Debunked: Debunkers Trust the Government and Think Everything is Fine

I once knew a woman in Berkeley who informed me that she was gay.

Months later, it came out in conversation that she hadn't actually ever been intimate
with another woman. Also, that she had never been in a relationship with a female.

When I asked her how she knew she was gay, she responded:
"Well I must be: every relationship I have with a man is awful!" :eek:

I've known a few people who liked to think of themselves as anarchists,
but not one who ever actually lived as an anarchist, or anything close.
In fact, not one that could even point me to a good, useful example of successful anarchy.

Do you condone violence against me?
 
I wanted an example of "having no government would be better than having an imperfect government". You believe this but how could you actually know?

Government is violence, I dont want violence against me or people I care about? Do I really have to prove that is ok?

I never claimed what you quoted. I said it was my opinion.

What solution other than a social construct could be a solution to market abuses? Government can be a facilitator for market corruption but I think the vast majority of market abuse and failures comes from individual/private greed and corruption and the government is seen as a hindrance to greed fulfillment.

There is a trend for more opensource knowledge as such. The internet being the main example and all the websites. The public are best equipped for helping the public to become aware of dangerous products etc. The government gives a false sense of security about such things.

To me, it seemed you implied it...but perhaps you simply think decentralized violence is better than centralized violence. I just do not see society being any less violent without government.


Considering how many people government has killed doesnt it follow that no government means that violence wont happen any-more? Ok other violence will happen but that will be easier to stop then government violence is. There would be nothing stopping people employing people to protect them or protecting each other as a community. Ok there may be some attempts at forming gangs but that happens now and there are ways to reduce that without government.

If that were true then current HIV treatments would be made widely available throughout Africa by the drug companies...Perhaps study the polio vaccine and its subsequent eradication for the role government played vs. the private sector.

A big part of the reason Africans are broke seems to be that governments supported their robbery. Both foreign and domestic. People would still want to rob them but without government support it would not be as easy if possible at all.

It is not easy to prove something as axiomatic but still debunked. Are you just trying to debunk what I am saying for some reason or do you really think using violence to try and stop violence is rational??
 
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I'm a debunker....the degree to which they think everything is fine.

Great speech, Mick (it almost seems like it should be delivered, with appropriate reverb, as the climax of a movie...) :)
Screen Shot 2015-02-08 at 11.13.41 PM.png

Solid list of legit grievances...quite a supportable list, too, I'd argue.
(I'm not sure if I totally agree with the drones one
--if we're real sure a foreign national is involved in terrorism against the U.S.--
but that's a complex issue, and definitely not a focus of my post.)


Beautifully articulated! I'm saving it for the next time I'm accused of this...
 
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I'm a debunker. I like finding and exposing bunk. I do it because I enjoy doing it, and because I think it can do some good in terms of helping people not being scared of things that don't exist, and in terms of helping people focus on real issues.

As a debunker, quite often I debunk claims that some "official story" is wrong. For example, the "official story" of the long lasting white lines in the sky is that they are "just contrails". There's a conspiracy theory that they are actually "chemtrails". I've extensively debunked most of the claims of evidence behind this theory.

As a result, I often get the accusation that I'm a "supporter" of the official story, and that I "trust the government", and that I think "everything is fine", and "there's nothing to see here".

This could not be further from the truth.

I don't trust "the government" (and here we are talking about the US government). I most certainly do not trust career politicians. I think a significant quantity of the people in congress are essentially corrupt - working in large part for their own self interests. I think there's a "revolving door" where former politicians go to work in lobbying, or in the industries that they once were responsible for regulating. I think corporations have a huge influence over the formation of legislation.

I most certainly do not think "everything is all right". I think there are major problems both in this country, and in the world at large. I think American foreign policy is overly interventionist, and this has led to significant problems with anti-american sentiment in places like Pakistan that could be a huge issue in the near future, and has contributed to events like 9/11 in the past.

I think the financial system is over extended, under regulated, and twisted and distorted into a pure money-making scheme that does not reflect any kind of economic reality.

I think the war on drugs has resulted in an unconscionably large prison population. I think that is very, very wrong that hundreds of thousands of young people are in jail for essentially victimless crimes. Often they get longer sentences than people who actually killed someone. I think the fact that the prison industry effectively lobbies for longer sentences is utterly disgusting.

I think the rich are getting richer far too fast. I think that wealth inequality is creating deep division in the country, and the race for wealth is a generally corrupting influence all round.

