When people just read one book, this is what happens. When I read the history of the Bible and the compilation of the cannons and how the book of Revelation almost didn't get included, I try to imagine what one book religions like Jehovah's Witnesses would be selling today if Revelation had not made the cut. These are people with a microscopic view of the world and of life who adopted a conspiracy theory as something real. They give the conspiracy theory so much weight that they are easily able to reject simple reality.
Religions like the Jehovah's Witnesses assign everything a role in the conspiracy. Everything is black and white. People are seen as pawns . . . divided and labeled, the weather plays a part, governments are all bad and have a part, the world economic system is flawed and doomed, families are seen as really little more than economic support systems for group members and individual family members as well as whole families are dispensable.
In business, assumptions are recognized as assumptions and given weight and value that is less than the weight and value given to objective information. In conspiracy focused religions, assumptions are taken for granted and are the very basis for the religion. Objective information is not a consideration, because there is no objective information to support the conspiracy theory. There is nothing except the theory itself. . . . nothing to support it but the assumptions.
The issue of sovereignty replaced the issue of vindication. Both are elements of the conspiracy. Both are based on the reading of one book and both rely on assumptions for their merit. In closed systems like the Jehovah's Witnesses, members do not have the right to question the assumptions or to give weight or consideration to more than one book.
In my experience, not only do groups only read one book, they only read selected passages from that one book. For example, the passages relating to acceptance, kindness, charity, and forgiveness, are omitted and the hard line approach of the jealous invisible god are embraced. Both approaches and both attitudes are Biblical no doubt. To be Biblical though, some groups readily dispense with decency. Once they dispense with decency, decency is rationed, like serum. It's okay that decency is gone because decency being gone fits the conspiracy theory model. Then charity is gone, then civility is gone, then reasonableness, then honesty. In the end emotion is bunted and hardened and all but gone. What remains is the hard side, anger, rejection, and legalism to hold it all together. All from a conspiracy theory, all from reading only one book.
GaryB
