The Coin and the Dome Light - Two Happy Stories from Taiwan

Over the past couple of years I have typically written longer/heavier posts and have several drafts of that sort which may eventually see the light of publishment. But on this warm Spring evening after a very long posting hiatus, I'm writing about a couple of incidents recently which reminded me how life is more pleasant when we look out for each other.

A high speed train rolling into sunny Hsinchu

The Necessary Coin

The first incident took place after a long day of productive meetings, a few weeks ago as I write this. Our baby isn't the worst sleeper I've heard of, but by somewhere around one month my wife and I had been experiencing all sorts of different flavors of sleep-deprivation, which added a bit of spice to my responsibility of chairing this particular meeting for the first time and also taking all the minutes. The trip up to the big city had been smooth, and I'd arrived at the high speed rail station in time to snag a Japanese-style pork and shredded cabbage sandwich to eat on the train along with a cup of coffee. 

All the meetings went well, but after a sequence of "traveling to the capital-morning meeting-lunch meeting-afternoon meeting" I was tired in that late afternoon way, and looking forward to heading home. The train back down the coast was peaceful and sunny, and I could let my thoughts wander for a bit. After arriving at the high speed rail station north of our city and taking a few pictures outside in the good light, I needed to retrieve my car from the big north lot by the station's local railway link. Some parking lots here are automated with cameras, others give you parking tokens, but either way it's typically a smooth process, except for one particular cursed parking garage which I may share about in a future post someday. 

As I neared the payment kiosk for this particular lot--located under loftily elevated tracks so that occasionally a high speed train thundered far overhead on its way up or down the coast--I noticed a long queue of people. Never a good sign. Of the twin machines inside the kiosk, only one was functioning, and I took up my position in line beside the other. The line moved quickly, but as we waited a young man mostly dressed in black behind me said something loudly. After removing my headphones to make sure he wasn't addressing me, I realized he had a bluetooth phone and was talking to someone on the other end while staring into space in my direction, a thing which happens less frequently here than in the U.S.

Then it was my turn to pay, and to my consternation the ample pocket of change I was carrying turned out to be a little too exactly right; I was down to 5 'pennies' (Small copper-colored coins worth 1 NT, short for New Taiwan Dollar, about 3.6 cents apiece in U.S. currency). This was precisely the right amount remaining to pay, but the machine only took 5NT coins or larger. After verifying I had no more coins in my backpack, I had two options; hike to the car on the other side of the parking lot and back while everyone else waited for me, or see if anyone would swap me 5 "pennies" for a "nickel." 

I turned around to face the line that was slowly but inevitably lengthening behind me, and noticed to my surprise that the man in black was already holding out a 5NT coin in his hand. He must have seen the balance on the screen as I was digging around in my backpack. However he couldn't see that I had found the five smaller coins, and thus was simply going to offer me the 5NT so that I could pay and the line could move on. 

I thanked him repeatedly in Mandarin and dumped the five 1 NT coins into his hand as I took the 5 NT coin, and his face showed surprise as he counted the coins, not expecting for the gift to suddenly be a trade. Not everyone would have done that, but Taiwan is the sort of place where it can happen.

A corner fruit market, on an evening of much-needed rain

The Observant Guard

That previous incident came at the beginning of a long busy stretch, which has really more or less continued until the time of this writing. One day earlier this week, I found myself down in our community's underground parking garage. It has room for maybe 80-100 cars, and in one complicatedly-musty-smelling corner are the recycling pails for sorting out the various kinds of plastics, glass, paper, etc. In a more straightforwardly-foul-smelling room, foulness depending on the day of the week, are the big garbage bins and smaller set of "kitchen scrap" tubs which ostensibly get collected and converted into hog feed for pig farmers. 

I was down there on this occasion neither to carry small, pungent bags of things like papaya peelings, onion skins, and egg shells to the scrap tubs, nor large, translucent-pink plastic sacks jostling with fish bones, old face masks, seaweed-almond snack wrappers and way too many baby diapers to the garbage bins, nor even oil-stained, stiff paper lunch takeout boxes, rinsed-out yogurt tubs, gingerly clinking glass oil and soy sauce jars, or humble styrofoam fruit nets to their appropriate recycling pails, but because I was looking around in my car for a printed-out insurance bill. I felt I had already paid it, but wanted to make sure before the end of the month. Having searched the car to no avail, and my sleep-deprived brain filled with other hypothetical places it could be, I accidentally left the dome light on as I left. 

Fast forward to a blessedly rainy evening the next day. I pronounce it blessed because we are in a very serious drought in Taiwan, as all the typhoons missed us last year, and the big reservoirs thus didn't get filled with the vast flood of rainwater those storms drop over Taiwan each summer as they crash into its high mountain ranges and begin to break up. Even all the rain on that day across the big island only served to get back 1 day of national water needs, but with Taiwan's second largest city already cutting water off for 2 days every week, a day's worth of water was very welcome.

I have a habit of reading to my wife and baby before we sleep, which we did through the pregnancy as well, something we credit for the baby seeming to instantly recognize my voice once she was born.  Having worked our way through literary continents like the entire LotR trilogy, we are currently reading the very innocuous Willows in Winter, a heartfelt, many-decades-later sequel to the Wind in the Willows. As I elaborated on the regress of Mr. Toad into the self-aggrandizing schemes he had seemed to renounce at the end of Wind of the Willows and our daughter drifted into a comfortable, milk-drunk daze, I suddenly got a message on my phone and also received a phone call. The message was my landlord telling me the building guard had noticed the vehicle in his unit's parking spot (my car) had an inside light on and contacted him, and the call was from the apartment community front desk, phoning me to make sure I knew to go turn it off. (They had my number because they needed it for my car tag registration for the community lot)

The light had been on for more than 24 hours by that point; I hadn't been back to the car since then as some of my work is done online from home and most errands can be accomplished by walking, the more so as public parking spots are a pain to find. I was grateful, however, to find the light only a little dimmer than before, and the car started right up. After driving a short circuit around our community area just in case, I picked up some cashews and a pork floss* pastry on the way back and returned to our apartment through the night rain, which had by now diminished to a mist. Please pray we'll get more soon.

(*- Pork floss is finely-shredded pork which looks almost exactly like the wood shavings you dump out of an old-fashioned pencil sharpener, and on my first visit to Taiwan I pronounced it based on the appearance and taste to be exactly that, but it's grown on me in the years since, as have many things here.) 

Life and ministry in Taiwan, while sometimes tiring and stressful for reasons beyond our control, is always interesting and often inspiring. I hope these two brief anecdotes give a glimpse into our day-to-day life in which we encounter God's blessings in many small ways. Taiwan is a good place to live, and if traveling had not become a complicated proposition in these troubled days, I would encourage all of you to visit soon. I hope you may yet do so in the future.

The Motte and Bailey Trap

Social media has been especially stressful lately, with COVID-19 taking a back seat or at least riding shotgun to societal and racial contemplation and debates on the nature of corrupt and sinful power systems and corrupt and sinful revolutions, and at which point the extreme corruption of one is announced to have ceded the moral high (or less-low) ground to the other.

To say that I see a lot of logically invalid arguments on instagram and facebook would be like complaining that summer is hot and rain is wet, and certainly not worth writing a blog post about. But I have recently run across an insightful set of articles/blog posts which explains a logical fallacy/argument tactic I'm seeing all over social media now, and I wanted to provide a summary of that tactic.

1. The Motte and Bailey Defense

Around the time the children of Viking raiders were settling into Northeastern France and establishing Normandy, a new type of defensive structure had been developed. The fortification consisted of a strong tower on a hill, called a Motte, overlooking a flat, walled-in area called a Bailey surrounded by a ditch. The walled-in area was where people lived and worked, but in times of trouble they could retreat to the higher tower.

Sometimes a would-be attacker could be held off at the ditch/dike of the Bailey, but stronger assaults might overrun the Bailey and force the defenders back up onto the Motte, from which they could more easily resist their attackers, as it is difficult to charge up a hill and attack a stronghold which is free to attack you back as you do so, especially without strong siege engines. (Which grew more common after the early Middle Ages, as castles grew to be larger and more impressive structures)

So with the Motte-and-Bailey structure we have the basic idea of a less-easily defended but desirable piece of land, marked with a wall and/or ditch, and a strong tower to which one can retreat and be safe from an attacker when necessary.

A very basic version of the Motte and Bailey fortification which illustrates the concept well

2. The Motte and Bailey Doctrine/Informal Fallacy

That brings us to the argument tactic which uses the same name. The idea of a "Motte and Bailey Doctrine" was coined by Nicholas Shackel, who recognized that it could be used as a logical fallacy when arguing. Another thoughtful analysis of the idea can be found both linked to from his own article or directly here.)

Rather than get bogged down in the difference of the Motte and Bailey "Doctrine" vs. how it is used as an informal logical fallacy, which is explained by Shackel in the link above, I am going to mostly refer to it as a "tactic" from now on, since that is how I see it being used, as a way to "win" arguments easily without having an actual debate between contrasting ideas.

The Motte and Bailey tactic involves making a bold and controversial claim (metaphorically, the piece of land you want to secure within your Bailey), then if pressed hard on it, pulling back to say "you only meant" some commonly-held truism which few people will be willing to argue with (a retreat to the defensive Motte).

One can frequently see Motte-and-Bailey tactics being employed on controversial social topics.

1. Bailey position: "I think anyone who wants to get into America that badly should be allowed in."
2. (Someone argues against this, starts to gain ground)
3. Retreating to the Motte: "Well I just can't agree with the government tearing children away from their parents and treating people like animals."
4. (Argument stalls as others say they don't agree with that part either)

1. Bailey: "Defund the police!"
2. (Someone argues that this is a horrifically bad idea)
3. Retreat to Motte: "We don't mean totally defunding the police, we just mean some of the overburden of policework should be shifted to qualified social workers, along with some of their  budget."
4. (Discussion turns to whether this is actually a decent idea or not)
5. Returning to Bailey later... Next posted meme: "Stop police oppression! Defund the police!"

Very few people are going to argue that the government should be tearing children away from their parents or that the numerous examples of wrongful deadly force by police are not indeed more than merely tragedies but indicative of a bigger problem that requires more than official apologies and a few officers laid off. But the point of the Motte-and-Bailey tactic is that this is not the primary assertion being made, merely a strong back-up position to retreat to temporarily until you leave them alone and they can continue pushing controversial positions that shift the Overton window in the direction they desire.

An example of the tactic mentioned by one of the bloggers I linked to at the beginning of this section, and used in one of my examples above, is how many attack labels used by SJW's are explained in much more neutral or reasonable-sounding terms if you push back against them, but the weaponized labels continue in every other case.

E.g. "Tear down their privilege!" when fought back against becomes "We don't mean you are intentionally a bad person, but that you have unconsciously profited from systemic power structures which favor you at the expense of others, and we are demanding with joyful vehemence that those systems be renegotiated." (Then they post another meme saying anyone who disagrees with looting should be silenced by force)

By contrast, the nicest version of this that I've personally encountered is LDS missionaries. They have a set of things they are instructed to tell you to persuade you to get involved with Mormonism. If you engage them regarding some of the odd sci-fi-esque beliefs the Mormons teach which are utterly at odds with the Bible, they will often retreat to claiming that they are Jesus followers who believe the Bible too, but then as quickly as possible return to suggesting you take a first step down the road towards joining Mormonism.

(Christians are not immune to falling into this tactic either. I give a couple examples in the last section of this post but you can probably come up with various others from your own experience)

Perhaps the easiest way to recognize someone employing the Motte-and-Bailey tactic is that you can think you've reached some kind of conclusion or concession through dialogue, or reached some kind of common ground that they will honor, but they quickly return to making the same statements they made previously as if your conversation/debate never occurred. They only retreated to a non-controversial position as a tactic to endure a probing line of thought or challenge that they had no interest in actually pursuing, so that they could resume promoting their position later.

Just as the villagers do not want to live in the cramped Motte defense tower, but will come down from the Motte and resume their productive activity in the Bailey area as soon as possible, so someone using the Motte-and-Bailey tactic will typically go back to making the same claims they had been making before being challenged as soon as they can. It's an effective tactic, since they can continue trying to push controversial positions with relative impunity, and it's not likely that someone will challenge them every single time. (Medieval peasants did not have the "block" option)

People using various versions of "all I'm saying is" or "I'm just saying" or "I can't believe you don't agree that [basic thing that 95% of people agree on]" are also a strong clue that the Motte and Bailey tactic is being employed.

3. Why People Like This Tactic

When people push back against our opinion, even with a cogent argument, it often does not convince us that we are wrong (humans are avid rationalizers), but makes us hold onto it more firmly than before. Thus we seek a way to not be forced to defend through argumentation a position that we did not arrive at through argumentation, yet feel inclined to hold onto anyway.

On the other hand, for those who are already involved in political movements or actively promoting certain ideologies, real arguments are usually a waste of their time, since they are not seeking information but busy convincing others to join them (or refrain from interfering).

The Motte and Bailey fallacy can be used intentionally as a clever tactic for ideologues, but it's also a handy work-around for this information-overloaded world we live in. With so many thoughts and assertions and memes flying around, we want to stake out a piece of opinion real estate (our Bailey) too, but we haven't necessarily crash-tested the idea. In many cases we're merely reacting to the tsunami of information that we're encouraged, even commanded, to express an opinion and take a stance on. Then along comes someone who feels differently and furthermore has an argument prepared against your opinion. Rather than reformulate your stance, or worse, admit defeat and give in to theirs, it's easier to retreat to a defensive position that can hardly be disagreed with then return to the opinion-giving and stance-taking.

It's easy to see that trying to convince a politician on the campaign trail to join the other party instead is almost certainly going to be fruitless effort. The Motte and Bailey tactic, which politicians do indeed often employ in their "debates," is a way to deflect opposing viewpoints, in view of your social media following, while minimizing the possibility that your opponent can score points on you or peel away any followers. Yes it's boring to retreat to truisms and slogans, but it's safer than risking a real defeat at the game of ideas, and it requires your opponent to either do the same or run the risk of looking unreasonable, confirming the stereotype of "the other side."

Imagine a way to end a chess game in a stalemate at any point in the game within two moves. If your goal is to win 1000 games as soon as possible and be dealt as few checkmates as possible, using the fast stalemate to tie up all the hardest games will vastly increase your progress.

4. Motte and Bailey Tactics -- Real Life Examples

To provide some real life examples by way of illustration, Wikipedia's article on the Motte and Bailey fallacy mentions Trump's campaign slogan of "Make American Great Again" as a rhetorical Motte which protects a more controversial Bailey such as building border walls (ironically, a literal attempt to strengthen America's geographical "Bailey").

That probably isn't the greatest example because that slogan itself was the subject of considerable controversy throughout the campaign, whereas the best Motte and Bailey defenses are not "preaching to the choir" but retreating to a Motte which people on the opposite side of the argument from you would also hasten to agree with. ("Make America Better" would be a true Motte and Bailey slogan)

One historical example would be the Temperance Movement in the United States, which eventually led to the Prohibition. Condemning drunkenness and the debauchery that surrounded that lifestyle and the establishments which catered to it was a strong Motte, from which the controversial Bailey of supporting a ban on alcohol sales across the nation could be defended. Thus if you opposed a ban on the sale of alcohol, you could be accused of supporting all the problems alcoholism can bring about. And it worked, though the same cannot really be said for the Prohibition itself.

(I will note in passing that in a very similar fashion, both sides have continually used this tactic on the abortion legality debate)

A very skillful current example of this tactic is the brilliantly-named Black Lives Matter movement. Led by avowed Marxists dedicated to social revolution, it would ordinarily not have gained much traction or support. However their chosen name invokes the Motte and Bailey defense automatically, since the Bailey of "Black Lives Matter" (the movement) has the Motte of "Black lives matter" (the principle).

