Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

Our next book is going to be the 1972 “memoir” The Satan Seller by Mike Warnke …with David Balsiger and Les Jones. I’ve chosen this book for a few reasons. The primary reason I’m choosing this book is that it’s the first domino in the debacle that will be called “The Satanic Panic.” We know the Satanic Panic from the 1980s and 90s; but the origins of it go back to the 1970s. During the 1970s a few things come together to create this panic that would sweep through the English-speaking world. The sexual revolution is one, I don’t have the expertise to really speak on the causes of the revolution, but I can write about the effect—women wanting to work…well not work, no one wants to work. They wanted autonomy and to break the chain of having to be considered a housewife. Once they left the house in pursuit of their own lives, someone needed to watch the kids and Christian men in 1970s America would rather be damned than raise their own children. The response was to scream about how wom...

We have reached the end of the Webster book and like most of the conspiracy books that we cover, we can say that we’ve read it. Like all conspiracy theory books, the main issue with the theory that Webster is trying to build is that of coherence. The book is a good example of an argument that is all emotion wrapped in a veneer of facts. We’ve spent over a year reading this book so let me ask one question: what is the conspiracy’s goal? I simply cannot answer this question because Webster has never provided it. Are they trying to destroy England? Sure, but that’s only in coincidence with other revolutions that they are planning. I’ll say this for Cooper’s book—in the few chapters that he was coherent about the conspiracy, it was clear that he was talking about a UFO assisted world conspiracy. He had about the same soundness with his theory that Webster had, but his conspiracy theory had a clear goal. Webster seems to vacillate between revolution for revolution’s sake and a revolutio...