Another Rant About Research

Should you share that claim so quickly? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Christians are supposed to be people of truth. Some claims, of course, cannot be verified easily. They also cannot be falsified easily. Some are very controversial and have intelligent people on both sides. However, some claims are just bogus or at least highly insufficient. Sadly, too often I see these and get incredibly frustrated.

This is the internet. Imagine if you woke up one day and saw a story being shared on Facebook that you were a pedophile. You go about and refute the charges the best you can and most people believe you, but some do not. Stories are shared all over the Facebook and your reputation can be destroyed just like that.

That might be extreme, but consider whenever you spread false information about another person on the internet, you are doing just that. This is especially worse if you’re a Christian since you claim to be a person of truth. You are doing what James said not to do and using your tongue, or in this case, your keyboard, to destroy.

Not only that, you want people to believe you when you tell them Jesus rose from the dead. Right? Even if all you have is your personal testimony, you want people to believe that. Why on Earth should anyone believe you on stuff that can’t be studied in five minutes, if they cannot believe you in what could have been easily checked with an internet search?

So let’s look at some claims this weekend that I came across.

You know that Trump was supposed to hold the Republican convention in Florida? He was, but he cancelled. What was the reason? Well, believe it or not, it was because Black Lives Matter had a bunch of buses lined up ready to get protesters and rioters to the meeting and make a scene.

I also want to say that I do say this as someone who voted for Trump and who does not support the movement Black Lives Matter. Of course, black lives matter, but the organization itself stands for a number of issues that I cannot support. Therefore, in saying what I am saying, I am actually calling out a fellow conservative who shared false information.

So the claim was Trump cancelled this because of the protesters. What was the evidence? Pictures of the buses lined up. Let’s take a look at these.

In the first picture, the buses could hypothetically say Black Lives Matter, but you can’t tell for sure. It could say Black Ladies Aboard. It could say Black Looks Beautiful. There’s any number of things it could say. The second picture has a bunch of buses that say absolutely nothing like that.

Doing my own research on the picture, the nearest I can figure is that the top buses do say Black Lives Matter, but that they were also from the Toronto Raptors who were in Florida. Even if that wasn’t the case, let’s consider something else. Whether you love Trump or hate him, does anyone think he shies away from confrontation and/or a fight? I found it amusing that I, as a conservative, was questioned because I dared to ask questions about the evidence, but alas, the evidence for this one is lacking.

Sometimes people send me YouTube videos that are really conspiracy theories. Please don’t. I hardly watch two minutes of these things if that much before I know they’re absolute nonsense. Last night, I got sent one that said that anything in history before the 1600’s is highly questionable.

Please don’t bother sending me stuff like this. I really find it highly embarrassing to see this stuff and to see Christians spreading it. On that, let’s give a brief caveat.

I have said something about conservatives and Christians and I am both, but this is not a conservative or a Christian problem. This is a human problem. We are all inclined to believe things that tend to go with our biases at the time. Liberals spread conspiracy theories. Atheists spread conspiracy theories. (Yes. Jesus mythicism I count as a conspiracy theory for atheists) Let’s not go on about how one group is so stupid. It’s all of us.

Also, for many atheists, it’s really hard for me to take you seriously as a person of reason and evidence when I see you blindly believing something about Christianity. Many Christians are skeptical of evolution. That cannot be studied in five minutes, and yet they see you sharing Jesus mythicism stuff and you expect them to take you seriously on this topic?

So let’s go with a final one. Someone shared this and I went directly to the source material which apparently was another Facebook page. So what’s the claim? Apparently, Lady Gaga has a new album called Chromatica where she celebrates extracting blood from the pineal glands of traumatized children. Here, you can see a picture of her covered with blood and her children drinking blood.

Wow. That’s pretty serious isn’t it? Look at Gaga covered in that blood and those children with zombie stares on their faces drinking blood. That’s pretty serious.

Or is it?

If you saw the real picture, it would say Entertainment Weekly on the bottom left. Why would that be the case? Because this is a picture of Lady Gaga on the set of American Horror Story where she played a character called the Countess.

This is probably the worst offender on this list today because this is an accusation of moral turpitude. None of us would like to be accused of this. It doesn’t matter what you think of Lady Gaga. I don’t particularly care for her stuff, but it’s wrong to share this information about her. I have my opponents on political issues, for example, but if you want to say something against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, you’d better make sure it’s true or at least has darn good evidence for it. I only want my opponents taken down in truth.

Christians. Please be better about sharing things like this. Please do your own research independently. It’s too easy to hit that “share” button on Facebook and share it immediately. You are damaging your reputation though if it’s false and someone else’s reputation as well.

