists are simply not your subversive, extreme left-wing, conspiracy types. And why would climatologists falsify their data? To what gain? Since the debate began, literally all reputable scientific organizations across the world supported the conclusion that global warning was real. But conspiracy theorists simply refuse to accept any information, no matter how overwhelming, that they were wrong.
How could climatologists, and other scientists across the world, be sure that global warming is real? Because they compiled and studied thousands of pages of data which follow carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures over the last 60 years. We know the equations that prove that Carbon Dioxide is able to capture more of the energy of the sun’s rays. For anyone who has actually looked at the data, the reality of global warming was not in question. In the past decade, conspiracists who refused to look at the data have also had to ignore the facts that each year, cities across the globe are setting record high summer temperatures and mild winters. The evidence has continued to mount, so we hear fewer denials of global warming today. I am still waiting for one of our political leaders who called global warming a hoax to write a book entitled, “Science Was Right and I Was Wrong”.
COVID-19 Conspiracy Theorists
However, many of the same people who saw conspiracies in the warnings of scientists worldwide about global warming have now moved on to find yet a new conspiracy. This time conspiracy theorists have decided that the COVID-19 vaccine is unsafe.
In this case, we have legions of medical professionals telling us that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective. The doctors at the Food & Drug Administration, Center for Disease Control, American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and countless other medical science-based organizations throughout the world have endorsed the vaccine. As of this writing, 10.5 Billion doses have been administered.
One criticism I hear is that people are getting sick and dying from the vaccine. This assumes that people should have stopped getting sick and dying from normal disease and aging after the vaccination. However, people getting sick and dying is an ongoing event. Side effects of a new vaccine are, of course, possible. Each one of those billions of vaccinated people have different metabolisms, immune responses, and health problems. Side effects, especially for our immunocompromised population, are to be expected. But the vaccines, if you care to look at the data, have proven safe and effective. Conspiracy theorists decry that the vaccine is not as effective against new strains of COVID, acting like this is a surprise to anyone. For decades, we have been encouraged to get a flu shot each and every fall. Each year the vaccines in that flu shot are different – because flu viruses mutate over the course of a year. Just like the overwhelming data that global warming was real, there is overwhelming data that the COVID vaccine is as safe and effective as any flu shot has been.
“Fearmongering” is the action of deliberately arousing unnecessary public alarm about a particular issue, or, in other words, intentionally trying to make people afraid of something that is harmless. The world has become a very strange place where websites, podcasts, social media, and blogs are dedicated toward getting you to “click” on their site so that you may see advertisements by their sponsors. Of all of our emotions, fear is the champion at getting you to click on particular stories. Thus, most anyone who wants to generate fear in the public mind is given a stage from which to do that.
To summarize, as we have witnessed from the many conspiracy theories throughout history, the human mind can be bent to go to a place where it refuses to consider logic and reason. Conspiracy theories caused Christians to kill Jews in the Dark Ages. They have caused us to ignore warnings that the world is heating up due to the burning of fossil fuels. It is causing many of us to ignore the availability of a vaccine that could prevent or minimize the effects of being stricken with a virus.
My fear, and the reason behind the subject of today’s podcast, is that church members who decide to subscribe to a conspiracy theory will forget the importance of their membership in the church and the covenants they have made. Conspiracy theorists can easily forget how to be charitable to those with whom they disagree – whether they be members of the Church or not. They can often justify their irrational fears by believing that they are just protecting their families, whom they love very much. One other note of warning regarding conspiracies. Whenever the opportunity arises, the press and social media love to publish suspicions that conspiracies exist within the highest levels of leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Such conspiracies have never been proven of course, but that fact will not deter future accusations against the Church.
The point of this podcast is to make you aware of the dangers of conspiracy theories, so you can better prevent yourself from being afflicted by them. If you can see the lack of reason and logic behind conspiracy theories of the past, it may help you to recognize them in the future.
So, how does one recognize if they are being swept away by a conspiracy theory? How do we first doubt and then reconsider the errant conclusions of our own brains? Ironically enough, by using your brain, which is quite capable of self-diagnosis.