I think Guantanamo should have been closed a long time ago. Clearly there are men there who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that remained detained just because it's politically uncomfortable to release them is really unacceptable.

I think the US has used torture, and likely continues to use it, and this is both morally and legally wrong.

I think that people in government lie. I think they lied about the evidence for WMDs in Iraq in order to create a pretext for war. I think thousands of people died because of these lies.

I think the Obama administration's targeted assassination of people without trial, specially via drone/ missile attack with collateral killings, is a bad thing.

I think campaign finance reform is at the root of many of these issues. Ultimately legislation is required to fix them, but the political process is broken and corrupt.

I don't trust the government. I don't think everything is fine. And I've not met a debunker who does.

I invite other debunkers, skeptics, etc, to describe their degree of trust in government, and the degree to which they think everything is fine.
I'm new here but wanted to weigh in on what you said. I don't think there is a single thing I disagree with. I might go a bit further though. I have read many books about the US and western intelligence services. I include the Mossad in this group. I also have a close relative who was very high up in one of the main alphabet agencies and although she obviously won't share state secrets with me, she's given me enough information to ascertain certain things on my own. Primarily that the things you mentioned Mick are merely the tip of the iceberg. Of course there is a reason these agencie's activities are "secret". One can only imagine the true state of affairs "behind the curtain" if you will. One thing that comes to mind for me is 911. While I don't consider myself a CT I feel that we have a right to know what really happened. Release the videotapes of thenPentagon attack. Release the 28 redacted pages of the Commission report as several Senators have called for and as Obama promised 911 victims families. When the powers that be continue to keep from us certain aspects of the event, it only fuels the flames of CTs. We could show, once and for all that the official story was basically correct if they did those two things. Yet they refuse. That gives me pause. According to what I've read, the 28 pages show the Saudia Arabia had more involvement than we thought in the attacks. By not releasing they protect big oil. Supposition of course, but looks bad either way.
 
While I don't consider myself a CT I feel that we have a right to know what really happened. Release the videotapes of thenPentagon attack. Release the 28 redacted pages of the Commission report as several Senators have called for and as Obama promised 911 victims families. When the powers that be continue to keep from us certain aspects of the event, it only fuels the flames of CTs. We could show, once and for all that the official story was basically correct if they did those two things.

I have to wholeheartedly agree with the second point made, the need to release the redacted pages of the report. It's not as if the contents of this redacted section aren't somewhat known already by the reports of those who have actually read/written the thing:

External Quote:
"The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier," said former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, who co-chaired the inquiry and helped to write the report.
Source

By allowing the CT crowd the ability to come to their own conclusions about what might be in the redacted section it allows for too many "what if" situations where any number of claims can be made about what "THEY ARE HIDING". From what I've heard from hardcore 9/11 Truth fanatics the redacted contents range anywhere from "it was all Israel's fault," on down the scale of irrationality to, "the directed energy weapons were located X and Y". As long as this section of the report remains unknown then there are too many hypotheses that can easily be inserted by the unscrupulous.

As for the first point of your comment I'm at a bit of a loss however, "Release the videotapes of the Pentagon attack". Those tapes have been available for quite a while. There has been a full accounting by the investigating agencies of the videos that were taken into custody for the investigation, lists made of the tapes and their contents, and whenever the video had any bearing on the events that took place they were released to the public. Of the 84 videos that were taken as evidence in the events of that day the vast majority of them had nothing to do with the Pentagon, and from the descriptions of them you can see why, "security videos from a Kinkos in south Florida," are not going to show you anything that occurred outside the Pentagon. A camera that was aimed at the gas pumps of the Citgo across the interstate from the Pentagon and not at the far-away government building also won't really show you much of anything. There are at least three videos in the public domain that show the events that took place at the Pentagon on September 11, and actually do show the explosion.

Pentagon Security Camera 1:



Pentagon Security Camera 2:



And one of the other videos that I often hear the CT crowd mentioning as having "been disappeared", the video from the Doubletree Hotel across the street:



Also, another "mysteriously disappeared" video is the one from the Citgo gas station located near the Pentagon, but this view doesn't even show the Pentagon, and the explosion isn't visible:



This is what makes it so hard to understand the oft repeated "THEY ARE HIDING THE VIDEOS" claim that 9/11 truthers make. The worst part is knowing that all this information is quite readily available to anyone who makes even a cursory attempt at doing what truthers claim to do best, investigate. If they did any of that themselves then they would find it, and stop trying to use that one claim as evidence of some great cover-up. I've provided links to one staunch truther on reddit, had him begrudgingly agree that it appears the videos actually HAD been released contrary to what he had heard parroted by his truther friends, then two days later he was including "THE HIDDEN PENTAGON VIDEOS" in another one of his gish gallops. It's just discouraging to think that mere hours were all it took for that information to be wiped from his memory. It seems dishonest.