Those involved with Black Lives Matter can thus automatically respond that any people condemning their Marxist agenda or use of rioting, etc., are taking a stand against agreeing that Black lives matter. And with such a strong Motte, even those unaware of that agenda will respond to defense of the Bailey when it is attacked. (To extend the metaphor, one could say their Motte is made much stronger, its moral high ground made much higher, by the true premises on which it is founded. America's history provides innumerable examples of how Black lives have not been treated as valuable. By linking themselves to such a strong and important Motte, their Bailey of latter-day Bolsheviks is very difficult to assail)

5. Responding to the Motte and Bailey Defense

How would one respond to such a tactic? First, by observing that it is indeed a fallacy. It is not true that opposing the prohibition of selling alcohol is equivalent to promoting alcoholism. It is not true that opposing the BLM movement is equivalent to denying that Black lives matter. The argument may frequently come to a standstill at that point, or devolve into other informal fallacies like ad hominem or false dilemmas, but most real progress will be made by strongly pointing out the invalid linkage between Bailey and Motte. This is particularly important when the Motte is a statement which is actually important and worth defending.

A globally notable example of a Motte and Bailey tactic is how honest fear about the danger of COVID-19 has been used to justify a great number of very controversial decisions. While the pandemic by necessity required controversial and costly decisions--and every mistake in dealing a pandemic has its own death toll, even the right decisions have them--it is the reasoning used to justify those decisions in which we can see this fallacy.

As the debate continues to rage in the US over decisions made and currently being made about how to deal with COVID, social distancing, mask wearing, etc., let's consider a hypothetical argument between two people who disagreed a few months ago on whether the government had the right to close churches:

A: "We need to close churches until further notice" (Bailey)
B: "That sounds like prohibiting the free exercise of religion" (Attack on Bailey)
A: "We all need to make some sacrifices to save lives" (Retreat to Motte)
B: "..." (Breaks off attack)

B probably doesn't want to deny the Motte's premise or even disagree with it, but may feel that there is still an argument to be made for continuing church attendance. Very frequently, the Motte can call in Imperial backup troops in the form of "expert opinion" or "scholarly findings." Let's see what would happen if B persists:

A: "We need to close churches until further notice" (Bailey)
B: "That sounds like prohibiting the free exercise of religion" (Attack on Bailey)
A: "We all need to make some sacrifices to save lives" (Retreat to Motte)
B: "Our church is going to take precautions" (Attack on Motte)
A: "The CDC says it's too dangerous" (Reinforcing troops for Motte)
B: "I don't think the CDC fully understands this yet" (Attacking reinforcements)
A: "They are looking at the numbers and that's their expert conclusion." (Reinforcing troops stand firm)
B: "Then why have they already contradicted their previous statements multiple times?" (Pressing back the reinforcing troops into the tower)
A: "Oh, are you one of those COVID-conspiracy theorists? Do you believe in flat earth too?" (Dumping boiling oil from tower windows)
B: "What? No...[defensive argument]" (Burned by oil, breaks siege and driven down from Motte)

What could B have done differently? Once the argument got to whether the CDC could be trusted or not, there was probably no helpful outcome to the discussion. One other option would be to "stalemate" the argument by finding his own Motte:

A: "We need to close churches until further notice" (Bailey)
B: "That sounds like prohibiting the free exercise of religion" (Attack on Bailey)
A: "We all need to make some sacrifices to save lives" (Retreat to Motte)
B: "Churches save lives too, and provide hope and assurance for people who need it desperately right now." (Retreat to a different Motte which claims the same Bailey)
A: "..."

At that point the argument might keep going, but it can't continue as a Motte-and-Bailey fallacy because now both people are sitting on positions it's difficult to attack. Either someone runs up the other's hill to attack their strong position, or the argument proceeds along different lines.

Disclaimer: This example does not represent my own views on the right thing for churches to do or have done during this confusing season. I have been in Taiwan for the duration of the pandemic thus far and so I don't believe I could offer any helpful opinion from afar on it except regarding what things have been like in Taiwan.

6. So in Conclusion

The Motte and Bailey tactic is a cheap but effective tactic, frequently seen in these days of ideological turmoil. An intellectually honest person will avoid it in their own arguments (though lazy thinking can help it creep in) though if it's used against you, sometimes the best strategy is to fight fire with fire. Better though, to see it for what it is, and consistently work to separate the Bailey from the Motte, if the Motte itself doesn't turn out to be a paper castle.

In the best cases, a retreat to the Motte can be a retreat to premises and presuppositions, and those are what we should be comparing now anyway, since those are where the real differences between us lie, or else where we will find we are not really on different sides at all.

7. A Reminder to the Church

When Christians don't deeply understand God's word, or feel impelled to "impress the world" by trying to do apologetics based on the world's own epistemology, they can fall into this fallacy as well, as described in an example from the blog I linked to above:

"The religious group that acts for all the world like God is a supernatural creator who builds universes, creates people out of other people’s ribs, parts seas, and heals the sick when asked very nicely (bailey). Then when atheists come around and say maybe there’s no God, the religious group objects “But God is just another name for the beauty and order in the Universe! You’re not denying that there’s beauty and order in the Universe, are you?” (motte). Then when the atheists go away they get back to making people out of other people’s ribs and stuff."

The criticism may sting, or it may not because you've never done that, but it should remind us of the danger of trying to win arguments instead of souls. Our apologetics should not ever fall into the lazy habit of the Motte and Bailey doctrine, and we should never fall into the trap of treating God like an abstract concept. (Yet another reason why the fact of the historical incarnation of Jesus is so crucially important for our faith) We believe in a God who did build (and sustains) this universe, created men and women out of earth, and of flesh and bone, and sometimes responds with miracles today when we ask Him.

For a real life example of Motte and Bailey doctrine in the Church, we could consider certain proponents of Young Earth Creationism. Since the beginnings of the Modern Era, it's been tough for anyone raised outside of certain branches of the Church to swallow the concept that the whole earth, or even the universe itself, could be much younger than the theorized beginnings of Egyptian civilization. Yet I have encountered YECs who insist that if you don't believe this, you don't "really" believe the Bible. In this case, the infallibility of holy scripture itself is the Motte, and it's a very strong one, one in which I happen to live and find refuge without identifying with every Bailey established in its shadow.

What makes this a Motte and Bailey fallacy is that there are different ways to interpret the Hebrew of Genesis 1. As we wrap up this post I am not at all interested in going into a discussion of which interpretation I believe and why, but I can say that for anyone who understands there are multiple interpretations, has researched them, and in the end firmly believes the correct interpretation of the Hebrew is 6 sequential days of creation, where a day was 24 hours, even before the sun was created, I have no quarrel with that person whatsoever. God could have done it that way as easily as any other of the theories. The point here is that the Bailey of 6000ish years can be debated, and should stand on other merits beyond insisting that its defense is the veracity of scripture itself, since other well-known interpretations exist which do not contradict scripture. (We are not here speaking of those that do; their Motte is likely to be "Science," which involves its own Motte and Bailey dance since the term "Science" invoked as an authority really means many more things than the dictionary definition, but that is the one they will retreat to if pushed)

I am not picking on Young Earthers here. I was raised one and I have no way of knowing for sure which interpretation of the Hebrew of Genesis 1 is correct, though it's clear that many parts of the creation narrative of current secular science cannot be reconciled with what we find there, and so I am comfortable with regarding the secular science tale of a uncaused expansion of non-created energy as a creation myth by the Modernists, only one level above the Pangu story of ancient Chinese myth or Norse tales of Muspellheim and Niflheim. Science has thrown out various old narratives as new facts render them obsolete, and it is inevitable that they will do so with their current model as well, if Christ tarries. Meanwhile God remains God. Whether 6 24-hour days, 6 poetically described epochs, a literary structure of forming and filling, or something else, Genesis 1 is a true account of how He did it. We can debate which interpretation is right, and it's okay to choose one, but not okay to Motte-and-Bailey and claim you are the only one who really believes the Bible is true and not metaphorical any time someone wants to propose another interpretation based on the text.

