What if there are factors besides the claims of the gospel itself that are making it hard or impossible for the unbelieving world to accept?| Baptist News Global
by Susan Trollinger and William Trollinger We are pleased to announce that our article, “From Creationism to QAnon: Answers in Genesis and the Culture Wars,” has been published in the June issue of…| Righting America
If I warn you about the dangers of red flags, am I an alarmist? How to recognise this tactic Those who use this tactic insist that the current scientific consensus on some issue is corrupt. This, they claim, is because a group of scientists has colluded to hype the position which favours its own interests. […]| Science or not?
The Epstein mythology can be roughly defined as the popular belief, nearly ubiquitous on social media and adjacent outlets, that the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein orchestrated a sprawling child sex-trafficking operation.| Compact
This issue of A Public Witness opens up the Epstein case to explore the dangers of phony, conspiratorial self-righteousness and how it captured so many conservative Christian figures.| Word&Way
Election officials across the country have been under attack since 2020, falsely accused of conspiring to steal or rig the last presidential election. These attacks stepped up to a dangerous degree recently, with officials in five states receiving letters containing a white powder that, in some cases, was found to be fentanyl. William Brangham reports.| PBS News
The original version of fake news was called propaganda — originally a means of disseminating the Catholic religion, then from about 1914, a news item meant to promote a political point of view. Pr…| Dowsing for Divinity
The sad announcement of Joe Biden's advanced cancer diagnosis has thrown fuel onto recriminations and speculations about his condition during his presidency, especially with the publication of a new book on the subject by none other than Jake Tapper. Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, on a Sunday interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, disavowed the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of notorious sex trafficker Joseph Epstein, spurring an outcr...| The American Mind
Volume 14, Issue 5, 1–102, May 2025 ❧ Fuller, Steve. 2025. “Elon Musk Meets Max Weber: The Logic of Dogelectics.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 14 (5): 1–6. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-9MO.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Here’s a question for anyone who is seriously into conspiracy theories: Are there any conspiracy theories that you reject and if so, why do you reject them?| Shadow To Light
Let me begin by thanking Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier for his insightful discussion (2025), which has helped me think through this material more carefully and explore ways to extend it. In the following, I will first make a few quick clarificatory remarks to minimize the danger of confusion. I then take up what I take to be the most pressing response Stamatiadis-Bréhier offers to my misgivings about the epistemic use of genealogies to debunk conspiracy theories. Lastly, I briefly respond to ...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
What it means to live an optimized life and why Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint just doesn’t get it| Coda Story
But we are also tasked with knowing truth from lies, real hope from false hope, the breath of the Spirit from the suffocation of deceit.| Christianity Today
In “Rethinking Conspiracy Theories: Method First! A Reply to Shields”, Sanja Dembić pushes back against elements of my article “Rethinking Conspiracy Theories” (2022). Dembić starts her reply by giving a clear and accurate reconstruction of my main argument. I present a novel critique of generalism—the view that conspiracy theories are epistemically defective by their very nature. (To indicate that this is the relevant meaning, I’ll continue with Quassim Cassam’s convention of...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I thank Kurtis Hagen for his reply (2025). It is valuable for people with very different perspectives like us to candidly lay out our disagreements. While Hagen makes several points that merit…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
On the Epstein files rug-pull.| The Dispatch
When Tony Blair says, “But honestly, I mean, conspiracy theories,” he appears to be encouraging the dismissal of the theory in question simply by suggesting that it counts as a conspiracy theory.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In her new novel, Panic, Catherine Jinks provides a timely take on online mobs, conspiracy theorists, and sovereign citizens.| Newtown Review of Books
Abstract| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Volume 13, Issue 12, 1–55, December 2024 ❧ de Lorenzo, Víctor. 2024 “Towards a New Materialism: A Comment on Armstrong’s ‘Life, Mind and Matter’.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 13…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
I am very grateful to Kurtis Hagen (2024) for pressing me on this topic. Working through his criticisms helped me to refine, modify, and improve my thoughts about where particularist allegations…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In my last post—a short introduction to this series of blogs I’m calling Bad Theology—I asked why evangelical Christians seemed so susceptible to the blandishments of Donald Trump and his allies. W…| Peripatetic Pastor
