Conspiracy Theories You’ve Heard

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In another post, I mentioned that I once talked to a guy who believes that we should go back to the apparent Golden Age that existed before the Enlightenment, and that the Enlightenment was brought about by the Illuminati which, according to him, is part of Babylon the Great and is run by Satan. That evil Benjamin Franklin with his ingenious inventions and free library...

I talked to an individual offline once who has similar thoughts about the Illuminati, and he was a homeschooling parent. I met him at a playground while our kids were playing together. He also thought Obama is a Muslim (so what?) and that the school system is intentionally making our kids “stupid,” so they can only handle manual labor and won’t be able to revolt against “the system.” Huh. Who knew America was so bad?

I also know somebody that believes in the ancient aliens phenomenon. With this individual, it’s more like he wants to believe in it because it’s fun than because it appeals to him logically, I think. Perhaps science was not presented in an appealing way which has made people like him yearn for something else.

Some fringe religious beliefs that I’m familiar with border on conspiracy theories as well.

Of course, there’s the anti-vaxxers, some of whom believe that doctors are intentionally giving kids autism to make money off of them. Homeopathers sometimes have similar views as far as believing that doctors are diagnosing people with conditions so they can keep providing treatment. I think Scientologists feel that way about psychiatry.

Whenever such people are presented with scientific evidence in the form of large scale studies or statistics, that becomes a conspiracy as a well. Someone somewhere is fudging the numbers.

It’s far more complex to invent conspiracy theories and to continue to justify them than it is to stick with the rational explanation. Some theories I’ve heard have been quite ingenious. If only that effort had been concentrated in better ways...

Anyway, have you heard anything especially crazy?

A conspiracy of Catholics murders everyone who doubts the Big Bang theory and now that I know I am in danger, too.

I have encountered many conspiracy theories but this was the craziest one.

That’s pretty nutty!

I think some of the craziest stuff I’ve heard involves religion in some way.

Some ex-members of my old religion (which is strict and weird to begin with) would take those already weird beliefs and push them much, much further. I could see how they got started on that path - by combining strange, initial beliefs with a poor education and exposure to strange stuff. It’s a recipe for weird.

Conspiracy theories are rampant among current and, especially, ex-members of my old faith. Mental problems can’t account for all of it (although certainly some).

Well, this guy for sure wasn't poorly educated as he was trying to make a PhD in astronomy. Very interesting figure.

Religions and nations are the best. I've encountered an elderly lady who believed anyone with even a drop of Jewish DNA would automatically support Israel at the expense of their home country. No other option.

Wow!

I wonder if he had a mild form of paranoid schizophrenia.

How about the Jehovah Witnesses' belief (if I'm correct)----that only 144,000 people will make it to their version of "heaven" following the "Second Coming."

According to some nutters in my hometown, there are a series of tunnels under the commercial district that lead down to the river.  They were used by bootleggers during prohibition to bring illegal whiskey into the speakeasies and "health spas" between the river and the fire station.  In exchange, grain from the local elevator was shunted down these same tunnels to be loaded onto the barges for the return trip up-river, where the UAW ran an illegal still inside the main automobile plant (with wooden barrels supplied by the furniture factory).  The tunnels are still in use by police and politicians as hidden paths to and from "houses of ill repute" all up and down the river.

Anyone who finds an entrance to one of these tunnels either mysteriously disappears, gets arrested on trumped-up charges, or gets invited to join the conspiracy "or else".

Yeah, they believe 144,000 will go to Heaven, and the rest of the obedient Jehovah’s Witnesses will be in the paradise on Earth.

Everyone else will be “conscious of nothing at all.” They don’t believe in hellfire which is one thing that I like.

They often have predicted Armageddon would come on specific dates.

They have strange beliefs regarding demons (demon possession type of stuff). It scared me as a young child and gave me insomnia and nightmares. Satan pretty much is in charge of everything on Earth apart from Jehovah’s Witness stuff which was odd because what about all the good things in the world?

Charity apart from preaching was considered a waste of time because that time should’ve been spent preaching to save people for eternity.

When someone showed up at the Kingdom Hall once asking for food, an elder directed him to a church that was serving free lunch but told him to come back to us for his “spiritual food.”

It sounds like the product of a brain that’s been stunted into a permanent adolescence by too much booze.

Kids just love the idea of secret tunnels.

Damn, I can't find the emails from a weirdo who proposed a mechanism of JW-like end of the world by descending of some orbital rings containing viruses. My bad.
Having an official email as a researcher makes strange people contact you sometimes.

I wonder if people get these ideas from reading bad science fiction novels.

Lemme see... Dan Brown... Roland Emmerich...
There is plenty of such ideas in popular culture. You can always find someone who takes it seriously.

One of the things I love about Eric Weinstein is that he'll talk about conspiracies but they're conspiracies that by this point are pretty much open book - ie. in a way he's a science, academia, and economic muck-raker rather than conspiracy theorist.

An interesting example he's brought up several times, including Lex Friedman's MIT interview with him, was the H1B Visa having been planned because scientists were looking at potentially 100K per year salaries per year getting out of graduate school, academia didn't like it, and not only were they able to significantly deflate that figure (cut it in half or better) but they were also able to - by making the job market extra grim for science students - keep them as graduate students while their professors wrote articles all day and raked in money and prestige for the universities.

IMHO those are conspiracies worth hearing about, Illuminati and hollow moon not so much.`

Conflict of interest and people forming cliques are not conspiracies in my opinion.

The globe manufacturers, and NASA, and the Illuminati, have combined to keep us all in the dark about the true shape of the earth: which is flat!

And outer space doesn't even exist. The heavens are just a big dome over the flat earth.

My current fav is ….the National Park Service! They are sitting on a scandal bigger than Watergate, Monicagate, and Ukrainegate combined because...they know all about.... Bigfoot! And are covering it up!

The park service and the U.S. Army supposedly joined forces in the wilderness cleanup of the Mt. St. Helens eruption, to not only bury bodies of bigfoot creatures killed in the eruption, but to cooperate with living Bigfoots to help rescue their kin in the wilderness. That according to a couple of UTube vids I saw.