What we all--regardless of our chosen Genesis interpretations--must be wary of, and graciously reprimand any believers we catch doing it, is fencing out the Bailey of our own pet or denominational or flavor-of-post-evangelicalism interpretation, then retreating immediately to the infallibility of scripture when questioned. Positions are not Doctrines are not Dogmas, and we must understand the difference. What's worse is when these Bailey walls are made into a hurdle that believers must first jump as a condition of believing in God, when it's belief in God that gives authority to scripture itself.

Christian denominations have carved out their own historic Baileys, which they vigorously defend, yet many still retreat to God's word and the Faith as their Motte. Some do no longer, and they are typically those which are most rapidly imploding as Millennials and Gen Z forsake the habit of cultural church attendance along with many of their elders. But so long as Christ crucified and risen according to the scriptures is indeed their strong tower, then when a denominational bailiwick is imperiled, let them find shelter in that feste Burg.

And it is directly to that mighty Keep of grace and redemption that we should be inviting those who do not yet know Christ, not to first pass the ditches and gates of our lovingly-cultivated Baileys, whether denominational or personal.

Introduce them to Christ through God's word, and let them be transformed by the renewing of their mind by the Spirit to the point that when it comes to choosing between the narratives of secular science (or of marxist dialectic) and God's truth, they will both choose the latter and be discerning enough that they can tell the difference. It has become all too clear these months that many long-time Christians cannot.

The Third Party Vote: Optionality

Just a short one today. I'm trying to cultivate the discipline of writing more.


I have written quite a few posts (they remain perennially the most popular entries on the blog) about the Myers-Briggs personality profile and being an INTP. It's 2020 now, and personality tests are not a trendy topic compared to when I started writing here, but I have found they continue to be a topic of interest on instagram, which has many channels devoted to MBTI.

Apparently there is a smaller but dedicated Korean MBTI community?

One stereotype of INTPs, frequently mentioned in those instagram posts on the topic, is that INTPs lack motivation. More specifically, the motivation is all focused on information gathering, and not on "getting out there and doing things." As far as I can tell this is true; I find myself naturally drawn to gathering and systematizing information to further complete a "theory of everything," which feels like an autotelic and all-absorbing occupation, whereas I often have to make to-do lists and try to cultivate good habits and drink coffee and cue up the right playlists at the right times to spur myself on to being productive and making progress on other kinds of goals. (Such as anything involving paperwork)

So coming from someone who struggles less to see things worth doing and more in summoning the willpower to accomplish some subset of them, a technique I find helpful is the one I want to explain briefly in this post.

An Embarrassment of Motivational Riches

There's a lot of good self-motivation material out there for free nowadays. If the motivation you lack can truly be supplied by anything external to yourself, YouTube has hundreds of hours of different styles and flavors of gifted speakers and accomplished people urging you to get out there and do something, to get up off the mat and overcome whatever is holding you back, to break your larger goals down into small enough steps that you can get started immediately, etc.

I enjoy a good Tom Bilyeu or Jocko Willink interview myself, and have gleaned some valuable puzzle pieces about how life and people work from some of the very accomplished people featured there, which I find ways to apply to my ministry work. (While recognizing the goals being discussed on that and other channels are usually very "this-worldly," if an observation is true then it's true, and truth works cross-platform)

In terms of self-motivation, self-improvement, "hustling/getting after it" and that whole milieu, Solomon tells us that chasing after material wealth isn't worth it; not only because a love for money can lead to all kinds of evil, but that it's simply not worth exhausting yourself for a lifetime for what you can't take with you and what other people may spend badly after you're gone.

(Yet that truth doesn't conflict with the true observation that "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit." Scripture also informs us that, generally speaking, when the righteous are diligent, they will also be prosperous, and this is considered a good thing, and society as a whole benefits.)

However many people have goals other than wealth; you may need motivation to work off that extra quarantine weight, to get skill certification and move into a new career path, or simply to accomplish that thing you've put off for two years already. But what about when that motivation is balanced more or less equally by our lack thereof?

"The Third Party Vote"

The 2016 election was a surreal experience, perhaps even more so to watch from overseas. One interesting thing to watch on FB was how people who were not excited about either choice mostly fell into two camps: either "lesser of the two evils" or "if we'd all just vote third party, it would solve this." Both camps had weak points which the other side pointed out, but the third party advocates were tenacious and I expect to see some of them back soon for election season 2020.

In trying to motivate ourselves to do a difficult or unpleasant task, we tend to fall into a similar dilemma. Not moving towards our goal is a bad option, but the effort or drudgery or willpower-expenditure involved is demotivational. We thus are trapped between two things we don't want: not making any progress, and some amount of suffering required to make progress.

In this situation, with one vote for progress yet one vote against it, we can benefit from a third vote. In this case, not a vote for a third party, but a vote by a third party. There is a third party involved in the decision, and we seldom give them a vote.

That third party is us, after we've made that progress and arrived at a different place. The you that has run the miles or applied for the grant or rearranged the shop or memorized the scripture passage. The you that now has increased optionality because you've put in the work to get there.

Give the third party involved in your decisions a vote...

Optionality, and the Coronavirus

Optionality is a topic I have not discussed at any length on the blog, though it is an integral part of the theory of Antifragility which I have mentioned quite a few times.

I will probably do a whole post on optionality in the future. For now let's consider it at a basic level--having worked to have more options at your disposal.

The coronavirus situation has caused untold economic damage and personal suffering in the US, partly because of a lack of optionality. Setting aside conspiracy theories to the contrary, the US healthcare system wasn't prepared to handle this kind of pandemic, and thus could only react in an extreme way (since nothing was in place to react at varying levels of extremity as appropriate), yet that meant both federal and state governments could only scramble to obtain resources for this kind of extreme reaction, for which there was no SOP (standard operating procedure) already in place. Hospitals couldn't obtain the supplies they needed and were under contrary instructions on what to do. It was most crudely effective shock test to the system imaginable (one the system failed badly) and yet new revised figures emerging all suggest it was a merciful one.

By contrast the optionality provided by things like more local manufacture of health supplies, a pandemic SOP and agreed-on chain of command, experience of previous pandemics, a smaller population size with fewer international points of entry, etc. helped Taiwan respond to the virus quickly and effectively. It is to be hoped that with the experience of 2020, the US federal and state governments, as well as the American populace, will know better how to respond. Some optionality will have been earned through experience, though at immense cost.

Optionality shows up in people's individual responses to the pandemic and quarantine as well. Some people with sufficient savings were in a position to "pivot" and use the unexpected time at home profitably, whereas those who depended on a weekly income were sorely hurt by the mandatory business closures and shelter-in-place orders. As the weeks drag on, some have even re-opened their shops in defiance of state governments, trying to provide for themselves and their employees with no other source of income. Their situation didn't leave them with any other options.

We can see examples of optionality in scripture, and the woman described in Proverbs 31 is an impressive example:

"She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come." (v25) 

She can laugh because she has worked hard, become a strong person, and knows she has options regardless of what may come. This is not only a question of material security because of all her "side gigs" (weaving, etc) as they'd say on some of those YouTube channels. Her hard work and the strong character she has developed, not to mention her position in the community and acts of charity, all work to secure her against future hardship. One given example is that she is not afraid of a cold winter, for she and her children already have warm clothes (v21-22).
I'm sure with little effort you can imagine various modern parallels. What does "laughing at the days" to come look like in 2020? Among other things, it certainly means setting your faith on a firm foundation and investing effort in doing lots of those things that are difficult, un-fun, yet give you good optionality in the future when you'll probably need it.

Conclusion: Vote for Optionality!

I said at the beginning that this would be short, and I'm rapidly failing to achieve that goal. So, let's wrap things up by combining this concept of optionality with the idea of a third vote: When caught in that balanced-dilemma moment of trying to decide whether or not to tackle a task you don't feel any motivation to complete, rather than just comparing the yes vote of our current level of motivation against the no vote of the effort and/or hardship involved and letting things stagnate there, try giving a third vote to that future self, who is in a place of better optionality due to your invested effort and time. If it's 2 vs 1, do it. You will thank yourself retrospectively from the future.

Conspiracy Theories: Navigating the Swamp

What a strange year 2020 has been.

