There is a lot in the news right now, but I won’t post about politics two weeks in a row. So I’m going to pull another post from the book Misbelief, in particular the chapter where the author takes a close look at alien abduction accounts. That leads to observations that he generalizes to conspiracy theories (and those who believe them) in general. I didn’t get to that part of the book in my previous post, and I’m not going to repeat the intro material on the book in this post. You can go back and skim that post if you want to. Instead, I’ll explain why I now read books like Misbelief, then I’ll circle back around to aliens and Mormons and conspiracy theories. In a few paragraphs I’ll get to my central point: Instead of talking about whether the Church is a cult, maybe we ought to be asking whether it’s a conspiracy theory.
Things I Read
Before about five years ago, I mostly read philosophy and history and theology and LDS studies books, with a science book thrown in here and there. Then Trump and the pandemic and general craziness hit the country, and suddenly I was reading books about Trump (such as Jonathan Karl’s Betrayal and the more recent sequel, Tired of Winning), books by Trump associates (like John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened and Mark Esper’s A Sacred Oath), and books by other insiders (like Liz Cheney’s recently released Oath and Honor). Fine books, all of them.
I also started reading books trying to explain the sudden proliferation of conspiracy theories, some so outlandish you just laugh out loud when they are explained to you, except for the fact the millions of otherwise rational people seem to be buying into them, often quite passionately. Misbelief is probably the best of this group of books that tries to explain this whole development, very insightful and without any particular partisan agenda. If you’re like me, it will temper some of the bad thoughts you have about people who fall for this stuff. It’s not always their fault.
A third group of books I started reading was to try and understand why Evangelicals fell so hard for Trump (and his endless stream of constantly repeated falsehoods) when so little about Trump’s personality or lifestyle fit with what Evangelicals supposedly believe or advocate. That narrow issue is of interest to me, of course, because about 95% of the political commentary on Evangelicals applies to Mormons as well, who have also fallen hard for Trump. For a quick intro into this topic, go read an essay just posted two days ago at The Atlantic, “Where Did Evangelicals Go Wrong?” I even thought of doing today’s post on that piece, with a title “Where Did Mormons Go Wrong?” But like I said, I can’t really post on politics twice in a row. But you really should go read the essay.
All of this — Trumpism, conspiracy theories, Evangelical/Mormon political leaning — seems very relevant to central LDS issues that concern a lot of us. What do you think of the Church? What do you think of LDS senior leaders and local leaders? What do you think of your fellow rank-and-file Mormons? I find it ironic that senior leadership and LDS apologists have, for two generations, been wringing their hands over historical and doctrinal challenges to LDS beliefs that critics and scholars have published. They have tried to counter those challenges and criticism with apologetic publications, including the pathbreaking Gospel Topics Essays from the Church itself. But, surprise!, it turns out that widespread Trump support within the Church and all that goes with it have chased more people out of the Church than the other stuff ever did.
I call this the “weak right flank” problem that LDS leadership has. They are blind to threats from the right. Some lady knocks on the door of the Tabernacle and wants to attend Priesthood Meeting (a big meeting they used to hold on Saturday night during Conference) and she gets excommunicated. A gang of gun-wielding LDS extremists takes over a government building for a couple of months, no problem. So our discussion will end up being about LDS rank and file members, but that things have come to this is because of a failure of leadership. They were asleep at the wheel while the Mormon bus veered right and went in the ditch.
Now let’s shift gears.
Alien Abductees
It’s hard to study aliens, but you can study people who believe in aliens and UFOs (not that intelligent extraterrestrial life is out there somewhere in the immense Universe, that’s fairly plausible, but that they have spaceships and visit Earth regularly). Dan Ariely, the author of Misbelief, devotes a chapter to studying a rather small slice of alienologists, those who believe they were abducted and (generally) mistreated by aliens. They are termed “alien abductees.” You can react two ways to alien abduction stories. You can say, “Oh, those terrible aliens! They are abducting people, albeit secretly, and doing questionable things to them. We must find these aliens and punish them!” Or you can say, “Hmm, well there isn’t much reliable evidence that aliens are visiting Planet Earth, so what is going on in the minds and memories of these alien abductees?” The author, of course, pursues the second option.