I would just advise you to avoid conspiracy theories altogether. The best conspiracy to pull off, as J. Warner Wallace has said, is two guys working to commit a crime and at the end one of them shoots the other one. Please don’t jump on board with these things immediately. Do your homework. Do your research.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Checking Internet Quotes

Is that quote that you’re passing along valid? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today on Facebook, I happen to come across the following image with a video attached to it.

Rockefeller Illuminati

This sounds convincing. After all, it’s a known figure and it’s got a time and a place to it, so, shouldn’t we trust it?

Not so fast.

As Abraham Lincoln has said (And I know he said this because I can find it on the internet) “The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine.” –Abraham Lincoln

And in fact, I was fortunate to find someone else had already researched this claim about the Rockefeller quote.

In fact, the video connected to the picture has another Rockefeller quote. Doing a search for this one also reveals that supposedly, not only did David Rockefeller say it, but Henry Ford himself said the exact same thing. Imagine that. Now some might say this is all illuminati code language, but perhaps there is a simpler explanation. Could it be that the quotes just didn’t really happen?

So here are some guidelines.

When you see a quote, the first thing you want to do is take the quote yourself, as much as you can, and put it in a search box with quotation marks around it. This way, your search engine knows you want to find the exact quote. Now some quotes could be too long. If that’s the case, then go and take a shorter piece. Now in the above quote, I would take something like the first sentence or the second sentence. I could also take “All we need is the right major crisis.”

I took that last one just now and typed it in and got this as a result. If you will look at that page, you will see that there is just the quote there with who said it. There is no source given. On the internet, it should be easy to give a link to a talk like this.

So I decided to look up the whole quote as I had done before. Among the results are some videos like this one and so what do I do? I watch the video.

And I do not see Rockefeller saying it once. Now there’s a more info button under the video that has him quoted as saying it. Source? You got it! There isn’t one!

All the video has is various people saying “New World Order.”

So let’s get this straight. Republicans and Democrats and leaders from all over the world who can’t get along, are all still being programmed somehow to say the term “New World Order” and the plan to keep this “New World Order” a total secret from the populace is to have them say the term repeatedly over and over?

Folks. If you have a secret plan and you want to keep it secret, one of the steps you do not take at all is to broadcast it everywhere.

Maybe we should look at what is meant? Could it mean simply that we are moving into a global age, and that is undeniable? With the internet, we have more access to each other than ever before? We have to learn how to behave together on a global scale. Could it be that that is all that is meant? Sure. I could be wrong, but shouldn’t that be a possibility to look into?

A second video is even more embarrassing.

In this second video, we see underneath many more quotes. Of course, one of them is the one included. The one we’re looking for. The next one is the following.

“”Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.” David Rockefeller, statement in 1973 about Mao Tse-tung: (NY Times 8-10-73)”

Now this is one that it looks like could be legitimate. It could come from an article called “From A Chinese Traveler.” What would it prove? It would prove that Rockefeller has some serious moral issues, but does it prove that there is a conspiracy going on? Not at all. Did Rockefeller know about the deaths Mao was bringing about? That would also need to be shown. It’s hard to say without reading the original article. It does exist, but I just don’t really want to pay to read it.

So let’s go back to the original quote. The next source I find goes here. Note the details. This time, the statement was made on September 23rd. Not Setpember 14th.

Next we get to the Huffington Post which has the following quote as well.

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

This is in fact Rockefeller mocking the conspiracy theorist idea. There’s no secret. If there was, you think he would say there’s a secret cabal? Kind of kills the plan. Rockefeller is an internationalist. That’s it. He could be right. He could be wrong. It does not equal conspiracy. This one is said to be in his memoirs. (A page would have been nice.) This is followed by the second quote which is the one from the image above. Again, no direct source.

Curious how many of you would trust the journalism of Larry Flynt anyway….

Our next link goes here. Again, no hard copy of this anywhere.

The next one takes us here and again, notice the date is different. You’d think if this was a genuine quote in our day and age of verbatim quoting and recordings and such, we could get the date right.

Of course, someone else has to insist that the Catholics must be involved! And again, the date is different from our original image.

Our next source is Collectively Conscious. Now I will tell you, I do not trust this site. Still, kudos to them for this on their Facebook page.

I just wanted to say thank you to Stephen Watson for debunking the following quote:

“All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.” ~ David Rockefeller

Turns out the supposed quote is from a speech David Rockefeller gave at a meeting with the U.N. on September 23rd, 1994, only the second half of it was altered and then it was propagated throughout the internet. Here is the full claimed quote:

“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”

And here is the actual quote:

“This present window of opportunity which during a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built will not be open for too long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threaten to destroy all of our hopes and efforts.”

