Happy Atheist Forum

Just a simple question. Is the number of people who believe in so called conspiracy theories increasing, or decreasing. If you think it's increasing, please say why, and likewise if you think it's decreasing. This isn't so much a discussion about whether or not they're true, but more of a discussion on the popularity of these so called conspiracy theories.

My view :

I think it's increasing fast. I'm not sure exactly why, but one very possible reason could be that many people feel that the mainstream media doesn't tell them the truth, or the full picture, or either. When 911 happened, the mainstream parroted bin laden's name over and over again, right from day one, and the effect that this has on people is that they automatically take it for granted. Repetition has that effect. Repetition has that effect. Repetition has that effect.

Non-mainstream media is not generally passive, meaning that you can turn on the tv or the radio or buy a newspaper and get the mainstream view, but if you want other views you generally have to seek them. The fact that the number of people who are seeking these other views, even despite the fact that it's not passive like the mainstream, shows that the feeling that the mainstream is not telling the truth is very strong.

Without having done any extensive sampling of the general public, I can hardly speak about more than my immediate circle, but your idea is interesting. The popularity of self-styled "alternative" viewpoints in the news does lend itself to this idea, particularly, it seems, within conservative groups in certain areas of the country (and also extreme liberal groups in other areas).  My own, admittedly entirely gut, suspicion is that this likely coorelates with economic difficulty.  When times are hard, people look for reasons, they're angry and afraid, they look for scape-goats, and they are more likely to give credence to theories that provide them.  I've never personally felt that any news outlet, whatever its flavor, provides the unvarnished truth.  That's not their job, nor is it in their best interests.  Their job is to sell commercial spots.  And the more loudly they proclaim their lack of "bias," the more suspicious I am of their motives.

I don't think the people I interact with on a daily basis are a good enough sampling of society to paint a good picture of what percentage is currently having a love affair with conspiracy theories.  I did notice that the 9/11 attack sparked conspiracy theories that a lot of people bought into, even those who would normally be slow to entertain such theories as true; however, that seems to have lost popularity now.

Personally, find conspiracy theories interesting from time to time but much in the same way that I would enjoy a movie.

I've dealt with a LOT of conspiracy folks. The biggest problem I find with each one is that they seem to suffer from some sort of mental health issue more often than not. Like Whitney said, I myself do not have a large enough sample to really classify them but my observation has been they seem to have their heads in a cloud most of the time.

I knew a guy who honestly thought we never landed on the moon. When I pointed out that the Soviets had the same level of tech to track the Apollo 11 mission and would have gleefully  pointed out what flipping fraud it was (if the conspiracy were true) he did mental gymnastics. First it was that we sent a decoy up into space.

I countered with if we can send a decoy why not be able to send men up there as well.

Then he goes on to claim that we live in the Matrix in the sense that the governments we see are false and that there is a one world government that uses the UN as its puppet.

He also was big into the Chemtrails (not a misspelling) that planes were supposedly pumping into the sky for some nefarious purpose. My points I'd bring up were as followed:

1.) These chemicals would be indiscriminate on who they affected and would also probably disperse so much they'd lose all potential to do anything.

2.) What purpose would it serve to poison the population at such a large scale?

3.) Planes fly at a higher altitude than they did several decades ago so contrails would be longer-lasting due to the thinner air (I could be wrong on this point but it seems a lot more logical than an evil NWO plot...).

I basically would hit a wall every time I would debate him because he would pull of the "You're still trapped in the Matrix!" nonsense like a bleating sheep. This would consistently occur when I pointed out the many holes in the conspiracy theories he'd bring up. Reminds me of the evangelical christians who bemoan the fact you're not buying the crap they're slinging.

You see a lot of these people in Austin because this is the base of operations for Alex Jones. Anyone interested in a good laugh should go to infowars.com and watch a few of his videos. The guy seems off his rocker in my opinion.