The most entertaining part of the chapter was the author’s list of 23 questions he asked people to try and generate a sort of conspiracy theory belief scale. His goal was to try and correlate high scores with certain personality traits. Here are a few of the questions participants could answer 0 (definitely not true) to 100 (definitely true).
- Covid-19 is a fake virus.
- The government covers up proof of alien life.
- The science around global warming is invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons.
- The world is controlled by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Donald Trump is battling to stop this cabal.
- Donald Trump really won the 2020 presidential election.
Well, it turns out the people you would like to provide candid answers to such a survey don’t trust you and won’t generally participate (“you’re part of the cabal, aren’t you? you’re making fun of us, aren’t you?”). If you go read the whole list, you’ll probably find one or two claims you score fairly high on. Maybe there’s a little bit of conspiracy theorist in all of us. That’s a lighthearted way to put it, of course. If conspiracy thinking is, in fact, tied to human perception, cognition, and memory, then all humans are subject to conspiracy thinking to some degree. That’s a more objective way to put it. What we need are good defenses against it and maybe a cure for family or friends who fall victim to such thinking.
Anyway, here’s a paragraph that gets down to business on the aliens angle.
A group of researchers led by Susan Clancy examined the general experience described by alien abductees. … The researchers noticed that their descriptions of their experience (electrical tingling, feelings of levitation, loud buzzing sounds, flashing lights, hovering figures of aliens) seemed very similar to the descriptions of the known physiological situation called sleep paralysis. (p. 186)
But don’t leap to a conclusion quite yet. The problem is that something like 8% of the population experiences episodes of sleep paralysis. The vast majority of them don’t then think they were abducted by aliens. The researchers administered memory tests to two groups (one control, one alien abductees) to try and determine what separated the abductees. In the study, they scored significantly higher on false recall (remembering a word on a list read earlier that wasn’t, in fact, on the list) and false recognition (being given a separate list of words later, and identifying particular words as being on earlier lists when, in fact, they weren’t). Those are different but related tests of faulty memory.
It’s More Than Just Memory
There was additional research. Again, for the abductees, “three main personality traits stood out: magical ideation, openness to absorbing, and perceptual aberration.” In plain English, “these personality traits measure the extent to which people believe in unconventional forms of causation; are more easily absorbed in their mental imagery and fantasy; are more easily hypnotizable; and believe that certain people have special powers” (p. 193). Here are a few questions asked in this further research (p. 194-95):
- Horoscopes are right too often for it to be coincidental.
- Numbers such as 13 and 7 have special powers.
- Good luck charms work.
- I have sometimes sensed an evil presence around me, although I could not see it.
- I have felt that I might cause something to happen just by thinking too much about it.
Maybe you are starting to sense a bit of resemblance here. With just slight rewording, a lot of rank-and-file Mormons would agree 100% with the following:
- Patriarchal blessings are right too often for it to be coincidental.
- Numbers like 12 and 70 have special significance.
- Temple garments work to protect people.
- I have sometimes sensed an evil presence about me, sometimes binding my tongue so I could not speak.
- I have felt that I might cause something to happen just by praying a lot about it.
So that’s about as far as I can take this in one blog post. Go read the book for the full story. The questions one might ask (after reading the book) about Mormons and their beliefs would be whether the personality traits that predispose people with sleep paralysis to think in terms of an alien abduction story (a very small slice of sleep paralysis people) might be generalizable into why some people are more susceptible to embracing conspiracy theories. Then, further, whether there is any correlation between people who are religious believers (or who are religious believers of a particular denomination, say Mormons) and those who embrace conspiracy theories. Or, to take a step further back in the chain, whether there are personality traits that predispose some people to embrace both a particular religious view of the world and also embrace various conspiracy theories.
