OK, one more post on conspiracy theories, and then I’m done with them for a while. Here is an important article by David Ramsay Steele on the JFK assassination, which emphasizes two points I made in a previous post: that conspiracy theories of the sort I have been criticizing unmoor themselves from any rational foundation by making the conspirators so powerful that all the relevant evidence becomes untrustworthy; and that the “just raising questions” pretense of conspiracy theorists keeps them from seeing that the answers implied by their loaded “questions” are so fantastically implausible that no one who thinks them through very carefully could take them seriously for a moment. Steele’s points apply mutatis mutandis to 9/11 inside job theories, which are vastly less plausible than JFK conspiracy theories in any case.
Steele, incidentally, is the author of the highly recommended From Marx to Mises, and also of Atheism Explained, a better book on atheism than anything written by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, or Hitchens. (Still totally wrong, mind you, and in particular woefully inadequate in its treatment of Aquinas. But not dishonest and incompetent like the other books. Steele and I had a very gentlemanly radio debate on atheism last year.)
Steele, incidentally, is the author of the highly recommended From Marx to Mises, and also of Atheism Explained, a better book on atheism than anything written by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, or Hitchens. (Still totally wrong, mind you, and in particular woefully inadequate in its treatment of Aquinas. But not dishonest and incompetent like the other books. Steele and I had a very gentlemanly radio debate on atheism last year.)
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