#eschatology and death cults and conspiracy theories probably

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

13, trying to prevent yaz from spiralling when they get separated: i need you to do a deepdive into eschatology

[taperwolf]

One of the most treasured pieces of my book collection is the 1989 compendium The Fringes of Reason. It originated as a special issue of the Whole Earth Review, the magazine that spun out of the old Whole Earth Catalog, looking at ideas and beliefs on and past the edge of scientific examination — the New Age, parapsychology, UFOs and saucer cults, eschatology, flat eartherism, and conspiracy theory. It runs just over 200 pages in 8.5x11, unlike the giant oversized and overstuffed Catalogs, but it uses the classic WEC/WER article-and-book review format to give detailed overviews and access to deeper sources. It's alternatingly overly credulous and witheringly skeptical — the articles and reviews are all signed, so you know who's believing what.

One of the articles that stays with me is by Robert Anton Wilson, who is probably best known as co-author of the Illuminatus! trilogy. The title is "Beyond True & False: A Sneaky Quiz with a Subversive Commentary". It starts simply with a 33 question true-or-false quiz, and then breaks down the very idea of answering any of them as definitively true or false.

As one example, he makes distinctions between truth and usefulness when considering scientific laws and the known or unknown locality of those laws. The proposition that "Water boils at 100° Centigrade" is true — on Earth, at sea level, but demonstrably false as soon as you take measurements in, say, Denver. "F=ma" — as far as we can tell, as best as we can measure, but we don't have proof that it still holds everywhere in the universe, or at all times.

The bit that most sticks in my mind, though, is the following quote, in regards to those who deny the proposition, "The Nazi government killed six million Jews":

"I merely observe that a conspiracy that can deceive us about 6,000,000 deaths can deceive us about anything, and that it takes a great leap of faith for Holocaust Revisionists to believe World War II happened at all, or that Franklin Roosevelt did serve as President from 1933 to 1945, or that Marilyn Monroe was more 'real' than King Kong or Donald Duck…. If we believe in a conspiracy of that size, we cannot fully believe in anything else, including the evidence that led us to believe in such a conspiracy."