And what is a conspiracy theory? An implausible theory with little or no objective evidence to support it.
I’ll let readers take it from here.
Wheat & Tares 
Your opening line says “I won’t post about politics two weeks in a row” and then you mention Trump’s name 7 times (yes, I counted). I just found that a little humorous. CARRY ON.
Josh, it seems like you are saying that the Venn diagram overlap of discussion between alien abductions, Mormons, and Donald Trump is a political matter. Interesting.
The conspiracy theories described here are ones I generally think of as crazy. But there are different items that others might label as conspiracy theories even though we consider them to have reliable sources—like CIA assassinations around the world, or the plastic industry pushing recycling despite know it wasn’t a good long-term solution. Or for church members, that the Church routinely covers up sexual abuse.
What’s the difference? Is “credible evidence” a fair answer? And how much overlap is there between people who believe credible theories and those who believe conspiracy theories? I’m reminded of character Dora Daphne Tanner from Steven L. Peck’s The Scholar of Moab. She claims to be the victim of an alien abduction, but she certainly wouldn’t support Trump.
This post’s jumping off point is that religion in general and Mormonism in particular are absolute frauds, and people who believe in religion are like unto conspiracy theorists such as alien abductees. “And what is a conspiracy theory? An implausible theory with little or no objective evidence to support it.” That definition isn’t that far from one definition of faith: “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” All physicians held to the Miasma theory of diseases coming from bad air, and this was considered the scientific and medical truth until not that long ago, but the truth has since changed and we know that diseases come frequently from germs (bacteria, fungi, viruses…). Just 2-3 years ago it was anathema to say that Covid-19 may have come from a laboratory in China, but that truth seems to be changing. Don’t throw stones: I am vaccinated and boosted! I don’t see conspiracy theorists in most faithful believers of any religion. Are there deluded people of faith? Yes. Are there deluded Atheists? Yes.
People can be decent people and not think like I think, and that need not make them weak minded (given to conspiracy theories). I’m OK with people stretching their beliefs into what they cannot prove, and that doesn’t make them intellectually deficient, which is what people mean when they call others conspiracy theorists. Conspiracy theorist is a derogatory term used to denigrate some who think differently than the way someone thinks they should believe. I don’t see conspiracies everywhere, but I have seen governments try to define what truth is (think communist Russia and China, and Orwell’s 1984). Were people conspiracy theorists when they thought that Stalinist or Maoist “truth” might not be exactly right? They were so declared in show trials and sent to reeducation camps, or worse. More than I fear a few people on the fringes believing in alien abductions, I fear government, establishment, and elitist “truth” being treated as truth because it comes from the government, establishment, or elites. Maybe that makes me a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t believe in alien abductions, nor do I want to see Mr Trump elected in 2024, nor do I believe the election was stolen in 2020.
More than I am concerned about seeing conspiracy theorists in religious believers, I question people who see conspiracy theories all around them in people who think differently than they “should.” My experience is that most believers in religion are decent people trying to do right as they understand it. I’m not going to put on them a derogatory label asserting their intellectual weakness.
At first I thought you were going to end up talking about Matthew Bowman’s new book, The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America, available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Abduction-Betty-Barney-Hill-Encounters-ebook/dp/B0CF279CJ4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
I had heard the story of Betty & Barney Hill (the “first” alien abduction encounter in the US, back in the 1950s) on the Lore podcast I think. It’s an interesting story, and they are definitely not right wingers (an interracial couple, and Betty grew up in a left-wing UU congregation if I’m remembering it right). Both the right and the left are susceptible to conspiracy thinking, but it’s most common among people who feel vulnerable for various reasons.
When you talked about the survey, “people you would like to provide candid answers to such a survey don’t trust you and won’t generally participate” what’s interesting to me is that it’s like trying to find out if someone is insecure. People who are insecure are certainly not going to tell you they are insecure because that makes them more vulnerable!
