We are often told that we should think critically, and that we should not believe everything we hear. We often hear “facts” about science, politics, history, economics, and religion. But if we are honest with ourselves, most people do not know how to think critically about claims that they hear.
Most of us follow our preferred media sources, and usually these are media sources that agree with our worldview. Quite often, many people believe their preferred media source to be “unbiased,” “neutral,” or “objective”. If someone were to accuse us of believing everything we hear, we would of course rebut that, because no one truly believes everything they hear.
Yet far too often, people believe that which fits with their biases, and dismiss that which they don’t like. Sadly, especially in this day and age, confirmation bias, and the backfire effect are rampant, and are destroying our ability to think and discuss rationally.
But since every news source is made by a human being with inherent biases, it is impossible for any news source to be truly unbiased, and infallible.
That is not to say that a news source cannot present a story in an objective manner. A news outlet can present the arguments of both the prosecution and the defense in a murder case, even if the guilt or innocence is plainly evident. They can also strive to give equal airtime to interviewing those for or against a particular cause, and doing their best to interview experts on all sides of a particular matter.
Yet far too often, we seal ourselves into echo chambers, only hearing the best of arguments that we like, and hearing only the worst of those we do not, and the news media has been incredibly complicit in this immoral state of affairs.
How then can we filter through claims that we hear? Are we doomed to forever wander in the intellectual wasteland merely believing what we hear from sources we like, and dismissing that which we don’t like?
I would argue no. Even if we have our personal preferences, and inherent biases, we can still objectively search through claims that are made. We can hear claim X, and claim Y, and filter through these claims, if we follow certain general guidelines of logic and reason.
In this article, I will go over just a few of these key guidelines. Some of these may seem obvious, but far too often I see these principles misapplied by even the smartest people I know.
Hear All Sides
“ The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him.” King Solomon (Proverbs 18:17 NASB)
“…a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” Charles Darwin
I often hear people claiming that a particular source is “biased” while other sources are “unbiased”. But in my experience an “unbiased” news source is just another word for propaganda.
We are told from the time we are children that we should always hear “both sides” of an issue. Yet this principle is so rarely applied in our society. If anything, this principle is that which is scarcest in our intellectually impoverished wasteland.
So few people are even willing to hear opposing viewpoints for themselves in political, social, and even scientific dialogues. People usually assume that they already know what the other person is going to say, before they even say it.
And the saddest part is that most people think they have heard the other side, when all they have heard are strawmen.
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
C.S. Lewis had a similar quote lamenting the echo chambers of universities.
“In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university, there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other groups can say.”
But what happens when we actually take the time to sit down and hear the arguments of our opponents, in detail, directly from our opponents themselves? What happens when we read their books, listen to their most prominent and most well-informed advocates, and take the time to hear the experts who disagree with what our teachers and professors have always taught us?
Take the example of Megan Phelps-Roper. She was a member of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, a group that goes around protesting at soldiers’ funerals, and holding up signs that say “God Hates Fags,” “God Hates America,” and even “God Hates U”.
Yet through her interactions with other people online, she came to the point where she found the worldview she’d grown up in to be wrong.
As another practical example, growing up, I had always heard that guns were bad. I saw shootings and gun violence on TV, and was concerned about people being killed by criminals.
Yet the only justification I heard for the pro-gun side of the debate was that gun rights were in the Constitution. I personally found this to be a terrible argument. After all, the Constitution, from my perspective, was written a long time ago, when hunting was a necessary practice in order to survive in the new American wilderness. But in modern times, people are crowded into cities, and guns were just causing people needless problems.
I even saw a cartoon where a talking gorilla (or maybe it was an alien) took a rifle from one of the bad guys, and said “These things cause too many problems on your planet.” Before the super-strong entity broke the firearm in half, followed by a “NOOOOO” from the bad-guy (bad-girl?) human onlooker.
But when I heard the testimony of Suzanna Gratia Hupp, my way of thinking radically changed. This short testimony was less than 10 minutes, and yet I can say it honestly changed my mind. It may not have changed my mind 100%, but it did flip the way I thought about the issue.
This woman’s parents were killed by a gunman, in front of her eyes, and yet here she was in court arguing for, not against,the Second Amendment.
Don’t Assume You Know What The Other Side Is Thinking
On the note of hearing all sides — Don’t assume you already know the opposing arguments. What you imagine they will be, and what they actually are are not always the same thing.
For example, if you hear someone opposing affirmative action, one might assume that the person putting forth the argument is opposed to helping black people, or that the person sees this as an example of “reverse racism.” One might even accuse this person of not caring about the economic inequality of black people in America.
Yet one of the most outspoken critics of affirmative action is Dr. Thomas Sowell, himself an African American. Far from hating black people, Dr. Sowell has pointed out that empirical data has shown that affirmative action only harmed black graduation rates at colleges and universities in California. Yet when these programs were taken away, black graduation rates dramatically increased — the direct opposite of what many had assumed! Dr. Sowell also goes into detail explaining the most logical inference, based on objective data, as to why this is the case.