Whether urgent pleas not to be self-centered and to abide by shelter in place orders, equally urgent concerns about the seeming ability of one virus to wipe away the rights of American citizens like a hand sanitizer-soaked sponge across a whiteboard, or gallows humor that seems to be getting a pass as people understand it's that kind of season, my FB newsfeed has been covered up in content about the coronavirus epidemic since late February.

For several days last week much of the focus was on "Plandemic," a video project I had not heard of until a few people on my newsfeed emerged to promote the trailer, and about 2 to 3 times as many people immediately began sharing pre-refutations and urging others not to share it or talk about it. Of course, because of how human psychology works, that made me very interested in it.

I have not watched that trailer, though I plan to do so later. I have already seen one video explaining the Buddhist/New age spiritual beliefs of one of the producers and that Christians may want to be very cautious and do more research before supporting the project. Yet to underline the point of this whole post, when I went back to watch it again, I found that video is no longer available for public viewing on Youtube. Does that make it more or less trustworthy? We cannot know.

1. The Problem: Why I'm Writing This

As a rule I do not spend much time reading about specific conspiracy theories. But I am familiar with how the broader "conspiratorial" mindset works. I was aware of the term "the narrative" long before it entered the popular consciousness, and the Daily Show hadn't yet run those clips showing journalists across many various channels repeating exactly the same lines with which they had clearly all been supplied. If you haven't seen what I'm talking about, a couple years ago there was a dramatic example of the same thing, where journalists on dozens of local stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting Group were all required to read the same statement on how biased, non-mainstream news online was "dangerous to our democracy". (Apparently the ominous irony was entirely lost on whoever wrote the statement all those news stations were required to read)

So conspiracy theories have become increasingly popular, because more and more people are becoming aware that something is up, on a large scale. Something that, prior to the internet, it would have been very difficult to figure out. When journalists all speak in lockstep, the sheer effort it would take to compare different channels and somehow get that information out to people 30 years ago would make you easily dismissed as a crazy obsessive person. Now, we can all watch these videos on YouTube (before they get deleted) and wonder what's going on.

There is no way to prove conspiracies on the global, generational-spanning scale that are being alleged by innumerable conspiracies theories and schools of thought. We don't have access to that information, and can only choose to believe either what the authorities tell us, which tends to be, uh, "comfortingly consistent," or else what those people who say the authorities are lying tell us, which is of almost endless variety, some that is reluctantly plausible and much that is anxiously fanciful.

But what is quite clear at this point is that the information we are presented with via mainstream media channels has been carefully curated. That realization encourages people to turn to non-mainstream sources, like people in Nazi-occupied Europe subjected to Third Reich propaganda but secretly tuning into VOA or other underground radio broadcasts to get the real news. In fact our situation today is very much like that, because that wasn't exactly the real news either. There was no "real news" about the war to listen to, you either accepted that Allied reports or underground radio (or the German communists, with their "People's Radio," etc.) were telling you the truth, or not.

One difference for us today is that the internet allows "mixed-truth" information to be disseminated at such a rapid pace that there's no way to keep on top of it all. There are not a few radio channels, there are a myriad of channels, some saying the same things and some disagreeing with each other. (Not to mention there is now AI software that can cobble together basic articles and even news reports with visuals and audio voiceovers, making it even easier to dump literally fake news into the turbid waters of online information.)

Social media has altered the equation too, by making these stories show up on your "own" news feed, shared by people you know. There was a popular late night radio show called Coast to Coast AM (I only caught it once or twice, I recall one caller was very interested in lizard people), hosted by Art Bell, and the fringe ideas shared there had their mysterious appeal based partly on their fringe-ness. Now the same process by which morally fringe behavior has become normalized in the eyes of society is being repeated in the world of news, where previously recognized authorities and standards have been dethroned, and now the concepts of "true/factually accurate" and "untrue" are being eroded even more quickly than "right" and "wrong" behavioral standards were in previous decades.

Bell's current spiritual successors sharing what used to be considered fringe theories on their various podcasts and shows are only part of the wave of unverified news and alarmist articles now coming from mainstream sources too. Much of it is designed intentionally to appeal to our sense that we're being lied to, that something big is going on and "the powers that be" are trying to keep us from figuring it out. They often portray themselves like those old underground radio broadcasts, brave men and women trying to get the truth to you despite opposition from the Deep State or Shadow Government or whoever.

To be interested in that sort of content is a very human trait. Just like it's a very human problem to be addicted to looking at your phone too much, because they are specifically designed to take advantage of human psychology to addict you, so the draw toward the world of conspiracy theory is too, for reasons we'll delve into later. That idea of "underground, government-discouraged sources" is also psychologically appealing to Americans in general and Christians in particular. It has nothing to do with the content being true or false, and everything to do with many people being pre-disposed to look favorably on information coming from that angle, and wanting to pass it along to others.

Art Bell, harbinger of the era when fringe news went mainstream

2. The Problem: The Antifragility of Conspiracy Theories

Another reason I'm writing this is that as soon as the Plandemic video trailer began popping up, various Christian outlets began popping up quickly denouncing it. This interested me, because a term those people in the world of non-aligned thought use is "gatekeeping." That is to say, there are people who self-identify or are popularly identified as being "on your side/part of your movement" but who actually exist to supply the appropriate rhetoric to make sure people don't stray too far from the narrative they're supposed to be following.

To be clear, I don't think that's what these editorials by big Christian websites are doing. I think articles like this one contain the genuine thoughts of the writer, who is probably tired of people in his congregation sharing totally unverifiable stories. But that article and others I've seen (Ed Stetzer has written multiple times for Christianity Today calling for Christians to repent and stop spreading conspiracy theories), and the angles from which they approach the problem, seemed a little misguided on a fundamental level. This from Stetzer's article:

"Yet in perpetuating the Seth Rich conspiracy, some Christians again are looking silly. The conspiracies were debunked by independent investigations such as websites like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. And if that isn’t convincing enough, Fox News itself retracted their original story, stating, 'The article was not subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require” and “was found not to meet those standards.'"

Oooh, fact checking websites, and even Fox News itself! Aren't you embarrassed, Christians who believe we can't trust the mainstream media, to hear that the mainstream media has cleared itself of any suspicion? Such failures in perception are one reason I'm writing this article, because they aren't going to help their target audience.

Antifragility, which I have written about in the past, is that quality of things that benefit from disorder, shocks, and apparent damage instead of being hurt by them. The most common metaphor is that of a Hydra from Greek mythology. Cutting off one head only leads to more growing.

A conspiracy theory has a kind of antifragility. This can be seen in that having accepted it, not only are people mentally inclined to defend against every attack on the theory's validity, but the very effort expended in trying to debunk it looks like more proof that it's true. Any idea that says "They'll try to stop me from telling you this, but--" has the potential to gain this kind of antifragility, if a widespread sense of recognition for it emerges. Fringe theories become very powerful if they can ever escape the fringe, and denouncing them as fringe/hearsay/debunked, as Stetzer and others have done, only increases the rate of their spread. As Nassim Taleb (developer of the concept of antifragility) has remarked, for a book to be publicly banned can only help its sales.

I'm sure that some people do share conspiracy theories out of "hatred for Hillary Clinton" as Stetzer claimed in that article, and that is not Christian behavior. We are commanded to love our enemies, and spreading unverified, negative stories about someone in order to discredit them is the sin of slander. But some others shared them because that "banned" motivation: they were trying to get the secret information out despite the blanket of government misinformation.

3. The Problem: False vs. True Prophets

As a rule I do not promote or share specific conspiracy theory-type stories about Hillary or vaccines or 5G or COVID-19, even when they seem probably true. This is because to paraphrase the common dictum about wrestling with pigs, when you enter the muddy arena of semi-truths and rumors and false cover stories and conspiracies to wrestle with swamp creatures, you just get muddy too, and besides, the swamp creatures like it.

