Lux Lucet

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed.

• Psalm 2:2

In last week’s post, we considered the many passages in Scripture which speak of conspiracies.  It seemed good to approach the subject of conspiracies in this way for at least two reasons.  If the fist place, this is a Scripturalist blog.  As such, it is the goal of this author to approach every subject with the understanding that that the Bible has a systematic monopoly on truth.  If one can establish that the infallible, inerrant Bible clearly teaches that conspiracies have occurred in the past, this poses a significant problem for those who claim, as some do, that it is impossible for conspiracies to occur today and to dismiss those who have doubts about the official explanations as “conspiracy theorists.”

A second reason for placing a post on biblical examples of conspiracies first in this series is one of interest.  It’s likely that many Christians have not considered the extensive evidence supporting the existence of conspiracies furnished by well-known Bible passages.  Coming to see these passages as examples of conspiracies not only adds to our understanding of Scripture, but gives Christians added intellectual ammunition to analyze events of the present day.

In today’s post, I would like to explore the term “conspiracy theory” itself.  As it turns out, one can make the case that the term “conspiracy theory” is, oddly enough, something of a conspiracy.

“Conspiracy Theory” as Term of Abuse

In his article “American Pravda:  How the CIA Invented ‘Conspiracy Theories,’” Ron Unz noted that use of the “highly loaded phrase” “conspiracy theory” is reserved for those theories, whether plausible or fanciful, that do not possess the endorsement stamp of establishmentarian approval.”

As I write, the U.S. and nearly every other developed nation in the world us under lockdown orders due to COVID19.  This lockdown, we are told, is for our own good.  Anyone who doubts this and raises the possibility that there’s something fishy about a world-wide effort to quarantine, not the sick, but the healthy, to effectively shut down the most advanced economies on Earth, and to float ideas about digitally tracking everyone through smartphone apps is dismissed as someone peddling dangerous conspiracy theories.

According to the article in The New Yorker, if you don’t buy the establishment’s official coronavirus narrative, you’re a spreader of dangerous misinformation.  Now it is not the purpose of this post to lend credence to any of the so-called conspiracy theories mentioned in the New Yorker article, neither is it my intention to dismiss them out of hand.  But what is worth pointing out is that, the New Yorker is more than willing to dismiss the alternate explanations as “conspiracy theory” and those who advocate them as “conspiracy theorists,” all the while never raising any questions about the extraordinary and unprecedented measures that the establishment is united in claiming are necessary to combat the virus.

Take, for example, a remarkable statement made by Dr. Dan Erickson in what has become a viral video, one that has garnered over 2.8 million views in less than a week.  In his briefing, Dr. Erickson said this at the 3:23 mark, “Typically, you quarantine the sick. When someone has measles, you quarantine them.  We’ve never seen where we quarantine the healthy. Where you take those without disease and without symptoms and lock them in your home” (emphasis added).

According to Dr. Erickson, we have never focused on quarantining healthy people.  This is in accord with biblical guidelines quarantining. According to the Mosaic Law, those who diagnosed with leprosy after examination by the priest were quarantined.  There was no protocol in the Old Testament for locking down Israel to prevent the spread of leprosy.  Yet all we’ve heard from the mainstream news and official government sources of the past month plus is about the necessity of locking everyone in their homes for an undetermined period of time.

American patriot Patrick Henry surely was correct when he wrote, “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.  Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.”  Liberty is a precious and rare jewel, one found but rarely in the whole history of the human race.  One won only at great cost.  And those who seek to use coronavirus as an excuse to take Americans’ liberty, whether it’s Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, or any one of several American governors, ought to be viewed with suspicion.

But, of course, the New Yorker doesn’t ask questions about the motives of those who want to lock Americans in their homes.  The New Yorker doesn’t ask questions about how it is that these lockdowns have been achieved on a worldwide basis. The New Yorker doesn’t even question, at least not in this article, whether the lockdowns are even needed or if, perhaps, they are even harmful as Dr.Erickson suggested in his briefing.

No. Instead what the New Yorker does is go after what is, at least in the minds of the author and the editors, the low hanging fruit of people who claim that 5G spreads the virus.  For my part, I don’t have enough information to judge the merits of the claims about there being a link between 5G and coronavirus or other health issues.  But the New Yorker finds it easy to go after these people while ignoring other, serious and not so easily dismissed questions about the global coronavirus lockdown.

The New Yorker is an example of mainstream, establishment journalism.  And very clearly, the establishment line is that lockdowns are the only way to prevent a new black death from occurring right here in 21^st century America.  Could this be an example of what Ron Unz describes as the use of the “conspiracy theory” label to suppress ideas the establishment wants to keep out the public’s mind?