“[…]the academic performances of black and Latino students rose substantially after affirmative action admissions policies were banned in the University of California system.
Instead of failing at Berkeley or UCLA, these minority students were now graduating from other campuses in the UC system. They were graduating at a higher rate, with higher grades, and now more often in challenging fields like math, science and technology.”
— Dr. Thomas Sowell, Do the real facts not matter at all in college admissions debate?
Notice what just happened here. Dr. Thomas Sowell, one of the most well respected economists in history, gave an expert response on an economic issue that no one would have expected. But no one would ever have even known that if we did not take the time to listen.
Seek Out Experts
This leads me to my next point. Seek out experts, and hear what they have to say, and hear experts with a diverse array of expert opinion. This is probably one of the most misunderstood points of all.
I am NOT saying that experts are infallible deities with nothing but holy writ flowing out of their mouths.
What I am saying is that those who are experts are experts for a reason.
If I think there is a pain in my chest, I will go to my doctor, and after listening to my chest, my doctor might send me to a heart specialist. In other words, I went to an expert, who sent me to an even higher expert.
In a court of law, when testifying on DNA evidence, the courts will bring in a biochemist to testify as to the validity of the evidence. It would not be appropriate to bring in Uncle Ruckus, or even some kid in high school who is really smart when it comes to science. Why? Because the biochemist here is an expert, and the others are laypeople, however smart they may be.
This should all be painfully obvious, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people fail to understand that not all people are equally qualified to speak on every issue.
I was once speaking with someone I know on a matter of economics, and to my amazement she dismissed the analysis of a Harvard Economist as being “Just her opinion.” This person asserted that this economist didn’t have any evidence for what she was saying. This was jaw dropping to me, as said economist has published multiple research papers on this topic going back many decades, and as far as I have been able to tell, economists are in universal agreement with regards to the interpretation of her data. In other words, what she was saying was not even controversial for economists.
In other words, this Harvard economist had done research with detailed empirical analysis on this topic going back multiple decades, and her work has become well known, and fully accepted, in the academic community.
Yet this person dismissed what this economist had to say as if this was just some set of feelings that said expert had dreamed up one day.
In contrast, earlier when I compared what this economist was saying to what a famous politician was saying, I pointed out that the politician was a layperson, and the response from this person was “Would you stop!” Followed by some kind of lecture about me being wrong for regarding some people as being smarter than others.
But some people are smarter than others, and that’s the point! That’s why they are called “experts.”
True, experts can be wrong. The majority of astronomers once believed that the Earth was in the center of the universe. But when 100% of the experts are all saying the exact same thing, then it tells me that there is probably something to it.
Keep in mind that seeking out experts is just a means of starting an investigation. Often one expert will say X, while another will say Y. The key here is to take the time to hear experts with a wide range of (expert) opinions, as opposed to only hearing people with strong opinions, but no credentials as to what they are saying.
How To Question The Experts
But what if the experts are wrong? And how do we avoid falling into the trap of just believing what every so called expert says?
The answer to this question is to seek out experts, and to hear a broad range of expert “opinions”. I put the word “opinions” here in quotes, because like the person I know, so many people regard this word as being equivalent to some idea they dreamed up one day. Yet when we seek a doctor for medical treatment, or bring a biochemist into the courtroom, we are not interested in their personal feelings, we want to know their analysis of the facts using the skills that they have spent many many years, and sometimes even decades to acquire.
So with regards to an issue of science, or economics, or history, what I try to do is to seek out experts who are debating a particular topic. If I can’t find any on Google, after doing my due diligence, I will ask proponents of said ideas what experts they can point me to to back up a particular idea.
So, if I am talking to someone who makes claim X about science, history etc. I will ask them what scientists or historians they can point me to who hold to claim X.
Sometimes people will point me to an expert, while other people will merely get mad, and call me names that usually end in some sort of “ist” or “ism.” But when they do point me to an expert, it gives me the opportunity to hear someone who is (beating a dead horse) an expert on the issue at hand advocating for one particular viewpoint or another.
Since I do not want to repeat the mistake of those who dismissed intellectual minorities in the past, who ultimately turned out to be right, if I can find at least one historian, or scientist etc. who is arguing for a particular viewpoint, I try to listen, and give him/her an equal playing field while I listen to their ideas, and listen to the ideas of their intellectual opponents. After all, Truth is not a Democracy.
So even if 99.9% of experts say X, and there is only one who says Y, I try to at least hear him out, while I also investigate the mainstream arguments.
When it really comes down to it, I generally do not waste my time if there are no experts who can be found, and if 100% of relevant experts really do agree on a particular issue, then I generally move on. The reason I do this is because there is only so much time in a day, and it isn’t worth my time trying to argue with someone whether or not the moon is made of cheese, or whether or not Jesus was a real person.
Which brings me to my next example…
I often hear Atheists who claim that Jesus was not a real historical person, and who say that there is no evidence for His existence. Interestingly, it seems that you can count on one hand the number of historians in the world who deny that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure, even if they do not believe Him to be the Son of God.
