Beliefs Are Only Crazy If They Don’t Catch On
Wholehearted belief is both one of the least insane things there is and the first step down the road to madness.
About 2,000 years ago there were as many people who believed in the story of Christ’s resurrection as believe in the Reptilian conspiracy today. I don’t mean to equate the two, but a troubling percentage of ultra-conservative Christians are also open to the idea of a Reptilian conspiracy, the notion that the famous and powerful are really lizards in human skin.
Out of the dozens of Reptilian conspiracy people I’ve spoken with, all have been self-described conservative Christians. Most aren’t open about their beliefs because they know how odd some of it sounds to the unenlightened. They see themselves as persecuted in the way early Christians were persecuted for their own odd beliefs.
I think Christ himself said it best:
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. — Matthew 5:11
I recently had the opportunity to speak with a conservative Christian who believes Reptiles may be among us. He’s not convinced, but he is open to the possibility.
This young man invited me on to his podcast, Lizard News Network, ostensibly to talk about my book, Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult, but the topic that interested him most was my ethics and approach to the divine after he discovered I wasn’t a person of faith.
Belief and Disbelief
This is a native Texan who was able to get sober because of his belief in Jesus. It was a miracle that he witnessed. It was transformative. Jesus gave him a will he didn’t have and this grateful believer used that gift to overcome a personal weakness. His belief comes from experience.
The fact that Jesus had nothing to do with his recovery is meaningless. The fact that his belief in Jesus had everything to do with his recovery is what’s critical.
This was a person teetering on the Reptilian bubble without knowing it. He said things like, “I’ve seen some weird videos,” and “There are things you can’t explain.”
When it comes to videos revealing that many of the rich and powerful are, in fact, Reptilians in disguise, the draw and the interest are undeniable. So much so that people who are open to the Reptilian conspiracy are one coincidence away from conversion.
Wholehearted belief is both one of the least insane things there is and the first step down the road to madness.
Flirting With Insanity Is Dangerous
“Even the most well-adjusted person is holding on to his or her sanity by a greased rope”bytonyrusso.medium.com
He is drawn to the Reptilian conspiracy (as so many conservative Christians tend to be) because he believes it may be an elegant solution to the problem of evil. Evil is in the world because Satan is gathering his armies for the final battle. This is a coordinated force of the damned.
Lots of people believe this without believing in the Reptilian conspiracy, but the appeal of conspiracies of all stripes is that they account for Satan’s army and the promised end times.
According to the stats site, FiveThirtyEight, 64 percent of Republican White Evangelicals believe the War of Armageddon is happening as we speak. My interlocutor did for sure.
Most conspiracy people I’ve spoken with saw Jeffrey Epstein’s death as absolute proof that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor. It was, for them, the final piece of a puzzle they’d been working on for years.
Accepting the Unbelievable
There is a difference between honest belief and being a liar. The tough thing is that religious practice attracts believers as well as liars, and I think we all know this on some level.
There are some people who radiate faith the way others radiate hypocrisy, and we judge who is doing which using only our own biases.
David Icke, one of the most enthusiastic Reptilian conspiracy promotors, is a liar and a charlatan on a Jerry Falwell (Sr. or Jr. you pick) level. The proliferation of professional liars working in the faith industry undermines the entire project.
Yet, millions of people would be baffled by my inability to see the Ickes, Falwalls, and others as the truly insightful beings they claim to be. Even people who don’t agree with them have a hard time accepting that all of their rhetoric is part of a larger con.
After all, if the leaders don’t believe, how can we accept that the followers do?
Ecstasy helps people get and stay sober, it drives people to commit astounding acts of charity and selflessness. It also helps people talk themselves into executing abortion doctors or their own children.
My experience with people across the faith spectrum is we all have an underlying suspicion that others don’t “really” believe things we find ridiculous.
It’s hard to accept the fact that someone’s beliefs could be so drastically out of sync with our own, so we wonder whether they’re being honest about it. The easiest example comes from Abrahamic sects who’ve spent the last, say, 1,500 years slaughtering one another claiming that they all believe in the same god.