That being said, there is a difference between conspiracy theories and "explanations we don't approve of." The emergence of COVID-19 has a lot of weird things associated with it. We shouldn't believe every story connecting the dots by dragging in the Rothschilds and the kitchen sink too, but I also believe there is so much geopolitical dynamite attached to a pandemic that spread out of China that we'll probably never be told the real story by any mainstream news source. We will be told whatever stories make people feel towards China, or Trump, or the CDC, or other parties, in the way that whoever is paying the salaries of those media institutions wants people to feel. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's an observation of how politics and media work in 2020.

I am working as a full-time missionary, and if I am informed that the fallen world is menaced in some new way by fallen leaders working in league together, the best thing I can do is spread the gospel and strengthen churches, not wade into the darkness of the swamp. Behind every corrupt, lying, neo-babelonian politician are 100 others. I would rather lead 10 people to Christ and train them to lead 10 each in turn, and so on. The Church is the ultimate antifragile institution on earth, and it has endured and grown through many centuries of stability and chaos.

In Old Testament Israel, true prophets did not exist alone. There were lots of false prophets spreading disinformation. Some could do so convincingly, with visual aids:

"Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah were sitting on their thrones, arrayed in their robes, at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria, and all the prophets were prophesying before them. And Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron and said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘With these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed.’” And all the prophets prophesied so and said, “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” 1 Kings 22:10-12

In 2020, you and I and anyone with a TV or internet connection are like kings on thrones. Below us are many voices "prophesying" (professing to reveal the truth to us), clamoring for our attention, and we must decide who speaks truly or falsely. The fact that lots of them are saying the same thing does not mean it is true, and in fact none of them may be right, and we may need to call for, as happens in this story, someone else who tells us what we don't want to hear.

That should be a truth-tell we never lose sight of: the Truth will always have some things we don't want to hear. If it sounds like exactly what we expected, if it confirms what we want to believe, it's probably mixed with falsehood. If a conspiracy theory seems "too pat" and seeks to bolster my prejudices against someone, it's probably just addictive, artificially-sweetened fodder created for my mental consumption. Beware of those who offer those snacks for free, it leads to mental obesity.

As for those false prophets, scripture tells us that the proof of a true prophet is that their word comes to pass. So when I hear someone putting out a conspiratorial-type theory that sounds like it may have some real information behind it, or is in line with things I already know to be true, I may give it my ear, but if later it proves to be untrue (which is different than "the story goes away"), then I know that they are at worst a false prophet, deserving of censure, and at best a peddler of unhealthy snacks, best avoided.

4. Christians and Conspiracies: Planned vs Randomness

There are two major competing theories in the West to explain the world we see around us. One is that it all emerged gradually, through changes that took unimaginable lengths of time to slowly happen. Modern science assumes this; the theory of evolution is an obvious example, and even the Big Bang has become problematic for some who want to upgrade the scientific method into an all-encompassing worldview because our universe exploding from an infinitesimal primordial nugget into its current state is too like a creation event that needed an outside force to kick it off.

The other major perspective is that things as we see them now came into being much more rapidly, and could do so by means of important and specific events. In Genesis we see the forming and populating of the earth with life by God as a work He began and completed. There is also Noah's flood and the vast effect on the world that it had, and the languages being divided at Babel. These events dramatically speed up the timeline of reality and human history as we know it to lengths of time comprehensible to our minds (We have no real way to conceptualize one million years or even one hundred thousand, let alone a trillion years)

There is no use trying to reconcile these two perspectives. Either things came about through randomness, which required a basically infinite supply of time to allow them to happen, or they came about through a plan, which required a basically infinite supply of power to accomplish. Whether the design took a long time (Old Earth Creationism) or the randomness also involved near-infinite amounts of applied power (Alien-creator-race theories) is not as important, but we can see both groups trying to massage the arbitrary infinite-ness of one factor (Incomprehensible depths of time, or God-like/Divine power) by balancing it with the other.

As we think about conspiracy theories, it's important to recognize that Christians are typically going to be coming from a worldview that understands there to be a Divine plan behind reality, not that things gradually arose naturally and for no particular reason. Yet in the West they are typically also immersed in a society and culture that holds the latter view.

Modern news is often presented from that Random/Uncaused angle that "things just happen in the world and we tell you about them." Stories about lone gunmen, often the subject of conspiracy theories, are a good example of this. We are assured that it was just one random person who did a terrible thing but it's over now. But with the mainstream media deservedly losing credibility, people begin to search for other explanations behind the story. Perhaps this wasn't a random incident.

And now people are more open than ever to the idea that perhaps major events didn't even take place, that the whole event and news story was faked for some ulterior motive. Maybe there is some big plan, with lots of power behind it, and this is one small piece of it. It would be wrong to say this is unbiblical thinking, as studying a scriptural account of reality in some sense trains our minds to think in this way. (How does this particular story or event fit into the big picture, long-term plan?)

However, the Bible also gives us a balancing principle: Things act according to their nature and the laws that govern them. A good tree bears good fruit, and an evil tree bears evil fruit. Sinful people do sinful things, and so it doesn't require a conspiracy to explain why a few people might do especially wicked things, or want to cooperate to do evil. Whenever we are informed of a "secret master plan" as the explanation for various events, we should remind ourselves that this need not always be the case, and that God's sovereignty means that even if evil people have come up with a secret plan, it will not succeed unless He permits it, to accomplish His greater purposes.


5. Christians and Conspiracies: Selective Listening

Anyone who grew up going to church in the U.S. is probably quite familiar with the debate I mentioned above, between the narrative of evolution's gradual, emergent changes and a universe made quickly into something much like its current form through a specific creation event and subsequent divine interventions.

Yet I cannot recall meeting a single Christian who denied the legitimacy of Science or History outright. What happens instead is that when "experts" make truth claims which are irreconcilable with the Bible's truth claims, we simply ignore those experts. Sometimes we do listen to other things they say, but ignore those particular statements, like parents skipping past "that one scene" in a movie the family can otherwise enjoy together. (a practice which seems endangered now in the days of streaming and uninhibited consumption of media)

The Church is, then, quite comfortable with taking a selective approach to science and history. Did we all stop believing because well-credentialed archaeologists at one point claimed Pontius Pilate never existed, or because many historians still believe the Old Testament was an invented back story to unite various Canaanite groups who found themselves exiled together in Babylon?

While the idea of rejecting "expert" academic claims when they go against what the Bible says but listening to other things they say gives some people fits, in truth for the average believer (i.e. someone not having the academic background to really debate the issue effectively) this is a very robust and pragmatic way of solving the problem. We have different categories of authority, and the Bible is in that "non-negotiable" category, while academic experts are not. (And do not deserve to be, since their authority is mostly borrowed and they rarely have any "skin in the game" -- they won't suffer any consequences except at worst a loss of reputation in their field if their theories turn out to be wrong)

So then, for Christians we're already used to navigating a lower hierarchy of truth claims based on a higher one. When the Bible says there's a reef there, we don't sail that way even when "the latest, peer-reviewed paper on the effect of tidal forces on reef development" says it ought to be clear water. (And those progressive-minded souls in the Church who do make the attempt must be fished out of the water, though often they go down with their ship.)

This means that for some Christians, it's very easy to shift into that mode of thinking where a conspiracy theory (based not on verifiable claims, but believed for other reasons) becomes our guiding truth claim, and we start rejecting official sources when they contradict it. This is a problem because now the conspiracy theory has become the filter by which we judge reality. If we are not careful, just as can easily happen with political convictions, it will become part of that filter by which we read scripture as well. We should be very wary of letting unverifiable claims through a backdoor to become part of our worldview.

Of course, there is another thing Christians do, which provides ammunition for the other side of the debate, the people who have no patience for those attracted by conspiracy theories. Because Christians are used to believing things based on authority, and indeed are taught (more in some circles than others) respect for authority, some transfer this to what they have been taught are, or come to regard as, respectable and reliable sources of information. Any conspiracy theory that comes along, if "debunked" by these respectable sources, will then be considered unworthy of future speculation. And anyone forwarding these conspiracy theories will look incredibly foolish in the eyes of those who still look at establishment media as possessing authority to say what is accurate and what has been proven false.

