there religious & theological motivations for conspiracy theories? Research psychologist Dr Jesse James says yes! We’ll give into polygamy skeptics claims, flat earth, forgeries, & the Dunning-Kruger effect. Check out our conversation…
Religious Motivation Behind Conspiracy Theories
Jesse explains that many conspiracy theories are religiously motivated, using the flat earth conspiracy theory as an example. Some look at the Bible which references the four corners of the earth, and that the earth will be rolled up as a scroll literally. While not many people believe in a flat earth, the % of the US population that believes in the flat earth conspiracy theory is higher than many think.
Historical and Theological Arguments Against Polygamy
Rick and Jesse discuss the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, mentioning Rob Reiner’s podcast on the topic. Jesse explains that some conspiracy theories are legitimate. Jesse outlines the theological arguments against Joseph Smith’s involvement in polygamy, including scriptural and emotional arguments. Theological arguments are irrelevant from a historical perspective.
Jesse discusses the emotional arguments against polygamy, such as the experiences of polygamous wives. It is important to restrict historical inquiry to empirical evidence. Jesse explains that some people believe polygamy is wrong, but this belief is irrelevant to the historical evidence. Skeptics often ask people to pray and study about Joseph Smith’s involvement in polygamy, which is a theological approach, not academic history.
Spillover Theories and Historical Conspiracies
Jesse introduces the concept of spillover theories, where real conspiracies lead to additional conspiracy theories. Rick and Jesse discuss the 9/11 attacks and the various conspiracy theories that emerged from it. The spillover effect occurs because real conspiracies create a muddier historical record, making it easier for conspiracy theories to emerge. Belief in one conspiracy theory often leads to belief in many others.
Confirmation Bias and Conspiracy Theories
Jesse explains confirmation bias, where people seek evidence that supports their preconceived conclusions. Confirmation bias amplifies in echo chambers and social media. Examples of confirmation bias include the climate change debate and the Joseph Smith and Brigham Young conspiracy theories.
Jesse discusses the inconsistent treatment of evidence in the Joseph Smith and Brigham Young conspiracy theories. The two best arguments for polygamy skeptics are Joseph & Hyrum Smith’s public denials and the “show me the children” argument. All DNA tests on possible children of Joseph rule him out as the father with other women. Skeptics often cherry-pick evidence to support their theories. This leads to confirmation bias in interpreting historical evidence.
Cognitive Dissonance/Resistance to Change
Cognitive dissonance makes people more entrenched in their conspiracy theories when faced with contradictory evidence. Examples include the Obama birther theory and its resistance to change despite overwhelming evidence. This leads to the backfire effect, where people become more committed to their theories when confronted with contradictory evidence. It is important to reassess theories in light of new evidence.
Adaptive Psychology of Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy theories can be adaptive for in-group and out-group psychology. Some use conspiracy theories to justify disaffiliation from the LDS church. For example, Church members who are against the COVID vaccine lost confidence in Pres Nelson and seek for ways to delegitimize his authority. Conspiracy theories can be used to scapegoat out-groups and protect the in-group.
Education and Conspiracy Theories
Education often plays a role in reducing belief in conspiracy theories. Higher levels of education help people turn off mind bugs like confirmation bias. Polygamy skeptics often fail to use appropriate academic approaches in their inquiry. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a case where people feel overconfident in their knowledge after gaining a little education. Experts are often more tentative in making claims than amatuers. It is important to learn 0scholarly approaches in evaluating historical evidence.
Skeptics have wisely questioned the provenance of historical some historical documents, but not all documents are forgeries as skeptics often make the case. Brigham Young did not destroy original source documents, which suggests he was not trying to perpetuate a conspiracy. Some skeptics storytelling often involves oversimplifications. People in the 19th century had lower standards in writing history than we do today.
Joseph Smith’s Public Polygamy Denials
Skeptics often trumpet Joseph Smith’s public denials of polygamy as proof he didn’t practice polygamy. Skeptics’ evaluation of first-source authenticity is often lacking. They also mention potential bias and coercion in affidavits of women who claimed to be married to Joseph Smith. Jesse explains the concept of temporal proximity and how skeptics discount later recollections due to memory degradation. Jesse highlights the skeptics’ tendency to hold later recollecting witnesses to unreasonable standards and their motivated reasoning.
Corroboration and Self-Damaging Disclosures
Jesse discusses the importance of corroboration in historical evidence and how multiple sources strengthen the argument. There are various sources, including Brighamite and RLDS traditions, that implicate Joseph in polygamy. Jesse explains the concept of self-damaging disclosures and provides examples from the Clayton journal, where William Clayton reports his rejections by Sarah Ann Whitney and Emily Partridge. Jesse emphasizes the emotional turmoil and guilt Clayton expresses in the journal, suggesting its authenticity.
Brigham Young Conspiracy Theory
The Brigham Young conspiracy theory anddoesn’t match the historical context of Joseph’s leadership and the loyalty of the Quorum of the Twelve. Jesse explains the implausibility of Joseph denouncing polygamy in private while the Quorum of the Twelve continued the practice. Jesse highlights Joseph’s syncretism and how he adopted various religious ideas, including plural wives, from the zeitgeist.
On the other hand, Brigham Young had several doctrinal innovations. This shows that skeptics can rightly suggest that Young started polygamy. Joseph’s theological evolution included how he changed his teachings over time, including his relativistic moral code in the 1840s. Jesse provides examples of Joseph’s teachings that suggest a shift towards polygamy, such as the Nancy Rigdon letter/The Happiness Letter. Jesse explains the contextual credibility of the Happiness Letter and how it fits within Joseph’s worldview and other teachings. The introduction of eternal marriage created problems, such as eternal spinsters and bastard children, and how polygamy was a solution to these problems.
There is a lack of contemporaneous records of Joseph’s polygamous marriages. There are few contemporaneous records of polygamous marriages by other church leaders, such as William Clayton and Heber C Kimball. There is difficulty in determining whether revisions were made by Joseph or Brigham Young and their implications for the conspiracy.
Joseph Smith’s Trauma
Jesse discusses Joseph’s character traits, including his unreasonable expectations, exploitative behavior, and preoccupation with success. He provides examples of Joseph’s arrogant behavior, such as using the title General Smith. Joseph had difficulty handling criticism and had a tendency to retaliate against critics. Jesse discusses the potential dissociative episodes Joseph experienced due to early trauma, including multiple surgeries without anesthesia and the exhumation of Alvin’s body.
It is important to understand Joseph as a fully three-dimensional character with both strengths and weaknesses. Joseph’s characteristics, including his dissociative episodes and narcissistic tendencies, could have influenced his engagement in polygamy.
What are your thoughts about polygamy skeptics? Do you engage with them often?
Wheat & Tares 
Flat Earthers do not seem to be predominantly motivated by religion, at least not anymore. I can’t judge the percentage, but I watch a lot of YouTube videos mocking Flat Earthers. A lot of them see themselves as doing science, e.g. by observing whether ships disappear as they pass over the horizon, or pointing out evidence of fakery in NASA images etc. There is a lot of talk about water finding its own level, or how air can’t exist next to a vacuum. A few do invoke religion, for example to explain why the world’s governments are lying about the shape of the earth (to keep people from realizing that the Bible is true), or to reinforce the idea that the sky is a kind of dome.
Yes, holding one conspiracy theory does make one more likely to hold others. Some of this is only logical–if you believe the earth is flat, then you have to also deny the moon landings, which implies a vast government conspiracy–but not all. I’m sure the percentage of Flat Earthers who are also anti-vaxxers is extremely high, even though you’d think the two subjects have nothing to do with each other. One genius thinks that penguins and gorillas in the zoo are just actors in costumes.
What are we to make of church history claims? I wish there was one thing we all could agree on: It is that the history of the LDS people is bizarre and possibly incomprehensible. LDS history cannot be put in a simple package because it involves so many competing claims. In particular, it is a observed fact that Joseph Smith’s leadership is filled with contradictions, revisionist history, significant family, personal and institutional turmoil and a paranoia perhaps best illustrated by Joseph Smith’s extreme mix of bold public declarations at odds with what he taught in secret. Is not hypocrisy – practicing in private what one condemns publicly – one of the sins Jesus laid on the priests and scribes of his day?
If Joseph Smith were put on a witness stand and all evidence of him presented, would a jury deem Joseph Smith a credible witness? Or would they indict him for perjury?
I watched Video 1015 (number 4 of 5) and recommend it. I find Dr. James to be fair minded and respectful of counter arguments. I noted that Dr. James used the label “skeptics” instead of the pejorative “conspiracist” and several times he acknowledged concerns about the LDS polygamy narrative as legitimate.