And the video clip that proves it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM8NpjmXD00

Provided Source: http://metabunk.org/…/debunked-all-we-need-is-the-right-ma…/

So we will remove the image that contains this quote from our photo albums and never post it again, BUT this does not mean that we support David Rockefeller. The statement “truly peaceful and interdependent world order” is still subject to interpretation. We must also consider the fact that he has said something similar to the claimed quote in his own memoirs:

“Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” ~ David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405

The point is, we will NOT propagate anything on this website that has been proven, or that is strongly believed by the majority, to be inauthentic.

Thanks again to Stephen Watson for bringing this to our attention.

The metabunk link might not work, but it is one that I provided earlier that does have the right info. Unfortunately for CC, as a result, they did have some egg on their face. Had they done this kind of thing earlier that metabunk did, they would not have had that. Still, I do have to say that the proper thing to do when you make a mistake of that nature is to admit it and while I do not trust the site, I can respect the ability to admit a mistake.

The final page we look at is here. Note I have just gone with the first page. The first hit was the metabunk site. Two were videos that did not have the quote. The first hit was the site debunking it. One hit was someone admitting it was false and retracting it. The other six were all simply quoting the source without a link or a vid or anything of that sort. Note that when you have sites simply quoting each other and being non-specific, be suspicious. This last page has several quotes without a referent.

You must ALWAYS be on the watch for this. ALWAYS.

But let’s suppose you find a quote is legitimate and it was said. What then?

That does not mean the meaning given to the quote is true. You must look at it in its context. The old joke is to say that the Bible says there is no God. How? Just go look it up! It’s right there in Psalm 14:1. Clear as day. “There is no God!”

Oh wait. That’s not what it says?

It says that the fool says in his heart “There is no God.”

That changes everything.

Try to study the context first. Did the author mean what is being said? Often times, it’s easy to remove a quote from its context.

Okay. Why does this stuff just irritate me so much that I spend so much time writing on it? Why do I care?

Because truth matters.

You see, the internet can be a dangerous place and too many people think a Google search engine makes you a scholar. No. Google does not teach you how to process information. I must go with what my friend Tim McGrew says about this.

“One of the most disastrous illusions of the internet age is that an amateur plus Google is equivalent to a scholar. A search engine offers information, more or less relevant according to the skill of the searcher. But it does not sift that information; it does not sort fact from fancy, wheat from chaff. It does not explain which facts are relevant and which are beside the point. It does not weigh the merits of competing arguments and tell the user where the balance of evidence lies. A bright amateur armed with the internet may at best be better informed than he would otherwise have been, and he may occasionally catch a real scholar in a factual error. But it will not turn him into a scholar himself. There is no such thing as effortless erudition.”

This is a bona fide quote. If anyone is suspicious of it, I am sure Tim McGrew would be happy to comment here himself if need be and say “Yes. I said that.” I have heard him give the exact sentiment elsewhere numerous times also.

On the internet, if you don’t know how to process information, you’re just going to blindly accept what you are told. Check it out. Research it. Make sure other real sites are sharing it and not just conspiracy sites. If you’re still unsure, don’t share it. Why?

Because Christians are to be people of truth.

When we share things that are not true and so easily, it makes us look stupid. If they can’t trust us on things they can test, why should they trust us on things they can’t? In John 3:12, Jesus said.

“I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”

Let’s draw a parallel. If they find us to be gullible and naive on these matters here, why should they trust us on the claims they’re most skeptical about. When we share these claims falsely, we destroy our witness to a lost world.

Also, we further damage our witness when we further have paranoia. There are things we should be very cautious about, but when we start looking at everything with paranoia, we become unable to function in society. In fact, the rest of the world again thinks we look ridiculous. Just look at the video again of Rockefeller being harrassed in Chile. Whether you care for the man or not, the people around him are simply being ridiculous.

Folks. The world already thinks we look ridiculous. They already think we believe crazy things. We have enough of a time convincing them of that.

Let’s not give them further reason to not trust us.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Conspiracy Theories. Don’t.

Should you pay attention to that idea of a conspiracy theory? Let’s dive into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Okay. I know right up that conspiracies do happen. People do try to cover things up and pull them off together. Usually however, we have some idea that this is definitely going on. Eventually, it all comes down on those who do it. For instance, Watergate was a conspiracy of sorts, and frankly, it didn’t really last too long.

The main conspiracies I’m talking about are the kind that are popularized by too many Christians and are also the same mindset found in a number of atheistic circles. For Christians, these often involves “satanic plots” to control our children and indoctrinate them. Much of the time, you know that the Illuminati has to be behind it all!