As to the other two observations from the book, magical thinking and false recall / false recognition, those are new connections that I haven’t read about previously when it comes to these things. Personally, I can say that I was much more susceptible to magic thinking and to false recall when I was a child. I remember imagining things that weren’t truly there, working myself into a state where I could almost see things or hear things that weren’t real, and to remember things that didn’t happen. But I did ultimately grow out of that. I don’t really understand completely why some people remain interested in it, but it feels like those who are into conspiracy theories among the people I know find it extremely fun and entertaining. I don’t think they are likely to join Tim Ballard’s cause or storm the capitol, but they do enjoy gossiping about these theories as if they alone have some secret inside knowledge of how things REALLY work. It’s just that their ideas aren’t well thought out. I read an interesting article on the Bentham’s Substack about how Conspiracy Theorists aren’t dumb (they have LOTS of facts, probably more than the rest of us); they are just bad at epistemology or understanding how to logically sort those facts into a realistic worldview: https://benthams.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-ignorant?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=707415&post_id=142037179&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=20xu2&open=false&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR3RHFVA2vpegSVIbiw6l_BLroWLpiFHdrnb5bbzImZhqLs1ddn7SYuiUA4.
Not a fan of Dan Ariely. And characterizing anyone’s religious beliefs as fallacious thinking at the level of delusional conspiracy theory (such as alien abductions and UFOs) is unenlightened and just plain wrong. There is plenty of magical thinking in most world religions. It does not disqualify their wisdom.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Tygan, there is generally a clear difference between open issues with reasonable arguments and evidence on both sides — issues on which reasonable people can disagree — and issues on which a fringe argument has little or no supporting evidence, yet the theory is accepted by some people for various reasons. One of the distinguishing features of conspiracy theories (which tend to be fairly elaborate) is that the *lack* of evidence somehow serves to bolster the credibility of the theory in the minds of those who endorse the theory. That runs counter to how most of us think most of the time. There are some issues that sort of sit on the boundary between reasonable if minority theories and conspiracy theories, of course. It’s a messy world.
Georgis, I’m glad you enjoyed the post.
Angela C, yes after reading Misbelief I’m more interested in Matt Bowman’s new book that you mentioned. There is also a book from 2011, Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore, with W. Paul Reeve as one of the editors. Both of these LDS books seem a lot more interesting after reading Misbelief. Centuries ago, people told stories about being visited or afflicted by demons and angels. Now they tell stories about being visited by good aliens and bad aliens.
Old Man, that’s an interesting article, thanks for the link. FYI, the reviews for Misbelief are all fairly positive. In every chapter the author brings up and discusses two or three research articles/projects by other researchers in the field, so most of the points he makes rests on “field work” that others have performed. I’ll bet you would enjoy the book.
My theory about why people believe different things, including conspiracy theories, is as follows: ”When we hear something that matches what is already inside of us, it feels like TRUTH.”
One of the crazy things that I “believe in” or that I have found useful, is the Enneagram personality profiles. The reason I like the enneagram is that it doesn’t just describe the way that different types of people behave, it describes the way different types of people see the world. Or the way I phrase it, is it describes what is the game each person is playing.
I think those who are playing the game of “safety and security” are ironically more likely to succumb to conspiracy theories because they are constantly on the lookout for danger and end up seeing danger everywhere. But it feels like truth to them because it matches what’s inside of them.
Those who are playing the game of “be good, choose the right” are more likely to scrupulously follow high demand religions because they are on the lookout for a system that clearly identifies good vs bad, and offers a structure where you can know that you are being good and choosing the right.
Most people mistakenly think that they game that they are playing is the game that everyone else is playing too. Because of that, people’s actions and beliefs don’t seem to make any sense. But in reality, everyone’s actions and beliefs make sense in the game that they are playing.
