Here I offer my video blog (Vlog) in place of this written blog for those interested.

Western civilization, particularly America, is in a crisis of truth. While lies can give temporary gain, they are corrosive to society and render it unable to function. We are witnessing this as our government is being dismantled right before our eyes. Two major influences on our loss of truth are the philosophical basis I’ve been writing about for years and the development of social media. Social media gives a public platform to the worst of liars.

Historically, the fields within our society that have had the most to gain from lies are the politicians, the salesmen/women, and the religious. The Christian religious should know better, as the Bible teaches both the value of truth and the evil of lies. John 8:44 refers to Satan, not as the father of abortions, nor the father of transexuals, but the father of lies.

The good news is that, as I’ve stated before, the fundamental problem is a way of thinking, not a moral issue per se (although lying is immoral) or a problem of intelligence. So this is not personal. I can fully respect those who disagree with me. A way of thinking can be corrected if there is a will.

Story Time: (optional read, or skip down to How do We Get Out of This Mess)

While living in northern Michigan, I attended a large 500-member evangelical church and worked at an internal medicine group. One morning, my office had a phone call from Mrs. Smith, who attended my church, but I barely knew. She wanted the result of her recent chest CT scan. Her doctor was out of town, so I called her back. I had heard in church that she had an aggressive form of lung cancer. Before I dialed her number, I read her notes and studied her CT scan along with the notes from the radiologist.

I always tried to put the most positive spin on things so patients don’t lose hope, and this is what I said, “I’ve reviewed your CT scan, and the good news is that the chemo is working. The radiologist says that after weeks of growth, the tumors have not changed in size, nor have new tumors appeared.”

Immediately, Mrs. Smith began shouting through the phone, “Praise Jesus, I knew that God was going to heal me. I just knew it. No more cancer, I’m healed!”

Thinking that I had been too optimistic, I explained, “I don’t know if you understood me, but the cancer is still present, and you need to keep your chemo this week because it is starting to work.”

“You don’t believe in God like I do. No, I’m done with chemo. I’m healed, and I praise Jesus for that. God promised me he would heal me.”

The next Sunday, the news was presented to the church, “Mrs. Smith found out this week her cancer is completely gone. God has healed her and even her doctors (including me, I suppose) are dumbfounded by the miracle!” Applause and praise to God broke out in the sanctuary.

To make a long story short, I saw Mrs. Smith at church for the next few Sundays. Once her eyes caught mine in the cloak room, and for a second, I imagined she was saying to me, “Please say nothing, let me live in my delusion.”

Soon, Mrs. Smith stopped coming to church, and to everyone’s shock, three months after her report of being cured, we found out Mrs. Smith had died. There were rumors that she didn’t die from cancer, but from lingering effects of that awful chemo. “If she had never taken chemo,” someone said, “she would be healed and alive.” Hmm. God can cure cancer, but can’t cure the side effects of chemo?

I looked at her medical notes, and she had never returned to her oncologists or our office after my phone call, but four months later, her husband brought her to the ER near death. Scans there showed the cancer had spread throughout her body, including her brain. She died in the hospital from cancer, not from chemo side effects.

Philip Yancey’s great book, Disappointment with God, starts with a similar story, about a theology student who wanted to interview a woman he had seen healed at a church service. He was writing a book and wanted to include her miracle. When he called to set up the interview, her husband told him she had died from her cancer a few weeks after the miracle. This theology student’s faith was so crushed that he burned all of his Bibles and theological books in his backyard, causing such a fire that the neighbors called the fire department.

How We Get Out of This Mess

1. Put Reason in Its Proper Place.

We are living in a time when human reason has been devalued by many parts of Christianity. I have gotten into trouble at my church–a very gracious, welcoming church–when I’ve mentioned that reason is important to my relationship with God. This would not have been true just fifty years ago.

Thomas Aquinas said that human reason is a gift from God, but like all things with human nature, it is imperfect, leaving a small space for faith and revelation. The attitude that reason is “from the flesh” or evil is not helpful. Aquinas also states that reason is the primary tool we use to find truth.

The postmodernist Christian agrees, unfortunately, with the conservative Christian that reason is an exercise in ego. It is not. It will take a total rethinking of reason, putting it in the same category as other gifts (music, teaching, pastoring), yet available to all humans.

2. Believe in Truth Again

Postmodernism is on its way out, but it has left a legacy of doubt about absolute truth. But postmodernism is not the only culprit. Living in a pluralistic society has also made the notion of truth confusing. There is a marketplace of ideas, so isn’t it arrogant to say just one (yours) is the truth? Aren’t the atheists, Christians, and Buddhists all saying the same thing? This is why the progressive churches have adopted a postmodernistic view. If you end the notion of only one perspective being true, harmony will ensue . . . correct? Jesus taught that harmony is the consequence of love, not agreement. We need to get that through our heads.

But relativism does not reflect reality. Reality is built upon absolute and finite truths. Two rocks at the south pole of Pluto are an exact distance apart. We may never see those rocks, but if we were there and could measure them with a finely tuned laser, we would get an absolute distance.