My conspiracy theory is that anyone with too much power will conspire to maintain that power.. It's interesting when you look into today's Proxy wars to which are generally waged vs open war. It seems open war only envelopes when the risks not to declare war are greater than losing the proxy wars. But for fun, are those Russian's really spies or just made up propaganda to distract from the failures, and agenda's by those in power? The funny thing about conspiracy is that it's always in play somewhere in government, or the world. :)























































 :satan:

QuoteA paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

William Burroughs

The only conspiracy I've seen pull traction is JFK's murder.  No one I know, at least, cares enough to bring the others up.

Quote from: "Jack"We will all eventually realize our irrelevance in the big picture we call existence, for we are only tenants waiting to be evicted. This is my prophecy ....

I'm not sure what to make of a nihilist prophet.  

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"

Quote from: "Jack"We will all eventually realize our irrelevance in the big picture we call existence, for we are only tenants waiting to be evicted. This is my prophecy ....

I'm not sure what to make of a nihilist prophet.   lol

Assuming there is an increase in the belief of conspiracy theories, I agree that there is probably a correlation with economic hardship.

There's definitely a lot of them out there and they do seem to have some wide acceptance.  I've recently discovered that AIDS denialism is still alive and well...I was a bit shocked.

I've been regularly running into the following:

HIV/AIDS denial.

9/11 truthers

Anti-vaxxers (I'm tempted to lump in all the various fear mongering against "western" medicine.)

The fluoride-in-our-water conspiracy.  (Does this have a shorthand name?)

On the plus side, while the Birthers still seem active, the whole death panels thing seems to have petered out.

There must be some conspiracy's out there which have a basis in fact. To hypothesise about them would be an exercise in futility, though. I prefer to leave the questions unanswered.

For instance, even though I believe the 9/11 attacks to be cut-and-dry terrorism, there are still a few oddities. The hole in the side of the pentagon still doesn't look large enough to have been a passenger aircraft and given the plethora of cameras in that vicinity, am doubtful that single frame grainy image is the only one which exists of the event.

I believe there is an enormous conspiracy behind the goings-on leading up to the Iraq war in the British government. I don't want to speculate as to what, though, as I have no real facts. Some of that shit was far too convenient for Blair.

I guess for every conspiracy out there, there are hundreds if not thousands of secrets no one will ever hear about.

Quote from: "karadan"There must be some conspiracy's out there which have a basis in fact. To hypothesise about them would be an exercise in futility, though. I prefer to leave the questions unanswered.

For instance, even though I believe the 9/11 attacks to be cut-and-dry terrorism, there are still a few oddities. The hole in the side of the pentagon still doesn't look large enough to have been a passenger aircraft and given the plethora of cameras in that vicinity, am doubtful that single frame grainy image is the only one which exists of the event.

Well, yes, there have clearly been instances where we've discovered a real "conspiracy", the Tuskegee experiments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment) come to mind, and there is no way to say there isn't an undiscovered conspiracy out there.  It's the way you go about presenting your arguments and dealing with what evidence there is that distinguishes the conspiracy theorist or denialist from a rational dissident.

I would say the two most common logical fallacies committed by the conspiracy theorist are 1) impossible expectations and 2)  arguments from ignorance.

With 9/11, for example, sure there are problems with the official report, there are questions that may never be answered.  But just because we don't know everything, doesn't mean we know nothing.  As with any hypothesis, we choose the one that best explains the evidence, and given competing hypotheses, we choose the simpler.  There is nothing in the buildings' collapse that is inconsistent with the planes crashing into the buildings, as has been explained in detail by articles in Popular Mechanics (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842), for example.

The 9/11 truthers tend to argue that we can't reasonable conclude it was not an inside job, because we don't have all the facts (impossible expectations), and that leads to the argument that the gaps in our knowledge are evidence of an inside job (argument from ignorance).  Well, we'll never have all the facts about anything, but we have enough facts to come to a reasonable conclusion.  Future evidence could change our minds.