I agree with the comments thus far. Thinking back to the Jubilee Youtube episode on Mormonism the first question posed was “Is Mormonism a cult?” and of course the post-Mormons said yes and the current Mormons said no. There was no bridging that gap, and therefore the conversation is a waste, until one of the participants mentioned that we should think about this question in terms of causing harm. Yes perhaps Apple and other corporations have cult-like policies but do those policies cause harm? Do high-demand religions cult-like policies cause harm?
I think the same rubric works here. Is someone’s beliefs causing harm? Spending your weekend in Death Valley or the Pac NW looking for signs of alien life or bigfoot may seem silly to some of us, but if no one is harmed then so what? Believing that left-wing celebrities eat babies in the basement of pizza parlors apparently does cause harm when the believers are moved to take violent action.
Back to Mormonism, I believe some of the magic beliefs do not cause harm, and some of them do. While I no longer identify as Mormonism, most of my extended family does. I hope for a Mormonism where the beliefs evolve and are healthy and do not cause harm.
I liked Chadwick’s clarification that you look at the harm done by the belief.
We all believe some things that aren’t true, or are only true-ish. Some of it doesn’t harm anyone, like looking at zodiac signs to guess at someone’s personality. It’s the intensity of the magical belief, and the amount of hatred behind it, that changes a quirk into a damaging conspiracy theory.
My father is a conspiracy theorist. The harm he did wasn’t just that he thought a bunch of weird things. He hated entire groups of people just because they existed. He believed the worst about entire groups of people without evidence. His blood pressure would go up while he snarled and growled about how the world would be a better place without that certain group of people (it changed periodically, depending on who had irritated him most recently). Sometimes he’d actually had an interaction with a member of a group he’d decided to hate (cops), but other times he just read about how bad a group of people was (liberals) and hated them based on what he’d read.
I’ve struggled with sleep paralysis (Old Hag Syndrome) for over 40 years. At first–when I was 16 years old–it was so terrifying that I thought it must’ve been caused by the adversary. And it wouldn’t be until I was in my thirties that I began to understand what was really going on–thanks to a good friend who had similar struggles. Even so, some of the episodes I’ve had after learning about sleep paralysis have been just as terrifying as before–when I used to think they were the product of the netherworld.
That said, while I was never taken in be any crazy conspiracy theories–I did have a difficult struggle with OCD and scrupulosity. And except for the notion that the family I grew up in had some bad ways of thinking that I didn’t want to carry into the future–I had no idea that I was half mad. And so I can certainly understand how folks can get attached to certain unhealthy ideas and ways of thinking with knowing that they’re on the brink of insanity.
Thankfully, a little over twenty years ago I traded in my OCD for major depression–and as bad as the latter can be I would never want to go back the former. I still struggle a bit with OCD but it’s much more manageable now–whereas before it was a tyrannical task master. Indeed, it’s almost laughable to look back at all of the crazy things I did while being so naive that I couldn’t see how wacky my thinking was.
Chadwick: I’m a little iffy on your litmus test for cults being that they cause harm because there is also harm (that is difficult to identify) in wasting your time and in getting so out of touch with your own moral compass, personal desires, and personality that your relationships suffer as a result. Since you brought up Silicon Valley, I’ll just expand on that a little bit by saying that the cultures where employees are behaving like children and bros to the founder aren’t always going to yield the best results, particularly when things get high stakes like self-driving cars, algorithms that fuel information dissemination, and so forth. I suspect strong cultures (maybe a better wording than “cult”) always cause some harms by exerting undue social pressure that humans find it hard to go against.
I am sure I am not alone in knowing some very intelligent, kind people who believe things that I don’t think are well supported objectively. They are excellent parents, sought out at work for problem solving, and tell me the sources of information that I look to to inform my opinions (largely regarded as neutral) show my bias. Some of them I used to enjoy bouncing ideas off of.
It is difficult to discuss things with them, because they’ve come to dismiss information from academics and mainstream media.
I’ve puzzled over how it is that they accept as authoritative things that to me are obviously not.
