Conspiracies
In the early days of the pandemic Phil was returning home from a quiet walk when he saw his next-door neighbour. She had just returned from picketing the local hospital. The hospital had no overflow of covid patients. It was lying, the media were lying. Covid did not exist. The whole thing was a conspiracy to reduce the world’s population because wealthy oligarchs thought the world was overcrowded.
He knew of such theories, impossible for him to believe but neither proven nor disproven. He read on the internet if it was not disproved, it was possible; if it was disproved, it might be a conspiracy to conceal vital information. Was the Earth round? Had a human landed on the Moon? Did fluoride cause autism? Facts were not always facts.
Phil spoke with friends, family, colleagues. No one admitted believing them. The only people who admitted believing conspiracy theories were the ones promoting them on the internet. Why were many people refusing facts? There was one way to find the answer: Phil had to look into the human soul to understand the human need to believe in the unbelievable.
Phil entered the astral plane and examined his soul.
He looked into the souls of those nearby.
All, including his own, harbored at least one extreme, unprovable belief which ignored facts. Even if nearly unconscious, there was a belief in bizarre claims. Phil needed to learn more, so he projected into the afterlife and spoke with the deceased. They told him they had believed in conspiracies only when alive. In the afterlife, there was no need for such beliefs.
Phil realized people needed to believe in conspiracies only when alive. The belief that something unprovable was responsible for their misfortunes kept people going. It was better than religion.
So Phil, to really help humanity, created the Church of Conspiracies, which listed in its scripture every conspiracy theory he knew of. The Church rapidly grew, soon bursting at its seams. Followers understood they needed to believe in a conspiracy to be happy. A new conspiracy was described every Sunday service, followed by talk groups and, of course, Sunday School for the children.