Of demonic portals and the X-Files
A lesson in evidential standards
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
This is just common sense. If, for instance, a man shows up at your front door claiming to be your long-lost illegitimate son, prudence demands that you question him in depth about such things as his family history before showering him with kisses. Certainly, it would be unwise to put him into your will until he’s taken a DNA test that proves the truth of his claims beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt.
One of the most puzzling and troubling phenomena of the past few years has been the explosion of cases in which people in positions of significant power and influence not only believe, but widely preach, the most extraordinary claims, often with vast national or international implications, based upon the flimsiest evidence. Sometimes no evidence at all.
Take Eric Metaxas. Metaxas is a prominent evangelical figure who is the host of popular podcast. He is also the author of numerous books, including Amazing Grace, an excellent biography of the slave abolitionist William Wilberforce. As far as I knew prior to 2020, he was a highly-intelligent, thoughtful, and often-humorous social commentator. A guy to be taken seriously. Certainly, a man who took truth seriously.
Then came the 2020 election. Metaxas became one of the leaders of the “Stop the Steal” movement, ultimately organizing that (in)famous Jericho Rally, at which such luminaries as Alex Jones and Mike Lindell proclaimed the “prophesies” that Trump had won, and would be reinstated. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out just why someone like Metaxas was so convinced by what often seemed to me to be highly-dubious fraud claims that he was willing to stake his whole career on them. What standard of evidence was he applying? Was I missing something that he was seeing?
As it turns out, I was wasting my energy.
A few days ago, Metaxas interviewed Trump advisor and long-time GOP operative Roger Stone on his podcast. During the conversation Metaxas asks Stone - who once told my friend Jonathon van Maren that there is a “prophesy” that America “will be saved by a Stone” - to repeat something Stone had been telling him prior to the show. Stone then goes on to tell Metaxas about his belief that a “demonic portal” has opened up above the White House since Biden’s inauguration.
Metaxas initially notes that this idea sounds “insane”. Stone, however, goes on to recount how he asked a friend, who is a police officer, to go to the White House and have a look. This friend reported seeing some sort of “smudge” in the sky. "[I]f one zooms in on whatever is floating above the Biden White House, it can be seen 'swirling like a cauldron,'" notes Stone. At which point Metaxas jumps in, asking Stone incredulously, “How has the media not covered this!?”
I suppose the obvious answer to that is because it’s insane, and obviously untrue. Given the number of cameras around the White House, I can assure you that if there were a “swirling cauldron” there, somebody would have broadcast it by now.
But what I found so illuminating is that while Metaxas initially professed a prudent skepticism, he was so promptly convinced of the truth (or at least the plausibility) of Stone’s claim. He didn’t even put up a fight. And what seemed to impress him the most is the fact that Stone’s friend was a “cop”. In other words, all Stone had to do was dress his mad claim up with the merest fig leaf of an appeal to authority, and this was enough for Metaxas.
Metaxas, in other words, has no meaningful standards of evidence at all. Given this, no wonder he was so easily convinced in 2020 by every self-proclaimed prophet with a prophesy to peddle about Trump’s impending second coming to the White House, and every self-proclaimed expert with a theory to peddle about computer algorithms and voting machines. He has no guardrails on his mind. He’s ripe for the picking by every huckster, con artist, and madman with a story to sell.
Take another recent example of a truly extraordinary claim making the rounds. Many prominent vaccine skeptics, including figures such as Steve Kirsch, Stew Peters, Peter McCullough, and Michael Yeadon, are claiming that the Covid-19 vaccines are part of a deliberate plot to depopulate the planet, and were developed to include mechanisms that will sterilize and kill billions of people.
Clearly, this is an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary evidence.
As with the 2020 election fraud claims, the biggest challenge in responding to the depopulation claims is that the advocates of this theory employ the “fire-hosing” technique: i.e. they flood the airwaves with so many different claims, that it becomes near impossible to select any one claim, and subject it to meaningful scrutiny. The sheer volume of evidence is designed to overwhelm the mind and preclude any kind of rational conversation. Debunk one claim, and advocates of this theory will have another 100 waiting in the wings.
However, what we can do is look at the mentality of those who are making these claims. And what we find is something similar to Metaxas, i.e. a total lack of meaningful standards of evidence.
Steve Kirsch is one of the leaders of the vaccine skeptical movement. In the recent “Died Suddenly” documentary, he claimed to have over a million subscribers on Substack. In other words, he is profoundly influential. I also happen to think that he’s nuts. The other day, for example, he retweeted this post from former Fox News Host Lara Logan (who herself has nearly 500k followers on Twitter).
The post links to a video compiled from an episode of the X-Files. The plot of the episode surrounds the idea that a number of shadowy globalist figures have used the smallpox vaccines to insert a piece of DNA into people’s genome using CRISPR technology. This genome suppresses people’s immune systems in order to kill vast swathes of people to depopulate the planet and to take over the United States, leaving only “the chosen” behind.
Sound familiar? Yes, indeed.
Now, it hardly need be said, but let me remind you that the X-Files is a fictional show that is predicated upon the preposterous: aliens, global conspiracies, man-beast chimeras, time travel, mind control, the paranormal, the supernatural. It is entertainment. Certainly, the writers spin their fantasies on certain real-world events, to make them more believable. There is no possible conspiracy theory that its writers have not exploited to the fullest, and written into a plot.
However, it takes a special level of delusion to think that because, among the several hundred episodes of the X-Files, there is one that resembles your pet conspiracy theory, that this proves that your particular theory is true, and that you are not crazy. Ironically, in fact, it is difficult to think of anything crazier than pointing to an episode of the X-Files, of all things, as “evidence” for anything whatsoever!
What I have come to realize, is that not only do people like Kirsch and Metaxas lack meaningful standards of evidence, they have a worldview that explicitly precludes the need for standards of evidence. What people like Kirsch and Metaxas start with is a large, big-picture narrative (e.g. Trump won the election; the vaccines are part of a plot to depopulate the planet). Call this “the Truth” (with a capital T). They then adjudicate individual fact claims based upon whether or not that fact claim coheres with the Truth. If it does, then it is called “true” (small t). If it does not, then it is untrue.
This, of course, gets things completely backwards. The way to figure out the truth about most fact claims, is not to start with the large narrative (i.e. the Truth). If you do that, it is highly likely that you will fall into delusion, misled by your particular biases or pre-existing social, political or other loyalties. Instead, the way to figure out the Truth, is to subject a large number of fact claims having to do with a particular matter (e.g. the election, vaccines) to rigorous scrutiny using the best standards of evidence, and then to build your large-scale narrative from the results of this process, while keeping in mind that this large scale narrative must remain subject to constant (and sometimes major) refinement, as various truth claims are investigated.
However, I’m getting into the weeds now. I will write more about this soon. For now, let us simply marvel that one of the most influential thought-leaders after the 2020 election can so easily be convinced of the existence of a demonic portal above the White House based upon essentially zero evidence; and that another one of the most-influential thought leaders right now, thinks that the existence of an episode of the X-Files proves that he is not crazy.
And then, perhaps, let’s consider slowly backing away.
My favorite “extraordinary” claim in the pedophiles in entertainment and politics. Sure, that has obviously happened, and people have produced evidence of specific events and the perpetrators have been duly prosecuted. But when people like Jim Caviezel, who has been IN HOLLYWOOD for decades, spin these wild conspiracies of widespread child trafficking and torture and adrenochrome, he of all people would be in the perfect position to document some of this stuff. He can’t produce one surreptitiously recorded conversation or grainy cell phone video. Not a one. But he promises you it’s real. Trust him. Meanwhile, he goes down to a Florida to shuck his wares to prolife people while stipulating that nothing he says there can be recorded.
My husband has also pointed out that pretty much every vaccine conspiracy theory can be found in Rainbow Six. Some people do say Tom Clancy was psychic.