The Washington Post had a piece today that identified how many times CNN brings up things critical of Trump, compared to the much fewer mentions by Fox Cable News – the difference is significant, as one would guess.
That STILL doesn’t get at the WHY of it all.
I find much of the misinformation to be distractions that make people feel good about supporting policies that lead to pay disparity, wealth inequities, and not holding corporations accountable for harm they cause. After all, if there are pedophile crime rings hiding in pizza parlors, then they are right to be outraged at it.
Is it a conspiracy for me to believe that right wing think tanks conspire to push misinformation on vulnerable people?
*do I buy into a conspiracy theory if I believe that …?
The WaPo article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/05/why-fox-news-pundit-may-not-have-heard-bad-news-about-trump/
Sorry for a third comment, but I want to add that common tactics of misinformation include:
-Name calling, discrediting, and even vilifying their opponents
-Raising unfounded fears of great harm that will ensue if the opposition is not stopped
-Whataboutisms are common
-And using false equivalents
What is an “elite”? Is that the same thing as an expert? Is someone who inherits millions of dollars elite? Is a billionaire elite? Is a person who grew up in a 2 bedroom apartment but got scholarships to good schools elite? Is someone who studies a subject for years and writes well-received articles on that subject elite? Is a person who buys an invention and then makes billions of dollars selling it elite?
Is a person who wants to deny women the right to control their bodies decent? What about a person who supports a dictatorship? Is a person decent who believes his beliefs are the only beliefs that should be recognized or taught? Is a person decent who thinks that it’s ok to let people drown because they do not have a specific document? Is a person who thinks it’s ok for a woman to lose fertility, or health, or life just because she’s carrying a fetus decent? Is a person who thinks they are superior to others of different races or religions decent?
If I do”right” as I “understand it” but it results in denying others the right to do right as they understand am I decent?
“A gang of gun-wielding LDS extremists takes over a government building for a couple of months, no problem.”
Not really. Most or all of that group was excommunicated. Unlike Kate Kelly, I’m not aware of any of these people blogging about their excommunication. The Church didn’t make any mention of Kate Kelly’s writing that I’m aware of, unless it was to clarify Church procedure. Would the fact that the Church somehow has no blog material to clarify regarding procedure for a bunch of men who were likely ashamed to mention anything about their excommunication in the first place suddenly make the Church seem okay with everything they did? I really don’t think so. I really don’t want the Church to go back to giving extra publicity to excommunications either. But now that you mention it, I thought it did take issue with people invoking Captain Moroni for their actions, so there’s something. Also worth noting is that their fellow citizens found them not guilty. It would be easy to disparage a jury of our peers, but I wonder how many of us would come to a similar conclusion if presented all the same information in that format. What’s considered irrational vs. rational can quickly change with just a little information. There are a number of majority positions out there, many of which I hold, in which I do feel it appropriate to ask myself from time to time whether I’m the actual extremist.
A high school buddy of mine has all but abandoned Mormonism (still clings to some favorite cultural aspects) and is rapidly rising in the world of UFOlogy. To him, it makes a lot more sense than Mormonism. And frankly, a lot of his logic is sound. Logic is the main thing fueling conspiracies, not evidence. One can run so many permutations and combinations with logic. And while religion can fuel conspiracies, I’ve just as often seen it temper them. Remove a love of God, and just about any other emotional or spiritual aspect of our being, and often all you have left is unchecked logic. In fact, without careful programming, I predict in the next decade or two we’ll see certain AI systems lean towards the probability of certain conspiracy theories as being true because they have nothing else to check their logic with. I’ve repeated this quote multiple times, but a favorite line from Asimov’s novel The Caves of Steel is “A robot is logical, a human is reasonable.” And although Asimov would roll in his grave to see me type this, there is plenty in religion, specifically Mormonism, that I find reasonable, including the reality of the Holy Ghost. Logic is part of it, but it’s so much more than that.