Because, you know, the main way to send that secret message is to go through the half time show on Super Bowl Sunday. How is it that the Illuminati managed to reach all these dancers and send a secret message to people watching the Super Bowl? Before going off on how it is something you think is part of hidden satanic symbolism, why not just consider something else?

Maybe it’s just a tasteless performance.

Now this is saying nothing about the morality of what goes on in said performances. I am not at all endorsing that. What I am saying is that you need to be on the watch for thinking that there are several conspiracies afoot. For a Christian, this can result in a heightened paranoia and to the rest of the world, you just look ridiculous. We already look ridiculous for believing in Jesus. There’s no reason to add to that.

Atheists don’t always do much better. You can think about plots in Christianity to destroy everything that disagreed with Christianity and then of course, the process of canonization, that was all just a total plot! Very rarely is any actual real historical study done on the topic. Unfortunately in our internet age, too many people find something on the internet and think it’s true. We all laugh at the idea of “I read it on the internet so it must be true”, but too many people have that same mindset.

The thinking also leads to a heightened arrogance. Sure, everyone else misses the main message, but I know what it is. I am not going to be fooled the way everyone else is. If you do not see it, well you just haven’t really reached this level of insight and thinking. Of course, a possibly even worse case could be that you’re part of the conspiracy.

One point to keep in mind when researching these claims is see who is being cited as a source. Too many times conspiracy theorists regularly cite each other and validate one another’s claims. Try to find a source that you think will be as objective as possible. Of course, total objectivity could be impossible, but try to get as close as you can.

For Christians also, please especially avoid conspiracies related to end times madness. I have seen too many times the idea of secretly implanting chips in us that are supposed to be the Mark of the Beast. Honestly, I have reached the point where my eyes just start rolling immediately at this. It’s not just because I’m a preterist. If you’re a futurist, you should avoid this as well.

There are far too many important things to study than the idea of possible conspiracies. If some Christians would seek to interpret their Bible as well as they try to interpret a show at halftime on Super Bowl Sunday, we’d all be better off.

In Christ,

Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Jesus Was a Mushroom…And Other Lies You Won’t Believe

What do I think of Holding’s book on conspiracies? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Jesuswasamushroom

My ministry partner J.P. Holding recently sent me a copy of his latest E-Book on dealing with conspiracy theories. Like many of his recent E-Books, this is a quick read as I tend to only read the Kindle at night and managed to go through it in just a few nights.

The whole theme of the book is about conspiracies that are often believed today involving any number of topics such as Alexander Hislop or the masons and Jesuits or whether Pope Francis or Barack Obama are the antichrist.

The title refers to such an idea as an example with the agnostic John Allegro writing a book where Christianity was a cult group that was created due to the effects of a certain mushroom in the area on the minds of the people. It was such a bad book that Allegro wrote on the topic that fourteen scholars took out an ad against it.

From here, Holding goes on to discuss various beliefs of people who are big into conspiracies. Naturally, such people can be hard to reason with because as soon as you deny the claim that they are making, well that’s because you’re part of the conspiracy! This is quite evident to several of us who have had to deal with the claims of Zeitgeist. If we’re not part of the conspiracy directly, well we’re just horribly duped by it.

Many of these you will just find it hard to believe. How can anyone take any of these seriously? Alas, I don’t doubt that many do. Most of these I had frankly never heard of. It would indeed be a stretch many times to put the occult significance into many of the items mentioned as no one would really notice. How can you convince people of a message if no one can understand the message?

I say this as someone who regularly gets asked questions about so many items in the world. Is X occult? Is this pagan? Over and over. Nowadays, it’s come to the point that when someone asks me if something is demonic, my default position is no because I’ve heard a case for most everything being demonic.

Perhaps also that’s something different about this book. I wasn’t able to get into this one as much and it could be because I’ve heard claims of “Demonic” so many times that I just start to roll my eyes. There are some ways I would also like to see some changes in future editions.

First, I kept wanting there to be some different title for the people being addressed. I heard conspiracy buffs, conspiracy guys, conspiracy X regularly. Holding is quite good at finding an appropriate label and sticking it most of the time so I was hoping there was just one humorous term we could include over these people.

The second area that I would like to see change in is that at the start, we are told we will be shown how to find the answers to this. I think it would be quite helpful for Holding to describe how he as one skilled in the use of a library, went about doing his research. What questions should one ask when considering a conspiracy theory? What resources should one look to? What resources should one not look to? What should qualify as a standard of proof?

Still, this is an interesting read and most of the time you’ll be rolling your eyes thinking “These people really believe that?” The sad answer is “Yes.”

In Christ,
Nick Peters