8:00AM
Rehabilitating a Conspiracy Theory
Friday, December 17, 2010 at 8:00AM | by Otter Here, in writing about the Resurrection (which I do NOT mean to debunk), I got into the idea of conspiracy theories, with an eye on the Gospel of Matthew's account of the tomb-guards at the Resurrection (Matthew 28: 11-15)
I wrote:
Conspiracy theories are just the many ways one has of casting doubt on or even co-opting contrary evidence.
A correspondent writes:
Can something that's been co-opted be rehabilitated or reclaimed?
Depends. Generally not. A man accused of sexual harassment will deny it whether he did it or not, which is why it's both an insidious crime and an insidious charge. It's possible that over time a man might live it down, recover the trust of the community where his word might not be tainted by the memory of that charge. But it'd be a difficult time, and a long one, and a forgiving community.
The government can say, "No, look, seriously, nothing crashed in the desert!" and all the conspiracy theorists nod and say, "As expected. Total denial. Why can't the government admit the truth?" No rehabilitation there. Where all evidence or testimony against a conspiracy theorist becomes evidence of the conspiracy, really, you've got no way out. Well, until either the theorists produce credible evidence or the deniers own up to their coverup.
In the case of the Resurrection (or any other religious claim that doesn't fairly submit itself to the scrutiny of the skeptic and disinterested), I'd say, No, that can't be rehabilitated either, but for a different reason.
The government can say, "No, look, seriously, nothing crashed in the desert!" and all the conspiracy theorists nod and say, "As expected. Total denial. Why can't the government admit the truth?" No rehabilitation there. Where all evidence or testimony against a conspiracy theorist becomes evidence of the conspiracy, really, you've got no way out. Well, until either the theorists produce credible evidence or the deniers own up to their coverup.
In the case of the Resurrection (or any other religious claim that doesn't fairly submit itself to the scrutiny of the skeptic and disinterested), I'd say, No, that can't be rehabilitated either, but for a different reason.
Once you say, "The Bible is factually accurate, always," then the tomb-guards are lying. There IS a cover up. But by making that move ("The Bible is always factually accurate") you've essentially said that the tomb guards do not have the opportunity to recover their integrity. The Bible said you took a bribe, so that's what you did. For the tomb guard to say "No, I didn't, I really saw the disciples stealing the body and taking it off to Galilee" is just further evidence of the conspiracy.
Once you commit to "The Bible is always factually true," you might as well stop talking about "evidence" and "argument" and "objective reality." It's a one way ticket on the bias confirmation express. So you really, really have to know what you're doing when you take the Bible on those terms. It's possible to win the battle and lose the war, to gain some support for the factuality of the Resurrection but totally devalue the status of "fact" while doing it.
Once you commit to "The Bible is always factually true," you might as well stop talking about "evidence" and "argument" and "objective reality." It's a one way ticket on the bias confirmation express. So you really, really have to know what you're doing when you take the Bible on those terms. It's possible to win the battle and lose the war, to gain some support for the factuality of the Resurrection but totally devalue the status of "fact" while doing it.
Reader Comments (2)
I'm actually a little confused about how YOU value fact. When you are urging your students to forsake their contemporary ideas about truth--namely, that it can only be approached via "facts" and "arguments" and "evidence"--when they read and try to interpret scripture, it often seems that you view the contemporary idea of truth as reductionist and inadequate. But then when you discuss the resurrection or the authority of scripture, you make arguments that appeal to concepts of facts and evidence, and we debate probabilities and likelihoods in a very familiar, contemporary fashion.
Do you simply put on your "ancients cap" when you interpret scripture and then take it off when you resume your regular, modern/post-modern life?
Good critique again, Susan.
My own target is really not factuality so much as the claim that the Resurrection is a historical fact, or the Israelite Conquest, or a Young Earth Creation in six days or whatever.
I push my students to approach the text as an ancient one, without the excessive (in my view) commitment to a hard fast distinction between factual and "figurative" language that comes from out own backgrounds. But my target with fundamentalism is a carelessness about what makes a fact a fact. The Resurrection is not properly speaking a fact: it's a story. The interesting question is not whether it's a factual story (it can't be, given it's form and characteristics) but whether it's a living story.
From my iPod, with all the typos pertaining thereunto...