One could calculate how many frames should show the Pentagon attacker by knowing the speed of the airplane, the distance  from the camera and flight path, and the frame rate of the camera.

Interesting the this was Fils penultimate post. Maybe he left it here just to cause discordance within the users, just sayin'  

Quote from: "Tank"Interesting the this was Fils penultimate post. Maybe he left it here just to cause discordance within the users, just sayin'  :eek:

Filanthropod is probably not a human being at all- I reckon he's an alien reptile in human form, just like Obama. What him and his extra-dimensional cronies are up to is this: they're gonna use the UN to establish a New World Order with a restored Merovingian dynasty at the helm. Then they'll re-establish the Knights Templar, and force through world-wide fluoridation of the drinking water. Its fiendish!

But don't worry, folks. Jesus is coming back soon, and he has the Hidden Masters of Tibet and the UFOs on his side. The NWO will be overthrown, and the lion will lie down with the lamb.  

Quote from: "Caecilian"

Quote from: "Tank"Interesting the this was Fils penultimate post. Maybe he left it here just to cause discordance within the users, just sayin'  :eek:

Filanthropod is probably not a human being at all- I reckon he's an alien reptile in human form, just like Obama. What him and his extra-dimensional cronies are up to is this: they're gonna use the UN to establish a New World Order with a restored Merovingian dynasty at the helm. Then they'll re-establish the Knights Templar, and force through world-wide fluoridation of the drinking water. Its fiendish!

But don't worry, folks. Jesus is coming back soon, and he has the Hidden Masters of Tibet and the UFOs on his side. The NWO will be overthrown, and the lion will lie down with the lamb.  :up:

Quote from: "Caecilian"

Quote from: "Tank"Interesting the this was Fils penultimate post. Maybe he left it here just to cause discordance within the users, just sayin'  :eek:

Filanthropod is probably not a human being at all- I reckon he's an alien reptile in human form, just like Obama. What him and his extra-dimensional cronies are up to is this: they're gonna use the UN to establish a New World Order with a restored Merovingian dynasty at the helm. Then they'll re-establish the Knights Templar, and force through world-wide fluoridation of the drinking water. Its fiendish!

But don't worry, folks. Jesus is coming back soon, and he has the Hidden Masters of Tibet and the UFOs on his side. The NWO will be overthrown, and the lion will lie down with the lamb.  

Silly.  This doesn't explain the VietCong prowling Ross Perot's property.

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"Silly.  This doesn't explain the VietCong prowling Ross Perot's property.

Well, I think I can explain that too:

The Viet Cong are controlled by the Illuminati, who are worried that Perot is going to spill the beans on their engineering 9/11. This was done as part of the cover-up of the faked moon landings. Of course, this still leaves the Elders of Zion and the Rosicrucians fighting for control of World Freemasonry. And whoever wins, we'll all get microchipped in preparation for the invasion of the greys and the coming of the Antichrist. Its a bad situation.

But don't worry, folks- the return of the Great Old Ones is nigh. R'lyeh will rise again, and the wrath of Cthulhu shall purify the world. We, his faithful servants, will dance with the Deep Ones to the music of a thousand deranged flautists. Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä! And the monkey will lie down with the squid.

Quote from: "Caecilian"But don't worry, folks- the return of the Great Old Ones is nigh. R'lyeh will rise again, and the wrath of Cthulhu shall purify the world. We, his faithful servants, will dance with the Deep Ones to the music of a thousand deranged flautists. Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä! And the monkey will lie down with the squid.

F'ing awesome.

All hail the coming of the monkey-squid children!

Quote from: "Caecilian"And the monkey will lie down with the squid.

My ex-wife was a monkey on the Chinese zodiac...wait... ...the prophecy fulfilled!!  The time is near!!

VINDICATION!!!

