Honey, we never had kids!
By Capt. Fogg
Someone told me that the Church of the Latter Day Saints is the fastest growing religion in the world, but it isn't -- not if one can call a family of beliefs that share the philosophy that nothing you hear is true a religion. Of course, when it comes to Sunday Supplement health and nutrition articles and the books that make diet doctors rich, little of it may actually be true, but there is no end of things that are really beyond reasonable doubt and should largely be beyond unreasonable doubt too. I wasted some time last week for instance with a fool who insisted no airplane could have hit the Pentagon because of the "ground effect," although I certainly know better than to do that.
But no, the winner, the fastest growing most universal faith is Denialism, and I think it's time to stop looking at it as anything but a religion. It has a canon and a catechism, albeit simple: Whatever happened didn't happen and I have a conspiracy to explain it. I have proof that nobody ever went to the Moon because the pictures they took would have been ruined by the Van Allen belts. The pyramids were built by aliens because how else? The World Trade Center must have been sabotaged because steel doesn't melt at the temperature of burning jet fuel... No, don't go away, I'm not going to explain why this is the purest of bull, I'm more interested at how nothing true is exempt from Denialist interpretation anymore.
Sure, it's a big country and you can find a few people who think anything and deny anything. It makes them feel important, but like most religions in today's America, they have their preachers and politicians and lobbyists spreading the faith like it was Ebola. Think nothing is true and they're coming for your shotgun? Who ya gonna call? Rand Paul!
Imagine someone calling you up and insisting that not only did your daughter not die in the school shooting at Sandy Hook, but she never existed! Birth certificate? Hey we know about birth certificates, don't we? And we know about Photoshop, too -- you can't fool me with your pictures! Hey, it was all a scam to allow the government to take our guns and you know they have no other purpose than to take your guns!
Rand Paul thinks so too, or at least he wants the nutjobs, nitwits, and whackadoodles to think he does because, after all, lunatics, idiots, and devout Denialists need representation too. Nope, nobody died, it never happened and if you know somebody who died, you're a liar, because they never existed.
Stunning, isn't it, but that's the world of Denialists, or "truthers" as they often like to be known. Who says they're immune to irony? They're good at it, even if they can't see it.
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)
Someone told me that the Church of the Latter Day Saints is the fastest growing religion in the world, but it isn't -- not if one can call a family of beliefs that share the philosophy that nothing you hear is true a religion. Of course, when it comes to Sunday Supplement health and nutrition articles and the books that make diet doctors rich, little of it may actually be true, but there is no end of things that are really beyond reasonable doubt and should largely be beyond unreasonable doubt too. I wasted some time last week for instance with a fool who insisted no airplane could have hit the Pentagon because of the "ground effect," although I certainly know better than to do that.
But no, the winner, the fastest growing most universal faith is Denialism, and I think it's time to stop looking at it as anything but a religion. It has a canon and a catechism, albeit simple: Whatever happened didn't happen and I have a conspiracy to explain it. I have proof that nobody ever went to the Moon because the pictures they took would have been ruined by the Van Allen belts. The pyramids were built by aliens because how else? The World Trade Center must have been sabotaged because steel doesn't melt at the temperature of burning jet fuel... No, don't go away, I'm not going to explain why this is the purest of bull, I'm more interested at how nothing true is exempt from Denialist interpretation anymore.
Sure, it's a big country and you can find a few people who think anything and deny anything. It makes them feel important, but like most religions in today's America, they have their preachers and politicians and lobbyists spreading the faith like it was Ebola. Think nothing is true and they're coming for your shotgun? Who ya gonna call? Rand Paul!
Imagine someone calling you up and insisting that not only did your daughter not die in the school shooting at Sandy Hook, but she never existed! Birth certificate? Hey we know about birth certificates, don't we? And we know about Photoshop, too -- you can't fool me with your pictures! Hey, it was all a scam to allow the government to take our guns and you know they have no other purpose than to take your guns!
Rand Paul thinks so too, or at least he wants the nutjobs, nitwits, and whackadoodles to think he does because, after all, lunatics, idiots, and devout Denialists need representation too. Nope, nobody died, it never happened and if you know somebody who died, you're a liar, because they never existed.
Stunning, isn't it, but that's the world of Denialists, or "truthers" as they often like to be known. Who says they're immune to irony? They're good at it, even if they can't see it.
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)
Labels: conspiracy theories, religion
posted by Capt. Fogg at
10:13 AM
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