Writes Unz,

Based on an important FOIA disclosure, the book’s [Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance deHaven-Smith, University of Texas Press, 2013] headline revelation was that the CIA was very likely responsible for the widespread introduction of “conspiracy theory” as a term of political abuse, having orchestrated that development as a deliberate means of influencing public opinion.

During the mid-1960s there had been increasing public skepticism about the Warren Commission findings that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been solely responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination, and growing suspicions that top-ranking American leaders had also been involved. So as a means of damage control, the CIA distributed a secret memo to all its field offices requesting that they enlist their media assets in efforts to ridicule and attack such critics as irrational supporters of “conspiracy theories.” Soon afterward, there suddenly appeared statements in the media making those exact points, with some of the wording, arguments, and patterns of usage closely matching those CIA guidelines. The result was a huge spike in the pejorative use of the phrase, which spread throughout the American media, with the residual impact continuing right down to the present day. Thus, there is considerable evidence in support of this particular “conspiracy theory” explaining the widespread appearance of attacks on “conspiracy theories” in the public media.

The American public was not buying the loan gunman conclusion of the Warren Commission and something needed to be done to redirect public attention.  In the U.S. the First Amendment protects free speech, so there was no way the government could simply ban news organizations or publishers from putting out articles and books questioning the official explanation of the Kennedy assassination.  A more subtle approach was needed.  What is the CIA could work with media influencers to vaccinate the public against counter explanations by getting people to view explanations not in agreement with the official line as nutty conspiracy theories?  Let the conspiracy theorists talk all they want.  They’re wasting their time, because all intelligent people just know their wrong.  How do they know the “conspiracy theorists” are wrong?  They read it in their newspaper which ran articles written by people working on behalf of the CIA!

Events Do Not Explain Themselves

John Robbins made the important point – I do not have the reference for this other than to say it’s in one of his recorded lectures – that events do not explain themselves but must themselves be explained.  This gives tremendous power to those who do the explaining.

People lie and people make mistakes is another maxim of John Robbins.  When we consider these two concepts – the necessity of explaining events and the possibility that those who are doing the explaining are either mistaken or lying – it should become clear that as Christians we need to be very careful to be Bereans when evaluating any claims we read in the press, whether it’s something we read in the mainstream press or an article or blog post or podcast from the alternate media.

But unlike the rest of the world whose options – empiricism (trust in what you see), rationalism (trust in your own ideas about reality) or skepticism (disbelief that knowledge is possible) – never can furnish them with truth, the Christian has the infallible, inerrant Word of God by which he can interpret and explain the events going on around him.

Martin Luther called this the Scriftprinzip, the writing principle.  In his essay “Christ and Civilization,” John Robbins quoted Luther on this point:

Putting aside all human writings, we should spend all the more and all the more persistent labor on Holy Scriptures alone…. Or tell me, if you can, who is the final judge when statements of the fathers contradict themselves? In this event the judgment of Scripture must decide the issue, which cannot be done if we do not give Scripture the first place…so that it [the Bible] is in itself the most certain, most easily understood, most plain, is its own interpreter, approving, judging, and illuminating all the statements of all men…. Therefore nothing except the divine words are to be the first principles for Christians; all human words are conclusions drawn from them and must be brought back to them and approved by them.

As Christians, we must always evaluate the statements of all men, whether related to the current COVID19 pandemic or any other claims we find the news media, against what the Scriptures tell us.

The current consensus among those in the establishment is that everyone must be put under quarantine – house arrest seems more appropriate – to prevent the spread of the disease and mass death.  But very clearly this violates the norms set down in Scripture for quarantine.  In the Bible, only those who were confirmed sick were quarantined.  There was no procedure for locking down Israel to prevent the spread of leprosy or any other disease.

Those who advocate locking down everyone – whether sick or healthy – to prevent additional cases of coronavirus ought to be regarded with suspicion.  Perhaps they are simply ignorant of what the Bible teaches about quarantines, in which case they are mistaken.  On the other hand, maybe they know the lockdowns being put in place are improper and ineffective and have some ulterior motive in mind.  That is to say, they are lying to the public and are actively dangerous and possibly involved in some sort of conspiracy.

The good news for Christians is that we don’t need to be experts on immunology or virology to be able to intelligently evaluate the truth claims of various experts.  If an expert makes a claim about coronavirus and advises a course of action that is not in accord with the Scriptures, we can safely dismiss that man’s advice as either mistaken or a lie.  Further, whether those who advocate an unscriptural course of action relative to coronavirus are merely mistaken or actively lying to us, they ought to be regarded with suspicion.  It is possible, wittingly or not, that they may be part of a larger conspiracy to defraud ordinary Americans of their liberty and property.