When we assess polygamy as taught and practiced by Joseph Smith, any who cannot acknowledge the situation as complex and confusing are misleading. Dr. James is not misleading. He acknowledges the history is murky. Consider what should be a simple question: Did Joseph Smith teach and condone men having conjugal relations with multiple women?
To this we have all sorts of contradictory answers. We know Joseph Smith publicly taught and proclaimed monogamy. We know he denied being in adultery. Emma denied Joseph Smith engaged in adultery. And then Dr. James points out that apparently Joseph Smith was critical of a church leader (I believe it was Whitney or Clayton) for fathering a child with one of his second wives.
Wait a second! I thought the LDS justification for polygamy was specifically to bring children into the world. Why in the wide world of sports would Joseph Smith be teaching a polygamy that discouraged reproduction?
I do not believe there is a reliable record of Joseph Smith teaching polygamy using the arguments later used by Brigham Young and the LDS church – this ought to raise all sorts of questions! For Joseph Smith, the sealing of multiple women to a man seemed to be driven by a sense of spiritual supremacy. A key indicator of this is the claim that Joseph Smith was sealed to women who were married to other men. Sure, argue if you want that these sealings were sexual. I’m not buying it. The LDS were not a sex cult but that is what one has to believe if one argues Smith was marrying other men’s wives and sleeping with them.
Oh, and there is the theory that Joseph Smith experimented with various forms of polygamy, including physical intimacy. Smith concluded physical polygamy was untenable and should be stopped, but he could not unwring that bell. And yes, there is documentary evidence in support of this explanation. Joseph Smith was a visionary man. Do we allow that he tried things in the church and later decided they did not bear good fruit?
I personally don’t think the matter of polygamy matters to one’s testimony of the LDS church. That said, the question matters greatly to how one assesses the integrity of the church leadership. What I mean by this is that if one is looking to tear down the church, polygamy is just one of many hammer blows. You can pick up the polygamy hammer, I think there are a dozen other hammers you could choose from. However, if one believes that the LDS church is a vehicle through which God is going to perform a “Marvelous Work and Wonder” then the flaws and failures of the people in the church are stumbling blocks but they do not cancel the work that God is able to accomplish.
A Disciple: “I personally don’t think the matter of polygamy matters to one’s testimony of the LDS church. That said, the question matters greatly to how one assesses the integrity of the church leadership.” I have a hard time reconciling this statement. Are you saying that it doesn’t matter because it’s just the cherry on the icing of the (bad) cake? Or that it’s of less concern than other lapses in leadership? Speaking as a woman, I’ll just say that there’s a damn good reason polygamy isn’t in the missionary discussions. It’s certainly not a selling point to women to be told that you are worth so little compared to men.
Assuming that Joseph’s flavor of polygamy was making legitimate a fancy social club and community through “sealings” and more of self-soothing of emotional trauma through legalizing emotional escapism – that doesn’t change that polygamy didn’t end with Joseph. There weren’t polygamy safety nets to protect the saints from another 100 years of polygamy and countless instances of generational trauma and abuse.
It’s hard to tell what history would have been like if Joseph had left “marriage” outside the sealing equation. What if Brigham hadn’t had to hustle so much to support his multiple wives and children to the degree that he did – would he have been less of a colonizer? What if a few other prophets hadn’t chosen to “seal” themselves to countless numbers of women to elevate themselves in that way?
Polygamy creates problems for extending serial monogamy (a solid structure) into the after life. This isn’t a problem for the brethren who can be sealed to all their spouses comfortably into the eternity. These brethren don’t have to theoretically choose which spouse to spend the rest of eternity with – they can spend all the time with all of them. The brethren can “cover” all their wives with their priesthood authority – and so “eternal coverture” is alive and kicking.
However, the assumption is that a woman will have to choose which husband she wants to be with the next life – so it’s best that she only get 1 chance, and that tinkering around with being sealed to multiple individuals not be an easily accessible option on the sealing table. And we have women who are mindful of that decision and are being “choosy” and not getting married for that reason – and are judged for that too.
On some cosmic level, the patriarchal leaders have determined for women that if encountering the “bear of not being sealed” and a man – the woman needs to choose that man. It is not her choice. On the surface, she could “choose to be unsealed” – but that is not the church’s end goal and that is a known thing.