So were there some other videos that the public, (including the investigating agencies,) are completely unaware of their existence? Or were those the ones you were talking about?



Edit: And now that I spent time typing that up I realize Bob was a troll account, and has already been banned. :rolleyes:
 
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I agree with what you say in the first quote. Very admirable, true, and well said. This puts you firmly in the Conspiracy Theorist camp. WELCOME!
Human beings conspire all the time. You probably learnt this from your classmates at school. Businesses are conspiracies.
I think we all accept that here, and make the appropriate discriminations between important and unimportant.
What really annoys us is bunk - the indiscriminate assembly of plausible lies - and which leads to conspiracies that cannot be good or useful from their inception - and are usually malevolent.
Religious charities are the exception, but can cause harm as well.
 
Judgywudgy - When conspiracy theorists come up with some actual evidence for a claim, I think we'll take it seriously. For now, all that has been put forth is speculation, lies and misdirection, while all available evidence supports the mainstream account.

As for 'the government always lies' etc.: yes, sometimes the government lies. Everyone lies sometimes. Sometimes parents lie, but that shouldn't stop their children from believing them when they say they are their parents; sometimes lovers lie, but that shouldn't stop their lovers from believing them when they say they had to work late one night. My point is that the mere fact that a source 'sometimes' lies does not disqualify it in all cases - if it did, you could never trust anything anyone said. Moreover, when it comes to the government, there's a media that looks over its shoulder - and before you claim that the media is bought, just remember that it's the media's reporting about government lies which has made you so cynical in the first place. (After all: if the media didn't keep exposing corruption and scandals in the upper echelons of government we'd have no reason at all to ever assume the government is corrupt or lying etc.)
 
Honestly for me the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games are enough proof that you're not a government shill of some sort. Sure, those games don't exactly inspire crime sprees but they're not exactly "pro authority" either. And if they were meant to be I'd question having a Dead Kennedys track in the OST.


A CT might call out the Neversoft eye as some kind of illuminati related symbol, but on top of the usual flaws with the whole "eye = illuminati" logic, it's actually just as easy to see that as an anti-illuminati message seeing as the eye always appears impaled by a spear.

I'll admit my point might not be 100% solid but I feel there's some validity to it.
 
Honestly for me the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games are enough proof that you're not a government shill of some sort. Sure, those games don't exactly inspire crime sprees but they're not exactly "pro authority" either. And if they were meant to be I'd question having a Dead Kennedys track in the OST.


A CT might call out the Neversoft eye as some kind of illuminati related symbol, but on top of the usual flaws with the whole "eye = illuminati" logic, it's actually just as easy to see that as an anti-illuminati message seeing as the eye always appears impaled by a spear.

I'll admit my point might not be 100% solid but I feel there's some validity to it.

Its worth pointing out that some debunkers such as myself are also former believers who just got tired of all the BS.
 
accept everything or nothing - and in that sense a lot like religion
not all religions are like that

Christianity has its canonical doubter, Thomas; St Peter denies Jesus 3 times; the idea that you can sin and be forgiven, that people aren't perfect and still belong, that we all make mistakes and that's ok, those ideas are part of any serious religion, and they are what makes inter-confessional (e.g. ecomenical) and inter-religious dialogue possible.

Cults (and conspiracy theorists), however, are more absolute: we know the truth without fail; and the others don't make mistakes, they're evil and deceitful. This is paired with a forgetfulness about the many times the cult was wrong.
 
not all religions are like that

Christianity has its canonical doubter, Thomas; St Peter denies Jesus 3 times; the idea that you can sin and be forgiven, that people aren't perfect and still belong, that we all make mistakes and that's ok, those ideas are part of any serious religion, and they are what makes inter-confessional (e.g. ecomenical) and inter-religious dialogue possible.

Cults (and conspiracy theorists), however, are more absolute: we know the truth without fail; and the others don't make mistakes, they're evil and deceitful. This is paired with a forgetfulness about the many times the cult was wrong.
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not all religions are like that

Christianity has its canonical doubter, Thomas; St Peter denies Jesus 3 times; the idea that you can sin and be forgiven, that people aren't perfect and still belong, that we all make mistakes and that's ok, those ideas are part of any serious religion, and they are what makes inter-confessional (e.g. ecomenical) and inter-religious dialogue possible.