Tim Alberta opens his bestselling book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (HarperCollins 2023), by recounting a February 2021interview with Chris W…| Peripatetic Pastor
Michigan's part-time clerks, who are trained every four years and have limited resources in running elections, are at a breaking point.| Stateline
By Rylie Oswald John Kenneth White, author of Grand Old Unraveling, talks about combating political conspiracy theories during election season in a Author John Kenneth White talks about combatting conspiracy theories in a digital age.| University Press of Kansas
The legendary attorney Vincent Bugliosi, who devoted a great deal of time to exhaustive debunking of JFK conspiracy theories, once asked an audience he was addressing how many of them distrusted th…| The Propaganda Professor
We might think we know all about every U.S. president in history. But there are still a few unsolved mysteries about past presidents and their affairs.| Grunge
Rapper Snoop Dogg was accused of wearing a "satanic" necklace at the Paris 2024 Olympics. He debunked the claims, but some fans weren't convinced.| Grunge
Someone sent me one of these ridiculous videos from some self-proclaimed "academic" proving that "Jesus" is a bastardization word meant to destroy his true name: Jeshua. I'm sure you've run across these recently yourself. We now live in the world where everything is a conspiracy, especially in Christianity (the shape of the earth, the number of books in the Bible, the name of the Savior, the color of Jews, the origin of the Jews, those evil Catholic Bishops trying to suppress the real Gnostic Je| Douglas Van Dorn
I saw a great short take today from one of my favorite, uh, let me just call him guys on Twitter/Telegram today. He’s actually the guy who broke the Ukraine-USA bio-weapon’s labs story, back when the deep state was promoting their 60s love-in for Ukraine.His comments were about Taylor Swift and the NFL. And for the records, yes, it gets old, as this Babylon Bee article and about 100 other brilliant memes that have come out today say so well. Before I let you see his piece, here’s a tin...| Douglas Van Dorn
By Douglas Van Dorn (Dec 19, 2023)"You Are An Obsession"In this post, I want to deal with a threat to the church that few seem to want to talk about. Have you ever had or seen or known a stalker? Have you ever been one yourself? I’m not talking about someone you don’t know outside your house trying to break in and kill you or anything, although that would also fit the larger context of my point in this post. I’m talking about that person who was so obsessed they could think or do nothin...| Douglas Van Dorn
In 2023, M R. X. Dentith edited a special issue—”Conspiracy Theory Theory”—of Social Epistemology (37:4). SERRC readers are familiar with Dentith’s philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory—work…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
In 2023, M R. X. Dentith edited a special issue—”Conspiracy Theory Theory”—of Social Epistemology (37:4). SERRC readers are familiar with Dentith’s philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory—work…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Fervent, overly determined techno-optimism has much in common with the ideation of conspiracy theories relating to advanced technologies. In fact, advocates of techno-optimist futures, and the proponents of conspiracy theories such as the supposed causal relationship between 5G and COVID-19, share common cognitive, dispositional and contextual characteristics.| Matthew Moran
In February 2023, All Together Now published a report (see below) detailing the result of the Agent C Project Pilot, as independently evaluated by Urbis. According to Urbis the Agent ... Read more| All Together Now
Sweet Baby Inc doesn't even remotely do what many think it does, but on the modern internet, that doesn't matter| aftermath.site
For many philosophers, it doesn’t seem right to say that we are mainly in the business of trying to describe our concepts. We are, at our best, trying to improve them. ‘Conceptual engineering’ describes this vision of philosophical practice. It is not hard to see its appeal. This metaphilosophical orientation gives us a clear mission that caters to what many take to be our distinct skill set: a combination of conceptual analysis and normative argument. … [please read below the rest of...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Audible Inc., the world’s largest producer and provider of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word entertainment, in conjunction with The Great Courses, is creating audio-only, non-fiction content for Audible’s millions of listeners. The first three titles include Dr. Michael Shermer’s new and original course on: Conspiracies & Conspiracy Theories: What We Should Believe and Why. Order […]| Michael Shermer
Before COVID, I was probably best known for three things: I wrote a bunch of mostly funny books, I’d given a few TED talks, and I liked cats and profanity (equally and a lot). Never once, not even in a drunken stupor or a| Jenna McCarthy
Why are they all blurry? In a recent article, Michael Shermer says about UFOs: UFOlogists claim that extraordinary evidence exists in the form of tens of thousands of UFO sightings. But SETI scient…| Entirely Useless
I’ve been aware of Scientology’s history at Saint Hill Manor near East Grinstead, Sussex, UK for many years. What I hadn’t realised is that several other occult/esoteric/religious organisations are…| The BS Historian
Conspiracy theories never seem to go away. Especially the ones that are said to involve clandestine plots of the United States government. It seems that many Americans believe high-level members of…| Reflections