Amy & Hawkgrrrl,
I’m on your side as far as opposing polygamy. I say that as one who is a direct descendants of polygamists. One side of the family tolerated it. The other side of the family loathed it. My personal view is Joseph Smith inquired of it and he may have even attempted some type of trial of it. I want to believe he found it unworkable. I want to believe that Joseph Smith learned that some things that appear like solutions to hard problems just invite other problems.
I understand the desire to put into context what Joseph Smith taught and practiced about polygamy. The Nauvoo period of the church is especially intriguing. But I’m not sure it matters. The “official” LDS church hitched its wagon long ago to Brigham Young and I don’t see how that wagon can ever be unhitched. And Brigham Young made official not only polygamy but declared many misogynistic arguments to defend it. What do we do about that? Each of us must decide for ourselves.
I suppose what really surprises me is that the polygamy issue still dominates LDS discussion. I think President Hinkley hoped to put it to rest with his media interviews in the late 1990s. I think the church hoped to put it to rest in the 2010s with their essays. But no. The issue of polygamy in the LDS church is the worst house guest ever – it never leaves.
How much does polygamy matter to the missionary work of the church? Do people outside the church actually care? Do people considering the church’s gospel message stop because of polygamy that happened so long ago? I’m not sure polygamy matters in that context.
Polygamy seems to matter greatly to church members once they begin exploring the history and doctrine of the church. And I believe the reason is that the narrative of polygamy – the secrecy and the denials and the stubborn defense of it were so great that for church leadership the polygamy defense and the emotions they fostered became an intractable aspect of their culture. It is only after a person is in the church for a while that they notice this unsavory aspect of church leadership culture and they wonder, where did it come from?
And this is the predicament of the LDS church leadership. It doesn’t matter how “open” and accommodating to true history they are. Facts are not the problem. The issue is the culture that the LDS leadership developed as the events of 1840 to 1890 transpired. And this culture remains at the core of the church today.
A Disciple,
I’m not sure about your last comment. While some statements really shine for me, you seem to be implying that polygamy does not matter for initial conversion, but that it matters for those who are trying to fully understand and embrace the culture? Isn’t conversion and retention both just ends of the same process? Wouldn’t a truly post-polygamous church have a different culture than what it has today? I suspect that a renewed church culture (one that has fully set aside polygamy) would greatly influence PR and missionary work.
Old Man asked, “Wouldn’t a truly post-polygamous church have a different culture than what it has today?”
My hypothesis is that the institutional leadership culture of the LDS church has not changed from the days of hiding and misleading about polygamy. Why does the leadership deceive about the wealth owned by the church? Why did the leadership try to hide its wealth from the government? This is the same pattern of deception the leadership used to hide its polygamy, first from the membership and then from the government.
That the church leadership still possesses this flawed culture is not apparent to new members and it is not necessarily apparent to outsiders – outsiders may simply see the behavior as typical corporate “hide the ball”. What those familiar with church history understand is the leadership believes that God approves of them hiding the ball. It is this justification of deception as being approved by God that still permeates the institutional church.
Being more open about church history doesn’t fix this cultural flaw. The issue is not what things the church taught and practiced in the past. The issue is how the church leadership justifies being dishonest about those things. What is needed is a recognition of this pattern of deception and fundamental changes that discourage the leadership from repeating the pattern.
One reason why I think the ghost of polygamy continues to haunt the church is because there are still so many offshoots that practice it. I live in southern Utah and there are lots of FLDS that practice polygamy, even with Warren Jeffs in prison. I worked at the hospital with active FLDS women who were openly practicing polygamy. There are many polygamists operating construction and large companies. Consider that Donald Trump Jr. went shooting guns with the Nick Young who is a member of the Kingston Group (The Order). The Kingston Group also has a history of money laundering (Washakie Renewable Energy) and they have a very problematic charter school in Salt Lake that is getting taxpayer monies.
So you’ve still got lots of polygamist offshoots that have lots of money and influence. And these trafficking operations are operating all over the US and they are extensive. And if the LDS church is loathe to use the moniker “Mormon,” these groups are more than happy to adopt the label.
In the end, the only way in which the ghost of polygamy will die for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints if for it to come clean and condemn it, including those in its past who practiced it, regardless of whether they were prophets, seers, and revelators. It cannot be justified doctrinally. A clean break is needed. They need to say explicitly that any scriptural or prophetic justification for this practice was not ordained of God, full stop.