I am pretty sure that there are less people who believe in conspiracy theories in countries outside the US.
We had a by-election last week the government won by 3.6%, but there were no people on the loosing side talking about the election being stolen or otherwise calling into question the result. We have a government body that sets the boundaries (so there are similar number of voters in each electorate), conduct the election, and count the votes. None of that are questioned.
I do wonder if people outside America should be able to vote in presidential, and possibly other elections, because Americas power/influence in the world affects us, and American voters don’t seem to represent the more responsible people.
The proportion of voters who believe trump in America is disturbing, near 50%, whereas I would be surprised if more than 10% would support him here.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Chadwick and Janey, yes the “does it do any harm?” test is a good one. Certainly holding groundless beliefs (with associated practices or actions) that do no harm is not as bad as holding groundless beliefs (with associated practices or actions) that harms that person or others. But it is probably the case that holding one set of groundless beliefs sets you up to accept another and another. Testing or pre-screening the claims we accept as true *before* we accept them seems like a good life practice. I know, easy to say …
Angela C (first comment), one of the interesting things in the book is the author’s recounting of his interactions with several full-on believers in this or that kooky theory. They were friendly interactions — as an academic researcher, he was truly trying to understand what they were thinking and what led them to those beliefs. And the book as a whole seems to argue that it is the natural (if not fully rational) thought and memory processes of the human mind that gives rise to some people affirming, sometimes zealously, various conspiracy theories.
Eli, thanks for the helpful information. I’ve read a lot about the 2016 Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation by the Bundy gang, both in the national media and various LDS sources. I’ve never seen any indication that any of the participants were disciplined by their LDS leaders. I believe it is a misstatement to say the participants were found “not guilty.” Here is a paragraph from the Wikipedia entry on the whole affair:
“By August 2017, a dozen had pleaded guilty, and six of those had been sentenced to 1–2 years’ probation, some including house arrest. Seven others, including Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were tried and acquitted of all federal charges. Five more had been found guilty and were sentenced months later. Seven of the militants saw prison time for their roles in the occupation. Jake Ryan and Duane Ehmer each received 366 days in prison, with Ryan additionally getting three years of supervised probation. Darryl Thorn received 18 months of prison time on November 21, 2017.[33] Jason Patrick received 21 months on February 15, 2018. Ryan Payne was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison along with three years of supervision on February 27, 2018. Jon Ritzheimer was sentenced to 366 days in federal prison and another 12 months in a residential re-entry program. Corey Lequieu was sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervision. Two others, Joe O’Shaughnessy and Brian Cavalier, were detained for at least a year, but released on time served plus three years of supervision each, plus fines.”
Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge – Wikipedia
@Geoff any time prior to 2016 I would have guessed that less than 10% of Americans would have supported Trump. It’s still shocking to me that a rich-kid, non-military, NYC carpetbagger has gained so much support, especially in the South. Sometimes these things sneak up on you.
In college I worked as a technician and had a ladder and tools in a truck in my driveway. One day the ladder was stolen. My roommate at the time said that it was probably our next door neighbors who stole it. There wasn’t any evidence of this, his only justification is that they were Mexicans. I interpreted this, then and still, as a racist motivation. I never figured out who stole it. I would argue that even if it turned out it had been those neighbors, my roommate would only have been “proven right” in the sense that a broken clock is right twice a day. His evidence was faulty and only based on racism.
This is roughly how I feel about some recent conspiracy theories, for example Trump promoting racism by name calling COVID the “China virus”. There was scant evidence of that at the time, and it felt obvious that he was just trying to deflect blame for his own poor response to the pandemic. It’s statistically probable that some conspiracy theories will end up having pieces of truth in them, but that doesn’t prove conspiracy theorists right if their initial evidence was faulty and misinterpreted, and it doesn’t justify taking actions that harm others without defensible evidence.