6. Christians and Conspiracies: Religion vs. Conspiracy

It has been said that the exclusive claims of the world's major faiths force us to conclude that either they are all wrong, or one is right and the others are wrong. Either the LORD, the Creator of the universe, also made humans according to His own likeness, or the Chinese goddess Nuwa made them from dragging a rope through mud, or they were made from driftwood by Odin and his brothers, or they are the result of chemicals that randomly bounced into each other long enough to kick off one reaction that led all the way to human consciousness, but those explanations cannot all be correct.

In the same way, it cannot be true that the way to heaven is to slaughter one's enemies with sufficient valor, to earn enough merit through multiple lifetimes and understand that reality is an illusion, or to trust in the grace of God as seen in the work of Jesus Christ, all at the same time. And those various conceptions of heaven/the afterlife are all mutually exclusive too.

So either we A) reject all religions, or B) we must figure out which one is true. Or, C) we could decide we don't care or couldn't ever figure out what is True, and pick the religion we think is most attractive or useful, or pick some parts of several of them and follow them without regard for potential internal contradictions (which is the approach one typically encounters in Taiwan).

Conspiracy theories are stories that claim, usually with at least some cursory attempt at providing evidence, that many events we see are not natural/normal, but are brought about by the actions of a secretive group with specific motives. But to an atheist or non-religious person, who goes with option A) above, Christianity is exactly this--an attempt to explain observable events and phenomenon (which can "already be explained by Science") by providing a unproveable backstory of unseen forces (God, etc).

This seems like the simplest approach, but our materialist friend has a big problem: he's got to ignore too much of reality to make his theory work. One single, real, true miracle, the kind countless people claim to have experienced throughout human history, renders his choice moot. In these kinds of situations, there are usually 2 strategies he will fall back on.

1) Deny the event: Claim that anyone who thinks they have witnessed something miraculous, supernatural, or violating the laws of physics as we know them were mistaken, confused, deceived, or lying. The burden of historical proof testifies overwhelmingly against this, but your average materialist science groupie has no concept of historical proof, and may in fact consider history to be merely one long struggle to achieve particle accelerators and rockets which can land themselves.

2) Use the Science-of-the-Gaps argument: Because most people throughout history, including many Christians, explained things they could not understand by saying they were or were caused by gods or spirits or other unseen powers, yet now we understand them to be natural phenomenon which we can describe and measure by the scientific method, so all those things and also that which we cannot explain scientifically in 2020 will in the same way be explained by future advancements in science.

Both of these seek to keep reality free of any behind-the-scenes Actor/s whose existence would make his simple dismissal of all religious belief untenable.

Those who dismiss all conspiracy theories automatically are more or less doing the same thing. They are seeking to keep reality and their concept of history and what they read in the news simple and clear: Things happen, and the news exists to inform us of these happenings, and don't try to sell me on some secret society or scheme behind them. If they existed, The Papers Walter Cronkite CNN Fox News would have told us so. Yet these people have a similar problem to our atheist friend above: There must be a true explanation, and if those establishment sources turn out in the end not to be reputable sources, perhaps one of the conspiracy theories floating around is actually the correct story of what happened. So the option of simply dismissing them all is another kind of lazy thinking, or one trying to reduce the world to a more simplistic (and less scary) model than it really is.

7. "Why are Christians being drawn to Conspiracy Theories?"

"If you're a Christian, you think that the entire fabric of the cosmos was ruptured, by this strange singularity, where Someone who is a god and a man sets everything on its head. And to say it's supernatural is to downplay it; this is a massive singularity at the very heart of things. And if you don't believe that, it seems to me that you aren't really a confessional Christian--you may be a cultural Christian, but you're not a confessional Christian. So if you believe that, then it should be possible to dwell on all the other weird stuff that traditionally comes as part of the Christian package." - Tom Holland (Not Spider-Man)

Christians, by contrast, have already chosen B) from part 4 above and believe that one religion is true and only that one, and others cannot be chosen along with it. The others may have much that is good in them, but they must necessarily fall short of complete truth, since none profess Christ as Lord and seek atonement through His finished work on the cross. That is a good, straightforward assertion which we make through faith, and which we believe will one day be sight.

We cannot prove that faith, but we have evidence in lots of areas of life (historical references to biblical events and people, changed lives after a decision of faith, answers to prayer which can't be put down to coincidence, etc) that it is true. This kind of evidence is important because Christians reject option C) up above, believing there is Truth which can be known and believed. We believe the Bible tells a long, true story which can be learned and lived by, which is also the underlying narrative of all human history and reality. A reality which is full of miraculous, wonderful, and terrifying things, and exists partly as an unseen world of which we have scant knowledge.

This understanding of the world, coupled with today's growing recognition of how inaccurate or intentionally misleading is so much of the information we're constantly immersed in, leads people to turn away from now-distrusted official sources and seek the real story behind reality somewhere else, just as believers turn away from academic sources who say Noah's flood never happened but might get misled by a well-spun yarn about finding the real ark somewhere in the mountains of Turkey.

We are misled because we believe that the ark is real, and therefore stories that affirm (or maybe, cater to; or perhaps, take advantage of) that conviction can get past our primary filter which would reject mainstream academic sources claiming it wasn't true. Or worse, we are lazy, and simply see "ark" and "discovered" and share the story without feeling it's important to know whether it's factual or not.

Either way, too many Christians have not developed a secondary filter, one that can intuit if something is plausible within a context of belief on the one hand and selective rejection of mainstream sources on the other. This is true for newly-"woke" Christians who have only recently become aware of the extent to which they've been lied to about the world we live in. Put another way, they hadn't realized that the god of this age who has blinded the minds of unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4) to prevent them from seeing the truth of the gospel did so in certain ways that Christians can easily fall prey to as well if they lose a biblical worldview and do not practice discernment.

Yet this is not a new phenomenon for Christians. Think of the popular eschatology phases where everyone had books and maps and charts and theories about the end times. How many were sure the world was going to already be over by now? How many conspiracy theories circulated about how the antichrist was some politician or world leader of their day? In a sense, we have seen this whole thing before, we just didn't have social media then. How many of those Christian thought leaders who convinced people the rapture was coming at a certain date or that accused various political leaders of being the antichrist were called to account?

Of course, it's more palatable to believe one has been intentionally deceived than to believe one has sinfully failed to exercise discernment, and so the impulse is strong to believe conspiracy-theory-type stories or explanations which make some sense of confused reality and simultaneously assert that things would make much more sense if they weren't being intentionally deceived by a massive conspiracy. Again, this does not mean any particular conspiracy theory is not true, or that none of them are, but it gives us a reason to be cautious about accepting them or sharing them as true.

8. How to be discerning in a climate of conspiracy and information overload?

As we start to wrap up this long post, I want to mention a few ideas we can internalize in order to build a stronger filter which will help us navigate the excess of information and truth claims we're bombarded with. Some of the points are obvious, some perhaps less so, but I hope they are helpful, or at least thought-provoking, as you wade through the claims about the coronavirus and everything else:

1. The person who agrees you are being lied to, might also be lying to you

There is a whole highway system across the internet by which conspiracy theories get shared and passed along and commented on, and they are by nature antifragile; the more mainstream media companies take action to suppress them, the more it looks like evidence that they are true. 

Some followers of conspiracy theories are like preteens who, having realized their dad (or mom) isn't the superhero they'd imagined them to be in earlier childhood, begin to idolize a teacher or older classmate who demonstrates some of the qualities they were disappointed to find lacking in their default hero figure, not realizing they are committing the next step of the same mistake. Thus having realized, to the great disappointment of their healthy lack of cynicism, that they cannot trust the mainstream media whose job it was (and not merely a job, but a sort of implied social contract) to inform them of what was happening in the world, these people now automatically turn a credulous ear to anyone who invokes the new password: "the mainstream media cannot be trusted." 

2. Is your intuition being hijacked?

A person skilled in rhetoric always sounds persuasive, and although it's an art, it's something of a science as well at this point. Humans have buttons, and they can be pushed, and vast amounts of money circulate around that fact. For explanations that are "outside the mainstream," the way the information is presented will attract different kinds of people. For some, authenticity will look like a lone dissenter, a "voice crying in the wilderness" with a bare-basics website, and anything that seems to have some money behind it becomes untrustworthy. For others that would be too fringe to take seriously, and a more polished approach with good rhetoric and some credentialed names will win them over.

