Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

I know that last week I said I was going to skip the very long introduction, though I did also say that there were some bits that needed to be explained...so we're going to cover the entire 40-page introduction in this post. There are some points that need to be covered as I think it gives us some insight into the author himself. One of my academic interests in this subject is how people got into it. What motivates a person to wake up one day and accept the conspiracy world as true. With Robison and Allen before him; the motivating factor seems to be a loss of control over the world. Not personal control but the shifting of the status quo for which they enjoyed an elevated position. In both works, the authors try their best to explain how it is that the world had changed around them and both blame it on nefarious controllers. So, with Cooper, it's going to be more interesting (hopefully).  The first 20 pages are a family history which is just biographical. It's not that int

Well, we did it. It took us nine months, but we have closed the back cover on the first book to warn us of the dangers of a private club of 18th-century skeptics. So what did we learn? Well, we learned that conspiracy theory books are pretty much the same throughout time. Remember this is the first book to call the Illuminati out and it reads like a slightly better-written version of the books that get popped out today. This is an interesting difference because Robison doesn't have access to the vocabulary or the concepts that we do. Otherwise, there isn't a substantial difference other than the historical references that peppered Gary Allen's book. Yet they are still arguing against the same thing, the encroachment of "liberalism." The funny thing about that is Allen would be Robison's enemy, I don't think that Allen would understand Robison's complaints. As much as I dislike Gary Allen's book and the ideas of the John Birch Society, I don't t

" Nor can it be said that these are vain fears. We know that the enemy is working among us, and that there are many appearances in these kingdoms which strongly resemble the contrivance of this dangerous Association." It's nice that it cannot be said that this is the case. It isn't exactly a vain fear, the fear that Robison has is without a warrant, but his fear is not the Illuminati. The fear is that the world is changing around him and he can't accept it. The fear is that the world is now more literate than it has ever been and new ideas are being tossed around that aren't the orthodoxy that he grew up with. Yes, Robison has a real fear, but the vanity is in thinking that the Illuminati are out there trying to target him.  For once we actually get a name of a book that is widely available even now, Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason." Here's what Robison claims about the book, " Till Paine's Age of Reason appeared, the most sceptical wr

 In this post, I'm left with a weird choice. I could power through to the end of the book and just say, "boom we're done." In fact, that's what I planned to do, but the conclusion isn't wrapping up the way I thought it was going to. Robison is writing a proper conclusion, not a call to arms like his conspiracy theorist progeny. He's plodding through the points that he thinks  he's made throughout the work and then gives what he feels is the proper observation. The problem I have is that there isn't much new here to say, and this conclusion is over forty pages (by the pdf) long. I'm not willing to trudge back through the conclusion like I'm playing Halo 3; however, it's also a disservice to the readers who have been with me for this entire book. So, we'll break this down into two posts, with a third post being the wrap-up for the entire book.  I'm also going to skip over his retread unless there's something I've noticed o