It is the same with opinions. Not all opinions are the same or true. Unlike the Kierkegaardian view, we do not create truth subjectively inside our heads. Aquinas also said that truth is where our thoughts agree with reality.

It is true that human reason is limited and can’t always find the truth. But it can find most truths to a high level of probability if you honestly seek them. Seeking truth is the noblest of pursuits.

3. Recognize our inward emotional bias.

The greatest hindrance to finding the truth is our biases. People believe lies because they appeal to their wants. This is the bread and butter of extremist news outlets, such as Fox News, and right and left-wing social media influencers.

After this last presidential election, one reputable person said in a podcast that the Trump-Musk team had stolen it via electronic interference. This is something I wanted to believe with all my heart. But I knew that my wanting did not make it true. After due diligence by looking at the reports from each state’s voting data, I saw no evidence of that corruption, just as there was no corruption in 2020.

4. Follow the evidence.

The late Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The most spiritual statement a Christian can say is, “Where’s the evidence?” Scripture calls the Bereans noble in Acts 17:11 because they did due diligence to see if what Paul said was true. Christians love to hear about miracles. or things that confirm their biases, but we must follow the evidence. We have to get away from the Kierkegaardian faith, where the level of belief is more important than the evidence of that belief. The Indiana Jones statement in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, “I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what you believe, but how hard you believe it,” is nuts. Speaking of nuts, an enormous faith that chipmunks are God doesn’t change the humble nature of the rodent.

5. Follow the Thomistic (Thomas Aquinas’) Perspective on God’s Two Books.

Thomas Aquinas wrote that God communicates in two books, in scripture and nature (reality). If there is a conflict between the two, the one with the least evidence in interpretation must be re-interpreted.

The problem within Christianity and the distrust of science stems from this problem. As an old friend and present conservative Presbyterian pastor told me recently, “Science is from Satan.”

I began a journey in 1990 to find the truth. Like all evangelicals, I had believed that it was a Biblical dogma that the earth was six thousand years old, evolution was a lie, and gay people were the worst of sinners. However, with rigorous and honest research, I found overwhelming evidence of 1) an old Earth (billions of years), 2) evolution at least on some level, and 3) LGBTQ people were not the evil people we were told, but quite nice.

When a Christian is unwilling to respect the evidence based on their interpretation of scripture, then they always resort to baseless conspiracy theories, “The scientists are bad people who are lying to us because they are working for Satan.” This attitude carries over to distrusting all of science, which can be devastating. The US had one of the highest death rates per capita during COVID because of the conspiracy theories around the disease and the vaccine. Over 250,000 dear people died horrible deaths because of believing lies. Conservative Christians were the worst in manufacturing and disseminating these lies. It is now part of their natural habitat.

The following is how Aquinas position is described:

Aquinas’s scriptural fidelity must be held alongside his conviction that there is no contradiction between revelation and reason, because the author of nature is the same God revealed in scripture. If the one appears to contradict the other, then we are mistaken either in our interpretation of scripture or in our science. So, given the scientific evidence for evolution by natural selection, he would say that creationist Christians are wrong in the way they interpret the Bible.

6. Respect the Expert

Imagine that someone excelled in studies in high school, then went on to college, where they studied hard and excelled. Then they went on to a rigorous medical school program for another four years. Then they do a five-year residency and PhD program, focused on the nature of viruses. They then have twenty years of hard research on viruses. They then make a statement, X, Y, and Z, about a possible epidemic, their specialty. But then a guy who has a gift of gab, but has never studied even the basic science of viruses, goes on Tucker Carlson or The Joe Rogan Experience and makes a convincing argument that X, Y, and Z are all lies. Since he has no evidence, he makes up a conspiracy theory: “That doctor is out to get you. He wants you to die because he makes money off your death.” Suddenly, every church in America is passing on the lie with certainty.

During COVID, I spoke to several old friends who are still evangelicals, and they told me the exact same conspiracy theories as fact: Joe Biden is a pedophile, Dr. Fauci created the COVID virus in a lab to embarrass Donald Trump, etc. When I asked for the evidence, they challenged my Christian faith. What?

We must return our respect for the expert. It is only rational that someone who has studied a topic, like climate, viruses, or cancer, knows what the hell they are talking about.

One of the key tools the conspiracy theorists use is “correlation.” Like Robert Kennedy Junior, who has made a buttload of money off of suing people for vaccines, talks about the diagnoses of autism is sky high at the same time vaccines have become numerous. But there is no relationship between the two. https://www.snexplores.org/article/explainer-correlation-causation-coincidence-and-more )

I will end with another recommendation of Dr. Francis Collins’ book The Road to Wisdom. It is a good analysis of the state of truth in American and the church and the way back to wisdom.

I will also leave you with an interview with his colleague, and a target of hatred by the conservative church, Dr. Anthony Fauci:- Here

Respectively,

Mike