According to the Times last week there is an order of Catholic nuns in Spain which is under siege by the Catholic church. Branded heretics and excommunicated they are locked in a legal battle with the church over the ownership of three convents. In turn, they claim that the Pope is a heretic. Long gone are the harmonious days when the nuns won prizes for making truffle and chocolate delicacies.

The Sisters say that they are “besieged” by their enemy, Mario Iceta, the Archbishop of Burgos. They believe he sends spies to observe them and that he has bugged their mobile phones, which they left in a separate room as a precaution before speaking to the reporter from The Times. The nuns are on alert as, several days ago, a “spy” drone flew over their convent.

“Don Mario”, as they call the archbishop, is pitted against the formidable Sister Isabel de la Trinidad, the mother superior. “We are at war with Don Mario but also with all that is the Vatican and Rome, all the hierarchical structure,” she says. “It is a criminal organisation.” Hostilities with the archbishop erupted in May when Isabel announced  theological differences with Rome. The community of Poor Clare sisters, then numbering 15, published a 70-page letter declaring that the Roman Catholic Church had been in error following the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and that every pope since Pius XII (1939 – 1958) has been a heretic. Excommunication and an expulsion order swiftly followed. Qué sorpresa.

So then, the Pope has reaffirmed that he is indeed catholic and that the Catholic Church is the one true church - beware counterfeits, especially if bought on eBay. It confirms his right to pontificate on so many things affecting life and death. But Islam is the one true religion, Buddhism leads you on the path to complete enlightenment and Pol Pot was the incarnation of the one true communist ideal, or was it Marx or Mao Tse Tung? Based on such mutually contradictory absolutist, evidence-free views, whether ancient or modern, societies are run and peoples’ individual views are trampled under foot.

Of course absolutism is a wonderful thing for those who believe its claims. It avoids the need to wrestle with the reason why something may be true. It just is. And indeed, the churches have become less full where the certainties of religion are not emphasised. Obviously many people like being told by a higher authority how to live their lives. Hence the roaring success of the protestant Pentecostal churches, particularly those in America – who are also supporters of Trump.

It seems that in general the poorer you are and the more part of a minority, the more likely you are to believe weird explanations for the things which happen. But according to all the European surveys, when it comes to conspiracy theories, the Muslim community as a whole is in the forefront. All the Western governments and big businesses are conspiring against them. Unsurprisingly, we are told by former jihadists that they are trained deliberately to encourage such beliefs by the wider community. The spreading of disinformation is as much a tool of terrorists as it is for conventional wars. It keeps the imagined grievances alive and, with them, the wish to help, financially and otherwise, to overturn the ‘oppressive’ order, even if that is a democracy.

The thug in the street behaves badly in the expectation that he can fight his way out of problems. He may take on political attitudes, such as those held by the bully-boys of the National Front. What he will be unlikely to do, however, is commit suicide attacks. That is not a part of his mentality, as you have to be willing to behave altruistically - selflessly to die for a cause - in order to do that and thugs aren’t generally altruistically inclined. But religious zealots are.

By refusing to keep an open mind or seriously to consider competing alternatives, you can quite easily become part of an ‘in-crowd’ of fellow ‘thinkers’, particularly in these days of social media. And the more firmly (fanatically?) you believe in and live by the precepts of that group, the more important you are likely to be regarded within it.

Some believers may indeed have an importance which they would never achieve in the real world. Which also means that the acquisition of such importance can become a major part of the motivation for so many religious people, politicians and conspiracy theorists.

As we know, conspiracy theories abound for every head-line grabbing event even if, in reality, it has an obvious or banal explanation. For them, important events in life, like the shooting of JFK should have explanations that could have been written by Ian Fleming. For such things, there is always a higher, malign, guiding hand – its a conspiracy by those ‘really’ in power.

For those having even a passing acquaintance with science and the scientific method, however, it is clear that in discussing our opinions with others, it pays not to confine ourselves to those who are likely to agree with us. It also makes sense to look at the whole of the available evidence rather than only at the subset of it which supports our view. But all of this presumes a degree of self-awareness and judgement which, by definition, is not present in people with closed minds.

And now we have a bunch of conspiracy theorists put forward by Trump to be in charge of his government departments. Robert F Kennedy is to be in charge of health. This is a man who is absolutely certain that vaccinations cause autism – a now completely discredited theory promoted in a paper written by Andrew Wakefield, a former British doctor (now struck off) and originally published in the Lancet, but since withdrawn. Kennedy also believes that fluoride in water is “associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease". None of which is true, unless the level of fluoridation is truly astronomical. He also tweeted: “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Again, absolutely no evidence in support.

And then there is Chris Wright, the CEO of a fracking company who is to be Trump’s energy secretary. He is someone who believes climate change fears have been whipped up in a conspiracy to deny the oil companies their profits. For him, net zero is 'sinister'. Trump has said “Drill baby drill”. So then a complete lack of scientific method in all of their thinking.

But what if there is no scientific expertise on which we can rely to support a political proposal? Such as those recurring arguments about “tax and spend” or reducing the size of government. Where can we get evidence from? We normally look at the past and infer that, in broadly similar circumstances, we will have the same outcomes as last time. But circumstances are never the same, and so this approach can be unreliable and, even, thanks to the butterfly effect, very unreliable.

For example, in 2020, we all breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden won. But if Trump had won? We now know that there would have been no allegation of a ‘Steal’ and no January 6th insurrection. The request to find him the extra votes he needed in Georgia would not have happened. The classified material in Mr Trump’s bathroom would not have been the subject of inquiry. And in the absence of the prosecutions of Trump, the Supreme Court would not have been asked to extend the idea of presidential immunity. Without the intervening four years during which his most rabid supporters have been able to plot their next moves, there may have been more moderates on his staff to temper the president’s worst impulses. And no Robert Kennedy or Elon Musk. And in this year’s presidential campaign, the Americans would have been voting for a new slate of both Republican and Democratic candidates, chosen after the winnowing carried out by party primaries.

Of course, it’s also possible that even worse things would have happened. We cannot know. And that’s precisely the point. We can only ever make our best guess and hope, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the future will be very much like the past.

Paul Buckingham

17 November 2024