P. T. Barnum's famous aphorism, "there's a sucker born every minute," still holds true in 2020. But these days one doesn't need to be a sucker to be deceived, either by mainstream or alternative sources. "Going with your gut" when deciding whether to trust a source or not is dangerous, because decades of studies have figured out what can make people's intuition push them one way or another. Unfortunately your gut intuition has been commoditized, without your permission, and those whose profession is mass marketing, whether its products or ideas they are trying to sell you, know how that works. So a darkly plausible sounding accusation about a politician you don't like, or an empathetically morally outraged article about life-improving information suppressed by profit-hungry forces, or any other article that feeds some sense of satisfying grievance, should be taken with many grains of salt.

3. Hanlon's Razor

"Do not attribute to maliciousness what can be adequately explained by incompetence." Think of the situations, events, well-intended plans, work projects you've seen go wrong before; think of people in very high positions of power or influence who say or do really dumb things. People simply aren't good at executing carefully controlled secret plans, and that goes for rich and smart people too.

That doesn't mean it never happens (the existence of secret societies and political conspiracies is part of the historical record), but it probably shouldn't be your go-to explanation without serious evidence from trusted sources. And what are trusted sources these days?


4. Are there biblical or historical principles that already cover it?

The Bible describes a world where people are flawed and sinful, where people in positions of authority abuse their power to do terrible things, and yet Paul says our battle is not against flesh and blood but with evil spiritual powers of this dark world and in heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

I believe what the Bible says about God's kingdom, which is not of this world, inaugurated by Christ and advancing against the kingdom of this world, which is the hierarchy of secular authority which goes all the way up to the Prince of this World and his fallen spiritual allies. That some world leaders would be deeply under their influence and foolishly imagine themselves their allies instead, and practice perverse rituals to reinforce that belief, doesn't surprise me at all. It has always been so.

So when I see rumors and dark intimations online describing the secret cultish behavior of some world leaders, etc., they don't sound all that conspiratorial to me. We have historical evidence that Aztec leaders were conducting public rituals that involved cutting the living hearts out of their enemies, and Roman emperors were setting live Christians on fire as human candles in Rome. More recently, for decades before and during the turn of the 20th century, seances were popular activities. Many people, including famous people you've heard of, tried to talk to the dead through mediums, sometimes for amusement but sometimes in earnest. In Taiwan up until recent years it was a regular practice for children to be taken to temples and "opened up" to spiritual influence so they can serve as mediums, an ability they apparently retain for life. Though I keep a distance from such things here, my understanding is that the practices continues today, to a lesser extent.

All that is to say, sometimes breathless stories insisting that we should be alarmed that certain famous people are secretly engaged in dark and illicit activities have the opposite effect; the testimony of history, the bible's take on the world, and human nature more or less guarantee some of them are up to much worse things than the average conspiracy theory alleges. That certainly doesn't mean we need to believe every specific story we hear.

5. Know what you can't know, and whether that matters

At this point I view everything I read online on a sliding scale of unverifiability. I don't know if any of it is true, and I can't verify or debunk a CNN article about a bombing in Kenya which proves Al-Qaeda is active there, any more than I can verify the secret discovery of an ancient supercomputer under the Sphinx, or that some government officials instructed their family members to get out of NYC on Sept 10th, or that the Coronavirus is a man-made ploy to get us to accept the vaccine which will be administered via bioinfernal Mark of the Beast technology. I can't know if those things happened to begin with, nor whether the explanation provided to me about those things is correct. There is no strong reason for me to trust an unverifiable conspiracy theory video on YouTube more or less than I trust unreliable poll numbers on MSNBC. (Though in a pinch, if it's MSNBC, I'd go with the YouTube video. Just kidding. Probably.)

If you are sheltering at home because of the coronavirus, and especially if you've suffered or lost friends and/or family members because of it, it's only reasonable to try and figure out what's going on. If the government seems to be lying, with their track record of dishonesty, it's also reasonable to entertain other theories, though not wise to share them with others. What if you are sharing, and thus promoting, false prophecy? But we have to recognize that we won't be able to personally verify if the people telling you it's a planned virus being exploited to create a one world government are correct, any more than people in Beijing will be able to verify if it's a weaponized virus created by the CIA to attack China, as they're being told over there. If it turns out that people really were lying, anger is also reasonable. But will it ever "turn out"?

Will the truth ever be found and explained? We don't know, and that's frustrating enough to turn a lot of people to conspiracy theories to provide an illusion of knowing and thus a little less lack of control.


6. Do you want it to be true?

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils." - C.S.Lewis

Lastly, I offer this Lewis quote not to suggest that some people in positions of power are not involved in filthy atrocities, but that our desire to keep filling our minds with conspiracy stories about them and clinging to those explanations which attribute maximum evil intent to people can be unhealthy.

If you find yourself rejecting evidence for a more mundane explanation ("sometimes accidents just happen") because you don't want there to be a more mundane explanation, because that would be less entertaining, or less cathartic, or because that particular story would prove what you suspected all along about Trump, or Obama, or the Republicans, or the Democrats, or Big Pharma, or Monsanto, then be very, very careful. Because that is a point where the truth of the story is no longer the thing that matters most to you, and you wish evil to be true of others.

That is the negative version of believing something because you wish it to be true. The positive version could be represented by my own sympathy toward stories that claim sightings of creatures thought to be long extinct, because I want them to still be alive, and I want to believe the world is still big enough in 2020 for mysterious life to still be hiding somewhere. So I have to be extra careful to guard my mind against embracing those kinds of stories, which typically are based on very flimsy evidence. A historically famous example of this was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, who defended various, obviously fake reports of fairies, ghosts, etc., because of his strong desire to prove the existence of the supernatural.

Christians can commit the same error... every time people share a fake story about someone who went to heaven or hell without trying to verify it (witness the ruin caused by this example), they are promoting a lie and weakening the Church's testimony that heaven and hell are real. That it supports what you believe to be true does not mean it should get an automatic pass.

9. Conclusion: Wisdom... and Patience

Simply put, if you believe respectable institutions and elected officials don't cooperate to deceive us, you are a fool. But if you believe and share every conspiratorial, alarmist, or political attack story you see, you are a different kind of fool. We are drowning in information, and sharing half-truths or fake news means you are part of the problem. Yet, if we are not being told the truth by official sources, we will seek for it in other places, and these stories are not going away, and censorship only strengthens their appeal, as we saw above.

I have no delusions that articles like concerned Christians I mentioned earlier, or this one, or others like it, will have any great effect on human nature. But you, reading this, you can change. You can choose to be wise and exercise restraint when you want to share the latest tantalizing rumor or urgent, probably-true update, and to be patient and wait until more facts come out before sharing a conspiracy theory trying to explain an event based on "what we already know about how those people act" vs. whatever evidence is available. If you believe the evidence will be faked or changed as necessary to keep people from figuring out those people are behind it, that is indeed a kind of consistent logic, but it's also an inescapable trap, so just be aware you are in it.

At very least, educate yourself broadly on the topics you are sharing stories about. (And I don't mean in the YouTube rabbit hole way) Don't have a careless attitude towards spreading half-truths and unverified accusations, but be very focused on sacrificial love and doing good in this world, not "raising awareness" or "putting everyone on alert" from the safety of your digital device. Needlessly raising the anxiety level of a world suffocating in anxiety is not a light sin.

So as you encounter stories and rumors about the coronavirus, about political leaders, about alternate versions of history or government cover-ups or aliens or vaccines or false flags or anything else, I hope you will keep some of what I've said here in mind. It would be hypocritical of me to suggest you should just stop listening to alternative theories and believe the official stories about everything--I often do not believe them either. But the fact that scripture calls Satan the father of lies should make us extra careful not to accidentally do his work for him.

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." - Ephesians 5:15-16

Be well, guard your mind and heart, and let His word be a lamp to your feet
and a light to your path among these swamps of misinformation and deceit.