Truthers

GodsUseForAMosquito
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Truthers

 

Members of my family are, I think it's fairly safe to say, pretty nutty about conspiracy theories. With the recent anniversary of the 11 September attacks, the subject has  reared its head once again, and it got me thinking about applying evidence-based rationality to these claims. 

 

 

I think of the conspiracy theory movement as a lawyer in a courtroom: 

 

Lawyer 1 (Conspiracy theorist): this is my evidence for a government conspiracy..

 

Lawyer 2: this is my evidence in response to that, debunking your evidence. 

 

Now the next stage should be to get the first lawyer respond with a further response showing why the second lawyer is incorrect in his debunking before the judge makes a decision, but what's happened with conspiracy theorists instead is that they've  stuck their head out the courthouse window and shouted their original evidence loudly to anyone walking past, who then start passing it around to each other as if they were proven facts. 

 

Show me some good solid rebuttal of the debunking evidence instead of just the original 'evidence' and the logical process can get to a final judgement. Shouting out the window the points already refuted is a poor method of finding the truth.

 

Wild flights of fancy, evidence ignoring, spreading rumour and downright mistruths, and all generally carried out by those without solid foundations or education in the subjects they are discussing. I'm sure you can see the parallels with religion here.

 

So I'm interested to know whether Atheists generally apply logic and reason to these 'conspiracies' and find them lacking, or whether we have some die-hard 'truthers' on these boards?

 

The floor is yours. 

 

 

 


harleysportster
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Well

Well you've heard me complain about the conspiracy theory nutcase that I work with plenty of times on here. The one that thinks 9/11 was an inside job, the one that thinks that Aurora, Colorado was an FBI set-up, etc.

Luckily, I am not friends with him on Facebook, and even luckier, he had the day off on 9/11 so I did not have to listen to his bullshit.

But, a co-worker who IS friends with him on Facebook told me that his page was flooded with conspiracy theory videos and that was probably to be expected.

If he would debate the subject with me, I would be glad to take it on. But he takes the tactic of trying to get much louder than the opponent and will not let the opponent have a word.

Typical scenario :

Nutcase co-worker : "So how did the third building fall ? It just fell on it's own right ?"

Me : "If you'll look at

Nutcase co-worker " SO HOW DID IT FALL ? HOW ? IT JUST IMPLODED RIGHT ?

Me: "If you'll let me fucking finish--

Nutcase co-worker : " YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN IT ! YOU CAN'T ! OH I AM SORRY, YOU BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT HAS NEVER LIED DON'T YOU ? "

Me : "If you'll give me

Nutcase co-worker : " IT NEVER LIED ABOUT VIETNAM RIGHT ? IT NEVER LIED ? YOU THINK IT'S COMPLETELY HONEST RIGHT ? OH I AM SORRY. YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT IS HONEST DON'T YOU ? DON'T YOU ? "

When I decided to fight fire with fire and outscream him. He did the old bait and switch trick.

" It's just like Jesse Ventura said. You can't even question 9/11 without being branded a lunatic. You can't even QUESTION." was his fallback.

My answer : "Your not QUESTIONING shit. Your making a bunch of stupid fucking assertions. A politician can't even get a prostitute without it making headline news, you think the government could do all of that ?"

Nutcase co-worker : "VIETNAM WAS STARTED ON A LIE ! THERE WERE NO BODIES IN THE WATER ! THE WHOLE THING WAS A LIE ! BUT OH WAIT ! 9/11 WAS THE TRUTH RIGHT ?"

I am not so concerned about him. He is a fucking moron. I am concerned about all the idiots that I work with that say that he should be allowed to question the legitimacy of the whole thing. What is there to question ?

If anyone has any true evidence that 9/11 was an inside job, I have never seen it.

Of course, this idiot also thinks that we never got to Osama Bin Laden. We just killed someone that looked a whole lot like him and rigged a helicopter crash to kill all the soldiers involved.

Idiots like this guy are as responsible for more delusions as theists. What kills me are the morons like this that have websites that can broadcast this crap and people think it is legitimate news.

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


GodsUseForAMosquito
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 The internet has changed

 The internet has changed all our lives for the better, but i will never forgive it for allowing fallacious hearsay to be mistaken for truth.


Vastet
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My official position is to

My official position is to never assume conspiracy when stupidity is an acceptable answer to the question. That rules out a good 90% of all conspiracy theories I've heard.

That said, there are some that have a measure of credibility.
I'm quite willing to believe that the US is attempting to conspire to bring Assange to the US to face charges.
I'm also willing to believe that China, Russia, and a number of other nations are conspiring to overthrow the US (as a global empire, not necessarily as an independent nation).
I'm willing to believe a number of other theories that also may or may not have truth to them, simply because they are reasonable and rational, and could or should be happening even if they aren't.

But until evidence was presented, I wouldn't act on any of them.

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.


Joker
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The big problem I have with

The big problem I have with most of the whole truther movement is that they seem to depend the idea of a kind of hyper competent government. An organization that would be able to pull all of this off, with no one noticing during the buildup and either being so perfectly efficient that no one noticed until after the fact or that the conspiracy is so improbably large as to be impractical. This is the big problem with so many conspiracy theories I see, it isn't even that they're likely or unlikely in what's happening so much as the larger and more complex they have to be to actually work. Really it's a lot like dealing with a religious apologist.


iwbiek
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Joker wrote:The big problem

Joker wrote:

The big problem I have with most of the whole truther movement is that they seem to depend the idea of a kind of hyper competent government. An organization that would be able to pull all of this off, with no one noticing during the buildup and either being so perfectly efficient that no one noticed until after the fact or that the conspiracy is so improbably large as to be impractical. This is the big problem with so many conspiracy theories I see, it isn't even that they're likely or unlikely in what's happening so much as the larger and more complex they have to be to actually work. Really it's a lot like dealing with a religious apologist.

PRECISELY!  i've been saying this for years, especially since i moved to slovakia.  slovaks, and probably europeans in general, LOVE conspiracy theories.  they eat them in their corn flakes.  that 9/11 was an inside job is basically accepted fact here.  many of my students--otherwise so brilliant they make our american kids look like retarded monkeys--are convinced the illuminati are trying to control their minds through music videos.  the russian revolution happened solely because lenin was a german agent who was supposed to deliver russia's oil over to them.  dan brown is hotter than any other author here and jesus definitely married mary magdalene, had lots of kids, moved to france, and founded the merovingian dynasty (some of the most fucktarded, inept rulers in all european history, btw).  michael jackson was totally murdered (for refusing to cooperate with the illuminati, no less).  you get the idea...

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson