And I don’t think conspiracism, which is becoming almost the default mode of thinking in a large percentage of the American electorate, qualifies as rational thought.
Conversion to faith in God is absolutely a personal process, and nobody can do it for you, whoever you are or however inspired, intelligent, smart of spiritually "woke" that person may be.
Jesus taught "Seek and ye shall find", and that truth is extended to absolutely every human being, whether we see people as created by God or as God's children and family.
Arguments against God are all fundamentally "devilish", though we may prefer to use other terminology in polite discussion. "Mistaken", "Unaware", "Uninformed"..... I think there are hundreds of words to bemoan human disbelief or disinclination to seek God, most of them charitable, loving, and pleading.
Humans, each and all, have a personal choice to make, as I understand it. We have a spiritual adversary who would keep us estranged from out God, from out Father, and we have a spiritual advocate who pleads our case and calls us to step out and seek God.
The arguments or persuasions employed by our adversary include many very intelligent considerations, every imaginable fact or concept available to perhaps the second most intelligent entity in the Universe.
Perhaps the most effective attributes that our advocate can appeal to, to call us home, are virtues such as our character, our love for God or our fellow beings, or our affinity for and desire for actual truth.
"Conspiracism", as I take it, is a necessary tool when we are ignorant of facts or lack an informed understanding of what is going on. What else can we do.
Liberals are very capable conspiracists. Marxism is at root a kind of conspiracy theory. It makes unfounded assertions about human character, human nature, our history, and the facts of the Universe, and denies "God" with no basis in fact or evidence.
While no one in this world has all the information, and the compelling need to synthesize organizing or self-consistent theories with incomplete information, the cure for this fault is seeking more facts, using unbiased efforts to appropriately integrate the facts we have into a valid thesis as we gain the relevant pieces of understanding.
While we can apply the principles of science to our efforts with better results, and hopefully develop more valid understanding of our situation and other people, we can also apply these principles to our enquiries or efforts to "Seek" spiritually and develop a relationship with God.
Such efforts no doubt can be fraught with ignorance and mysticism and every other failing you can imagine people to have, but they can be developed one respect at a time into a valid and rational and successful "faith".
I sometimes confess to God that I am a "God-damned Fool", using those words with their appropriate meaning without a wrong meaning or a disrespect for myself. And I thank God I am exactly that. It is a praise for a very wise God.......It is a God who perhaps does not suffer Fools kindly, but loves them still. It is perhaps a God who loves Fools very much, and who has embraced the high ambition of teaching Fools.
The fundamental meaning of the word "damned" goes to a condition of being governed, stopped in some respect, in a manner than preserves our value and prevents our being personallyh wasted by a course of action that is self-destructive.
When I attempt to inform you and others that "Progressivism" will fail, the it's precepts are false, and its methods enslaving and destructive of human beings, I know it is a hard sell. Your reasons for believing in it are all high and noble, good, and well-intentioned. But sooner or later you will see it fail, you will see your efforts yield contrary results.
If you have actual virtue, you will find your best hopes destroyed by the wrong methods and you will one day face the very difficult task of realized you were wrong.
And God will be there to be found when sought.
If you do not have actual virtue, you just won't care about the ruin inflicted on others and the world, the calamities of every kind, including environmental and social. You will cling to your wrong motivations for personal worldly power or gain..... or perhaps the simple addiction of ideas that excite your brain.
And God will still be there, waiting for you to reconsider your ways.
"Conspiracism", as you envision it, equates with the idea of false and unfounded, unscientific, or unholy. It is pretty much used as an excuse to just ignore contrary evidence, or as a condemnation of a belief you believe is unsupportable. In business, and politics, it is universally true that actors are motivated to conceal their interests, their actions, and their aims.
"Conspiracy" is as true of our behavior as conversation or even publication of any information designed to achieve any ends.
It is always an irrational decision not to question or not to seek more information. When you dismiss something without due diligence you are "not thinking", when you believe something without due diligence, you are "not thinking"
We lack sufficient time and energy to do all the study and thought it takes to get anything "right" in an ultimate sense.
When we reach out to God in faith, it is confession of our situation and a pleading for informed and virtuous help, a kind of help we will need every day for as long as live in this world.
Rejecting the offering of help that comes to us from our loving God is the worst choice we can make.
Seeking God is the best we can do.
(edit) If anyone reads the above carefully, there are some typos, and sentence errors. But not enough to really affect the general idea. I might edit it later.