On a math test on high school, a friend of mine came to a question that he didn’t understand and didn’t know how to answer. This was the kind of test where you had to show your work. He just guessed an answer (1.5 as I recall). The answer was right! The teacher mentioned that he noticed the guessed answer when grading, and gave him partial credit for his lucky guess.
Of course, there is a corollary risk on the other side of this. If I had ignored evidence that pointed toward my neighbors, just because I didn’t want to appear racist, that is equally bad reasoning.
Geoff-Aus: I would totally disagree with your assessment that people outside the US are less susceptible to conspiracy thinking based on my own interactions in my travels with friends, drivers, and tour guides. Bear in mind that a lot of other countries have some very suspect news sources. Based on a few recent trips, I would say Spain, Egypt and Romania are right up there with rural America.
A great-uncle of mine by marriage said at a family gathering some years ago that he had always voted Democratic and would always do so, and if the Republicans were to put the Lord Jesus Christ himself on the ballot (he was a practicing Christian, although not of the Mormon faith), he would still have to vote for the Democratic candidate, even if they put up their signature donkey (he said jack ass, which got his wife a little upset since there were children present). He has long since passed. He hated all Republicans and everything to do with them. He wasn’t alone, and there are also some people who hate Democrats of all kinds.
The original post acknowledges that there is probably “a little bit of conspiracy theorist in all of us.” I appreciate the OP’s fairness here. Sometimes we label “opponents” with unpleasant names. I call some things true that I cannot prove as such, but I don’t want to be called a conspiracy theorist and be committed to a mental hospital or reeducation camp! The OP does not propose this, but in my lifetime and shortly before millions of people were killed for not holding the “right” opinions, and I fear that our society can move in that direction. I am a live-and-let-live kind of person, and I appreciate the do-no-harm principle that has been discussed here.
Labels serve a legitimate purpose, but we can label people wrongly and too quickly, like a child or husband who gets a label maker for Christmas! My great-uncle was a good person from my perspective as a great-nephew, but he probably had many faults, as do we all. He was probably racist, probably didn’t support women’s rights, and did smoke cigarettes, but I won’t hate him or label him. I also don’t have a problem (no no harm principle?) with people thanking the Lord for rain for their crops or when someone recovers from an illness, even if climatologists and physicians see no role for a divine actor.
Dave B,
“I believe it is a misstatement to say the participants were found ‘not guilty’.”
I’m sorry. I was thinking purely in terms of Federal charges. That was indeed a misstatement. Thank you for the correction.
“I’ve never seen any indication that any of the participants were disciplined by their LDS leaders.”
I mean, in an ideal situation for both the Church and the disciplined believer, isn’t that what you’d hope for? The Church sent a warning shot while they were at the refuge (or rather a promise of what was to come). They obviously didn’t listen, so they faced excommunication. If they humbled themselves, I imagine the excommunications went quickly and quietly. I don’t recall any of these men calling the Church out for wrongdoing. I haven’t encountered any blog material calling the Church wrong. I don’t think their family and associates are making similar statements. Maybe—just maybe—a lot of them feel bad about the way they went about things and the light they put the Church in. For those still gallivanting around preaching freedom in their own way, I imagine they’re still lacking membership but keeping the Church out of it. If anyone wants to associate the Church with them, I’m sure both the Church and these men are probably quick to note the severed connection.
I should mention it wasn’t a publication I learned of the excommunications, it was Facebook. I don’t lean quite as far right as these guys, but I have one mutual friend who leans closer. Someone even closer to them mentioned on my friend’s thread they had been excommunicated. The guy who mentioned it wasn’t even a member (which for some odd reason seemed to add credibility to the statement), had no dog in the fight, and stated the occurrence as mostly a simple matter of fact. Ultimately, I suppose the fact he could be wrong, and therefore me also, is still very possible.
Assuming they are excommunicated, it probably is strange neither of us have read it in an official publication, unless maybe it just doesn’t fit the narrative that the Church only targets liberal causes. I personally think the reasons above are more likely, but I’m sure we could both think of others.