Listen up you skeptics, you atheists, you so-called 'scientists', you deniers of the truth.

You always want 'evidence' for things- as if there could be evidence, what with Opus Dei and their Roswell facility controlling the media and sending telepathic brainwashing signals into our heads.

Well, now I have the evidence that you want. Cold, hard evidence that proves every single point that I've made in my earlier posts. And here it is:

Quote from: "Squid"

Quote from: "Caecilian"And the monkey will lie down with the squid.

My ex-wife was a monkey on the Chinese zodiac...wait... ...the prophecy fulfilled!!  The time is near!!

Free think on that!!

And yes, Brother Squid, the prophecy is fufilled! The time of the Great Old Ones return is even closer than I thought.

We must find sacrifices for them, Brother Squid. Virgins are of course the best.

Sadly, I suspect that virgins are in short supply around here. We need to look elsewhere...perhaps one of the christian sites?

Quote from: "Caecilian"Sadly, I suspect that virgins are in short supply around here. We need to look elsewhere...perhaps one of the christian sites?

Are you f'ing kidding me?!  That's the LAST place you should look.

Quote from: "The Black Jester"

Quote from: "Caecilian"Sadly, I suspect that virgins are in short supply around here. We need to look elsewhere...perhaps one of the christian sites?

Are you f'ing kidding me?!  That's the LAST place you should look.

Well...you're probably right there. Human nature being what it is, pretty much all of us fuck like rabbits given half a chance. So really there isn't a good place to look for virgins.

Still, we need blood sacrifices for Cthulhu- he will be hungry when he returns. And it might as well be christians. Sacrificing them will at least be fun.

Quote from: "Caecilian"

Quote from: "The Black Jester"

Quote from: "Caecilian"Sadly, I suspect that virgins are in short supply around here. We need to look elsewhere...perhaps one of the christian sites?

Are you f'ing kidding me?!  That's the LAST place you should look.

Well...you're probably right there. Human nature being what it is, pretty much all of us fuck like rabbits given half a chance. So really there isn't a good place to look for virgins.

Still, we need blood sacrifices for Cthulhu- he will be hungry when he returns. And it might as well be christians. Sacrificing them will at least be fun.

It's just that it's been soooooooo done before, and if there's one thing that twists my panties more than a Christian, it's a Christian martyr.

What about white male Derivatives traders?  They're just asking for it...

Quote from: "The Black Jester"It's just that it's been soooooooo done before, and if there's one thing that twists my panties more than a Christian, it's a Christian martyr.

What about white male Derivatives traders?  They're just asking for it...

Yeah, of course you're right.

Another consideration is this: christians are far more replacable than derivatives traders. Sacrifice a few christians, what difference does it make? Not a lot really.

But derivatives traders are a small and exclusive group. If we sacrificed enough of 'em it would make a real difference to the world.  

If we can't find enough derivatives traders, theres always the commodity brokers, bank CEOs, junk bond salesman, oil company executives...plenty of potential sacrifices.

And then, if Cthulhu didn't turn up after all (and lets be clear: I'm convinced that he will, be you can never be sure) we'll have performed a valuable service to society. Its a win-win scenario. I like it!

All of which reminds me of something that I was listening to earlier this evening- the words of a real prophet, or at least something close to it:


[youtube:al3jnf7r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caFiSBl-zUs[/youtube:al3jnf7r]

Most of the discussion so far has been about conspiracy theories themselves. It is clear though that the number of people who believe in one conspiracy or another is increasing. Especially the 911 terrorist attacks by Al-CIAda.

The more absurd something is, the more believable it becomes.  That was one way I heard conspiracy theology is described.

What bothers me is that conspiracy theories have actually spurred people to start stocking weapons, encourage insurrection, and feed into a general distressing malaise.  I worry that because of a sizable minority who ascribe to such are being pushed closer to an edge that will come to a very frightening, bloody, and painful outcome.