Some notes and thoughts on seeking objective truth, avoiding objective truth, or simply telling the truth.
The term post-truth, which was most likely coined in 1992, was selected by Oxford Dictionaries as the "word of the year" in 2016. This selection was mainly associated with president Trump's election and the novel public opinion phenomena observed and widely discussed around that time. But nothing was more revealing as to the power of this phenomenon than the COVID-19 adventure.
A couple of excerpts from Francis Collins' book "The Language of God", where Collins himself quotes some great men with tremendous reputation:
Galileo Galilei: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
St. Augustine: Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation in which people show a vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but the people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books and matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience in the light of reason? [9] (19:39)
Quoting from the documents of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: The truth telling and reconciliation process as part of an overall holistic and comprehensive response to the Indian Residential School legacy is a sincere indication and acknowledgement of the injustices and harms experienced by Aboriginal people and the need for continued healing.
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Notes by George Ellis