The Self-Diagnosing Brain
One of the most impressive aspects of the human brain is that it can doubt itself. For example, you can decide to buy a car, but then a voice in the back of your head tells you it was probably too expensive for your budget. You experience buyer’s remorse and you return the car - because the second voice in your head overruled the first voice. Strange, isn’t it? One part of your brain pushes you to do one thing, another part of your brain argues for you to do another, and a third part of you, let’s call it your consciousness, makes the final decision of what you are going to do.
In today’s new attitude of conflicting parties, where everyone is demanding your time, attention, and loyalty to their cause, your consciousness is being called on more than ever to try to maintain some sort of an equilibrium. Many church members have become so bitter in their opposition of other groups that it significantly affects their spirituality and peace.Their brains can recognize this problem for a while. But after certain amount of time denying reality, your brain can become so set in its ways that it cannot even recognize reality.
Please note that it may be difficult for your brain to stop finding conspiracies in the actions of people who disagree with you. Emotions can play havoc with your reasoning mind. Again, your brain loves to find patterns and loves to discover evidence supporting its previous conclusions. Any data or information that conflicts with its conclusions can be easily attributed to the evil workings of the latest global conspiracy. If you let your emotions of suspicion, then fear, and then outrage take over, the reasoning part of your brain can shut down completely.
The Fix
A Master Class definition of Apophenia (or our tendency to find patterns where none exist), includes suggestions on how to avoid being swept up in conspiracy theories. We read,
“Be a proper skeptic. One of the most powerful defenses against sloppy thinking and intellectual laziness is skepticism. Informed skepticism—the ability to ask the right questions—protects us from manipulation. An easy way to practice informed skepticism is to not regard eyewitness testimony as the ultimate measure of things. Research shows that eyewitness testimony is among the least reliable forms of evidence and is maximally susceptible to bias. Instead, do your own research to find support for the information that’s presented to you.”
As a sidenote to this quote, “doing your own research” means to weigh both sides of an argument. We all know that Google Search will gladly confirm any preconceived notions you carry into an Internet search. The recommendation from Master Class continues,
“Learn to recognize bias. You need to be able to identify when you’re falling prey to bias and unconscious distortions. This means understanding cognitive bias, or your tendency to believe that something is true despite contrary evidence.”
In other words, you need to allow your skeptical, reasoning mind to prevent the rest of your brain from being engulfed by fear. Social media and today’s news feed will do their best to get you to panic and click on fearmongering websites and reports. We all need to be aware of the dangers of being caught up in their rants and steel ourselves against the fear they wish to create.
The episode on tribalism and this on conspiracy theory may seem like a strange departure from my normal content on Science & Scriptures. These are the most political two podcasts I’ve ever posted. But my goal of teaching science is to allow my listeners to consider the Gospel with the realities of our physical world in mind. The physical world and the spiritual world support one another and, frankly, need one another to make sense of the whole experience of life.
However, to attain that understanding, people must be willing and able to THINK. As I have explained, conspiracy theories SHUT DOWN your ability to reason by allowing strong emotions to take over your mind. For both global warming and the COVID vaccine, the vast majority of respective experts came out in support of one side of the argument. If you find yourself on the other side of that argument, then maybe you need to reconsider where you are standing. If you see yourself as a maverick who is opposing the maneuverings and control of a group of climatologists, the worldwide medical community, or a national political party, maybe you want to evaluate the cause of those opinions.
In the past couple of years, our world has been turned upside down. Our church and our country desperately need thinking, rationally-minded people in their ranks. Some of the emotion caused by COVID and a series of crazy political events has died away. It is time we put the rest of that emotion aside and calmly assess our situations. We all need to be able to think clearly – and astonishingly enough, that is getting harder and harder to do.
So, that is all I have for you today. As always, thanks for listening to my podcast. If you enjoyed the topic, and you have a friend who might benefit from a discussion about tribalism and conspiracy theories, please share this episode with them. I will be posting less often in the coming few months, as I need to put some more time into a book project. But I will still be posting. Hopefully you have subscribed and are notified when new episodes are posted. If you enjoy the podcast, please let me know at ScottRFrazer@gmail.com. Or text me at 801-866-7749. I would really appreciate any communication - and would really like to know who, if anyone, is listening to the podcast. This is Scott Frazer from the podcast Science and Scriptures. Take care and have a good week.