Cults (and conspiracy theorists), however, are more absolute: we know the truth without fail;
All the religions I know of do "know the truth without fail" and this surely includes the different brands of Christianity. From "St Peter denied Jesus three times" to "then we Christians do not know the truth without fail" there is a big non-sequitur. Same for Doubting Thomas or for people being sinners and making mistakes, it does not follow "then the religious truth we know is fallible".

and the others don't make mistakes they're evil and deceitful.
"Others are evil and deceitful" was the default position even in mainstream Catholicism and Protestantesim until not so long a time ago, and it's still the default position of many Evangelicals, for instance. Or look at the Orthodox church in Russia nowadays.

This is paired with a forgetfulness about the many times the cult was wrong.
Oh well, here I can talk with confidence only about Catholic Church: they admit their past errors if and only if they are absolutely compelled to do that (often by the law).

The differences between a cult and a religion are not in what they think or preach or what they do, but more on the lines of what @Ann K said: they're older, more organized, more recognized, more estabilished in society. And yes, the founder is usually dead, but often he was just a mythical figure to start with.
 
not all religions are like that

Christianity has its canonical doubter, Thomas; St Peter denies Jesus 3 times; the idea that you can sin and be forgiven, that people aren't perfect and still belong, that we all make mistakes and that's ok, those ideas are part of any serious religion, and they are what makes inter-confessional (e.g. ecomenical) and inter-religious dialogue possible.

Cults (and conspiracy theorists), however, are more absolute: we know the truth without fail; and the others don't make mistakes, they're evil and deceitful. This is paired with a forgetfulness about the many times the cult was wrong.

When Christianity began, the 'church' ( the word itself ) referred to the body of believers....the actual people....and not any building. Over the years, 'the church' became a building. And believers would speak of 'going to church'...completely forgetting that they were the church. And, of course, once you have the belief system grounded in physical buildings then you have true control and all you then need is for the Roman empire, with its obsession with grandiose structures, to take over. Then you end up with an organisation that sells indulgences and burns people at the stake. I think one has to bear in mind that whatever one makes of the 'original' faith and its origins and truth.....most ( if not all ) religions get hijacked along the way.
 
All the religions I know of do "know the truth without fail" and this surely includes the different brands of Christianity.
A common maxim is that the different varieties of religion cannot possibly all be true ...but they can all be false.
 
All the religions I know of do "know the truth without fail" and this surely includes the different brands of Christianity. From "St Peter denied Jesus three times" to "then we Christians do not know the truth without fail" there is a big non-sequitur. Same for Doubting Thomas or for people being sinners and making mistakes, it does not follow "then the religious truth we know is fallible".
From "we are fallible" it follows that "we can be wrong about the truth".
This is a stance a religion allows, but a cult does not.
You can have a theological argument in a religion, but not in a cult.
 
When Christianity began, the 'church' ( the word itself ) referred to the body of believers....the actual people....and not any building. Over the years, 'the church' became a building. And believers would speak of 'going to church'...completely forgetting that they were the church.
I disagree with this because the reason you know this is because it's still actively being taught.
The church isn't buildings, it's the community of believers, and if you claim believers think otherwise, that sounds like bunk to me.
 
I disagree with this because the reason you know this is because it's still actively being taught.
The church isn't buildings, it's the community of believers, and if you claim believers think otherwise, that sounds like bunk to me.

I'd have guessed that rather than the community of their equals, most believers, if they were primed to not think of buildings - and yes, you have to be very careful how you would word the question, off the top of my head I can't think of a wording that wouldn't either prime the respondent to either think of buildings or people, would firstly think of the hierarchy and the organisation instead.

For example, consider this question:
"""
Do you agree with the statement "the church has a lot of money"?
a) I agree
b) I disagree
c) I don't know
d) The statement makes no sense, because the church is a disparate community of individuals some of whom will have more money than others
"""
Would you think that *anyone* would answer (d)?
 
From "we are fallible" it follows that "we can be wrong about the truth".
This is a stance a religion allows, but a cult does not.
You can have a theological argument in a religion, but not in a cult.
If the scriptures had instructions like "stop thinking, just believe" - where would that fall on the religion-cult spectrum for you?
 
