Interesting correlation, thoughts....
It's pretty clear if you're open to one myth, you're probably more susceptible to believing others.
It's sort of a chicken or egg question. which came first: the indoctrination in a mode of thought where evidence is not a prerequisite for belief, or belief in things fro which there is no evidence? I think that in our primitive ancestors, it was more the latter. Early hominids evolved in social groups where divining the intention of others was an advantage not only to the individual but also to his/her whole extended family group. It was no great leap to ascribe intention to natural phenomena like wind, rain, thunder, and lightening. As soon as you start seeing intention (say, expression of anger) in a phenomenon like thunder, you're off to the races with religious thinking. Then came a realization that there is a certain clockwork-like mechanism at work in the world. The days get shorter and shorter, and it gets colder and colder, and food gets scarcer and scarcer, until one day the whole trend turns around, and suddenly everything is in bloom. Repeat. Ascribe all that to the intention of a god or gods. The thought pattern is self-reinforcing when everyone in your group thinks the same way. It was only a matter of time before somebody figured out that they could use the superstitions of others to manipulate them. That's when religion really came into its own. First we had high priests playing politics, putting a stamp of approval on the king's tax law or invasion of proximal lands or elimination of rivals. Then we got televangelists collecting donations. All of it relies on providing easy answers to complex questions. It's amazing that science has made as many inroads as it has, given that it requires concerted effort of study, and sacrifice of time and resources in order for scientists to answer difficult questions and then have those answers understood by lay people. Science is fighting an uphill battle, but winning because its discoveries are so goddamn useful. Hopefully we don't blow ourselves up or destroy the ecosystems we depend on for our survival before we finally banish religious thinking to the the scrapheap of bad ideas where it belongs.
We do have dumb fucks who believe anything. Trump is coming back soon and JFK Jr. is going to be with him. LOL
JFK Jr still being alive is still less ridiculous than him being a Q lunatic trump humper if he were.
Unknown beliefs in having faith, is a true form of conspiracy since it is intangible and lacks any totally known facts and truth!!!
Faith is based upon the unseen unknown untouchable being(s) {god(s)} perceived as a known reality!!!
An inability to do rational thinking, is an inability to do rational thinking.
That said, some atheists and agnostics are still wooed by woo, and they believe in pretty rocks having magic power and ghosts and all manner of that fucktastic nonsense.
Amen sister!
Agreed, I dated an Atheist who was a firm believer in astrology. Felt it was kind of contradicting.
They both depend on hidden, complex explanations for phenomena, rather than looking for the simplest and most proximate explanations first. The same world view, probably based on an emotional need to believe that everything that happens in the world is controlled by some intelligence, rather than mechanical or accidental.
I argued for many years with self-identifying 'climate sceptics' and I came to the conclusion that many people cannot understand, let alone accept, that there are objective properties of such things as matter and energy, independent of human wishes. To them, everything is politics.
Actively teach people to believe in things without evidence, and that it is 'virtuous' to have faith, and guess what?
They believe in things without evidence - gods and QAnon, angels and 'Deep State'.
You can't train people to believe without evidence and then expect them to only do so within the context of their religion.
I can't speak to everybody's understanding of 'Deep State' but I think it is a more specific and well-defined concept than the others. It is promoted by Steve Bannon and others deliberately to give a pejorative meaning to ideas that are widely believed to be a good thing: the rule of law, checks and balances in government, independence of the judiciary, any sort of restriction on the action of rulers.