I was thinking about conspiracies the other day and kinda stumbled into the realization that the idea of a devil is probably the most widely adopted conspiracy theory in the history of the world. Of course, not everyone is Christian, but the idea of personified evil was, as far as I understand it, first taught by the ancient Persian, Zoroaster (the father of Zoroastrianism) and later adopted by Christianity.
Isn't it an interesting conspiracy? The idea as I've been taught it goes something like this: there is a real, but almost always invisible male being out there somewhere who is not omnipotent, but nevertheless powerful. He is selfishly interested in the destruction and misery of all people everywhere, and he devotes (as nearly as I can tell) every waking moment to the cunning art of deception. What's more, he is actually interested in me individually and I can never be sure if he's watching, possibly learning about me and my weaknesses. Having learned about my individual weaknesses, he will use his surreptitiously gained information against me.
I guess I just hadn't thought of this as a conspiracy theory before, probably because I learned about the devil in my youth before I even knew what a conspiracy was. Sometimes I wonder if the theory does more harm than good. I've found that people take the theory in varying degrees of seriousness, and those who take it extremely seriously sometimes make me nervous. The problem with most conspiracies is that there is never sufficient evidence to actually pin the blame on the correct party. Thus, whether something that happens to a person is actually caused by a devil is never something that person can be sure of, and so the theory itself can occasionally be the cause of paranoia (whether or not the theory is correct).
Ok, Duane. Back to homework now.
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