From "we are fallible" it follows that "we can be wrong about the truth".
This is a stance a religion allows, but a cult does not.
You can have a theological argument in a religion, but not in a cult.
I think we're probably using two different scopes for 'truth' in the context of religions. No religion I know doubts at all the 'truths' of its core principles, for example 'the God(s) of my religion exist(s)', I hope you agree with me on this. So from "we are fallible" it does not follow that "we can be wrong about the Truth [capitalized]".

But I agree with you that in a broader set of 'religious truths' from "we are fallible" it follows that "we can be wrong about lesser truths". Then if this can happen only in religions and never in cults, that I don't know, I never heard this argument before actually, interesting.
 
I disagree with this because the reason you know this is because it's still actively being taught.
The church isn't buildings, it's the community of believers, and if you claim believers think otherwise, that sounds like bunk to me.
It's actively taught because it is in the Bible....primarily in Acts. But you'd be surprised how many people who denote themselves as believers have never actually read the Bible.
 
From "we are fallible" it follows that "we can be wrong about the truth".
This is a stance a religion allows, but a cult does not.
You can have a theological argument in a religion, but not in a cult.
That depends entirely upon which religion and which cult... I assume you're not committing the "No true Scotsman" fallacy of defining only your chosen variety to be a "legitimate" religion.

Your mileage may vary.
 
If the scriptures had instructions like "stop thinking, just believe" - where would that fall on the religion-cult spectrum for you?
I would be very wary of anyone who commanded me to believe.

No religion I know doubts at all the 'truths' of its core principles, for example 'the God(s) of my religion exist(s)', I hope you agree with me on this. So from "we are fallible" it does not follow that "we can be wrong about the Truth [capitalized]".
That's a "no true scotsman" though. If you don't believe in the central dogma of a religion, you should leave the group, same as you shouldn't be in the Rail Workers Union if you don't work on the railway. It's not strange, abnormal or evil to find that only rail workers have a place there.

The difference is that religion will let you leave (or in some cases, force you to), while a cult won't.
It's actively taught because it is in the Bible....primarily in Acts.
It's also taught via songs (sorry, no examples, I don't have my English hymnal handy). For Christianity, I'd look in the letters because these actually deal with congregation issues; 1st Corinthians is a good place. And obviously, Matthew 18,20.

But we have other religions like Buddhism, where I don't think anyone would be tempted to make that distinction.
But you'd be surprised how many people who denote themselves as believers have never actually read the Bible.
If your claim means, 'read every word', then, sure.
But 'read the main bits' is true for pretty much all adult Christians, even if it was some time ago.
 
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"Others are evil and deceitful" was the default position even in mainstream Catholicism and Protestantesim until not so long a time ago, and it's still the default position of many Evangelicals
FWIW, I'd say the Christian theology goes something like "Everybody is evil and deceitful (sinful) , including us, that's why we're excited to believe in a route to forgiveness. If we were perfect, unlike all the rest of y'all sinners, we wouldn't need savin'!"

Of course as sinners sometimes we might forget that, or not live up to it. :)
 
Ancient thread but it got bumped, so... Does your recognition of past government misdeeds translate into skepticism of any of its current actions? Like it's easy to have "20/20 hindsight" and say, yeah that Iraq WMD thing was bad. But if you suspect that the US is currently lying about something, like perhaps the Nord Stream bombing, you get the "conspiracy theorist" label.
 
Ancient thread but it got bumped, so... Does your recognition of past government misdeeds translate into skepticism of any of its current actions? Like it's easy to have "20/20 hindsight" and say, yeah that Iraq WMD thing was bad. But if you suspect that the US is currently lying about something, like perhaps the Nord Stream bombing, you get the "conspiracy theorist" label.
I think one might sort things roughly into a government that
(1) tells you the truth, mostly.
(2) tells you a falsehood, mostly.
(3) declines to comment officially, but some other governmental entity gives unauthorized information which may be either true or false.

None of these consider the reasons. For such things as security concerns, there may be perfectly honest motivations for the public not to be told about something. Quite frankly not everything is the business of the public.

In other words, each individual claim would have to be treated as a separate item. A characteristic of what I'd deem to be a conspiracy theorist is an inclination to disbelieve the government automatically without evidence, while a person who believes everything they're told is merely gullible.
 
Another hallmark of CT thinking is generalisation: "the government" is the bogeyman and can remain faceless in a narrative intended to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). Does Trump lying about Covid mean Biden's EPA will lie about East Palestine? People and motivations matter if the goal is to understand the truth; they get in the way if the purpose is to scare.
 
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