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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 149035" data-attributes="member: 1054">No.I do, however, believe in conspiratorless conspiracies, that is, things which have all the traits of a vast conspiracy except for the fact no one is doing any conspiring. Emergent properties.  A lot of people walking in the same direction can look like a parade -- but it isn't.People who believe in conspiracies are very often people who don't understand evolution. (I say 'understand' rather than 'believe in', because evolution isn't something to believe in. Not believing in evolution is like not believing in gravity. It's happening all around us. It's why pennicillin doesn't work as well as it used to.) I remember reading a conspiracy site (a right wing one, but there's plenty of left-wing ones as well) where they basically said "Only an idiot would believe that these things just HAPPENED!"Well, they did "just happen". Conspiracy theories make the world seem SAFE, even when the conspirators are plotting or causing the deaths of millions. If there's someone BEHIND all the evil, all the terror, all the pain, then, it can be STOPPED. But if there isn't -- if it's all just random and uncontrolled -- then we can never be safe. It's better, in some people's minds, to have *someone* in charge -- even someone evil. The thought of a universe which is not malign, but merely *indifferent*, is terrifying to a lot of people.Too bad. Fact is, no one is in charge, life is random, and anything which happens to you is probably a coincidence. <a href="http://www.mrlizard.com/coinc.html" target="_blank">http://www.mrlizard.com/coinc.html</a></blockquote>

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