And this disconnect works in every direction. The person who interviewed me could not begin to accept that I didn’t believe in God at all. His rationale (which is common as well as tiresome) was that since I wasn’t murdering, raping, or stealing, I must believe in God unconsciously.
This is the chasm that draws my interest because it starts with suspicion and then sews a primal mistrust. The young man didn’t call me a liar, and I don’t think he believed I was a liar as far as I knew.
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The nicest way to put it is that he believed in his heart that I was being disingenuous to myself, creating a reality where it made sense not to accept a higher power. The less-nice way to put it is that he thought I was a little bit crazy, and he might be onto something.
When I say he thinks I’m a little crazy, I don’t mean he’s diagnosing me but rather that, because I’m unreasonable and maybe beyond reason I might be unstable as well.
From his perspective, given all of the ways that God is present in the world and all of the things that he has personally seen, my rejection of the obvious evidence is worrisome. If I can’t see the truth on this one simple point, there’s no telling how I’ll behave. Maybe I am just one hair’s breadth away from going on a raping spree.
But I’m no less concerned about him and his people.
It’s easy to mistrust someone else’s belief
I’ve written recently about the Christian surfing-school teacher who murdered his children to save the world. The members of the murder’s non-denominational church were shocked by the revelation.
I don’t want to harp, but I’ve written in my book and elsewhere that preachers from even mainline conservative Christian sects (like Baptists and Assemblies of God) are in a panic over conspiracy enthusiasts among their flocks.
They’ve been preaching the imminent end of the world for too long and it has undermined their authority among the truest believers.
In their reporting on the aftermath, David Gilbert and Lillian Perlmutter quoted Pastor Tommy Schneider giving a post-murder sermon at the murderer’s church:
“QAnon is wreaking havoc across the nation and it’s wreaking havoc here [motioning to the crowd]. I’ve seen people get destroyed by it. It’s evil straight from the devil. We need to be alert.”
It’s like the opposite of Frankenstein where faith, not science, is the cathartic hubris. I imagine hordes of the faithful stumbling out of their churches to seek and destroy Evil before it crushes the faithful entirely.
There May Not Be Such a Thing as a Sane Superstition
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The Reptilian murder is an ugly story and I can honestly say I felt bad calling this podcast host’s attention to it. Mostly as a warning about how easily the ecstatically faithful are pushed over the edge.
The murderer is an avid churchgoer and former missionary. He was active and well-liked in his congregation, but also open to the idea that evil incarnate had arrived on Earth for the final battle between good and evil.
There was a time before he killed his children that the Reptilian murderer’s beliefs weren’t any different from those of the young man interviewing me.
The constant search for evil incarnate and the prevailing fanaticism for end times evidence will keep leading people inexorably to the conclusion that there are Reptilians among us.
I would be a liar if I didn’t say that I wasn’t a little afraid of anyone who believes that the devil is here and the hour of the lord is at hand. Just as he worried what I would do if I “really” didn’t believe in God, I worry about what happens when people “really” do believe in the imminent end of the world.
Odd but Not Crazy
I struggle against considering mental illness a factor that drives belief. The more people I speak with, the more certain I am that it works the other way around. Mania doesn’t pop into existence fully formed, it is the logical extension of ecstasy. And it does so much good.
Ecstasy helps people get and stay sober, it drives people to commit astounding acts of charity and selflessness. It also helps people talk themselves into executing abortion doctors or their own children.
A Bagel Manifesto
Stories about coming to terms with belief, culture, and the profound sense of loss that no one really cares about bagels anymore.bit.ly
As human beings, we have to believe. Belief is a critical part of our larger intellectual life. We all take much of the world on faith in our own ways. When we stumble upon a key insight that justifies our intuition, that makes belief more like a fact than a hope, it is damn hard to let go.
Our intuition already is a part of us so “confirmed” beliefs make us feel a little more real, a little closer to the divine.
When people call my beliefs stupid, it hurts my feelings. If enough people were to call them stupid, I’d like to think that I could reevaluate them.
But when God himself tells you that the more people laugh at you and persecute you for your beliefs, the more righteous you really are, Reptile Overlords running the planet starts to look a lot more appealing.
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Tony Russo is a journalist and author of “Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult.” Subscribe to his Bagel Manifesto here.