Yet, when an Atheist friend of mine pointed these experts out to me, I took the time to hear what they had to say, and even watched debates between these historians and other historians.
What I found was that the arguments of these “Jesus-Mythers” were downright embarrassing, and showed that they had no case.
Look at what I did here. As a Christian, I believe that Jesus existed, but that belief is backed up by the facts of history. In fact, virtually every historian in the world agrees that Jesus was a real person. But in order to do my due diligence, and challenge my beliefs, I took the time to hear the arguments of a historian (albeit an ultra-fringe historian) who holds to a different view from my own.
That is often the biggest key to overcoming confirmation bias — take the time to seek out experts with views that are different from your own. Watch their talks, read their books, and analyze their arguments. And when you have heard from proponents of a position directly, then take the time to seek out experts with a different view from theirs.
It does no good to glean quotes here and there from commentators that you like to ascertain the views of your intellectual opposites, and then to claim that you’ve heard “both sides” for yourself.
Are they really experts?
It’s important to also recognize who is an expert, and who is not. Generally, those with an earned PhD in a given field are experts in that particular field.
One with a PhD in ancient Greek, probably knows his or her ancient Greek. And yes, they are probably smarter than me when it comes to all things pertaining to this ancient language.
Yet far too often I see people with no credentials in science, history, or anything else being passed off as “experts” in topics which they know nothing about.
For example, one author writing books critical of Christianity was described as a “historian” by some news outlets online. Yet when I looked up his credentials, it became clear that he had no formal training in history, and was merely a blogger writing his opinions in book form.
As another example, I was once watching a panel discussion on the news where they brought in an atmospheric physicist to talk about Climate Change … along with a actor-comedian who played a scientist on TV 20 years ago.
To make matters worse, they treated said actor-comedian as if he were the real expert, rather than the actual scientist with an actual PhD.
I am not sure what episode of the Twilight Zone I woke up in, but I would have expected better from CNN.
This is why it’s important to seek out experts for yourself. As someone with a background in Biotechnology, it never ceases to amaze me how often the news media’s reports on scientific issues is just plain wrong. Often it seems that the goal is to scare people into tuning into the news, or buying a copy of National Geographic, rather than presenting the science in an accurate manner.
Do all experts agree?
One other key point is to remember that even if it seems that all experts agree, it’s important to keep digging. Oftentimes issues are said to be agreed upon by experts, when in fact they are not.
For example, I often hear claims that all scientists agree with the Left’s narrative about Global Warming. Yet no serious scientist would have been willing to endorse the claims of alarmists like Al Gore.
In reality, this is a very complex issue, and the best thing that we can do for ourselves is to hear the arguments of scientists on all sides of this issue, rather than turning our brains off when politician Al Gore or comedian Bill Nye decide to play scientist on TV.
Again, this does not mean that we blindly follow everything that every expert says. And no one says that we do not have the right to hold to our own views and opinions. But despite the objections of many, the person I mentioned earlier included, seeking out experts with a broad range of expert opinions is a good place to start.
One last example … I once talked with someone who insisted that Jesus was copied from Horus. This person was an Atheist. Unfortunately for him, no Egyptologist or historian on Earth buys into this nonsense Internet Conspiracy Theory.
He went on and on with this nonsense that Horus was baptized by Anup the Baptizer and had 12 apostles … yet none of this is found anywhere in Egyptian history or mythology. The entire thing, although popular with uneducated Atheists on the Internet, was made up by Gerald Massey in the 1800’s, and as one person put it, he was laughed out of the room by every serious Egyptologist on the planet.
While investigating this topic, I even went so far as to reach out to one of the greatest universities in the world with regards to Egyptology, and the Email they sent back to me was dripping with sarcasm in their response to the Horus=Jesus conspiracy theory.
So in this case, literally every single PhD on the planet agrees that this is nonsense, and the evidence overwhelmingly shows this conspiracy theory to be wrong. Yet the response that this Internet Atheist gave me when challenged with Egyptian history, and what the actual experts have to say was this: He pointed me to memes he had made himself as “evidence” and said “PhD = Piled High and Deep”.
Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings
One of my favorite public speakers, Ben Shapiro, is famous for saying “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
We live in a free country, where all men (including women and children) are created equal, and where everyone is entitled to their opinions. But that does not mean that all views or all opinions are equally valid.
When analyzing the claims of others, it’s important to filter out the facts. One expert might say X, while the other says Y, and yet others say Z, W, H, or P. But the only way to filter through this is to ask “Why does said expert believe Y?”
Their race, gender, religion, or sexual preference or even their passion or public speaking ability is entirely irrelevant to the validity of their argument.
So what does this mean?
It doesn’t matter if someone “feels” that vaccines are bad. It doesn’t matter is someone “feels” that vaccines are good. The only thing that matters in determining scientific truth are the facts and the data — our emotions are entirely irrelevant.
You can “feel” very strongly that President X is from the Moon. No matter how strongly you believe it, or how strongly you “feel” something to be true, it makes absolutely no difference as to the truth of reality.
The same goes for your religion. You can believe anything you want — and it is a free country, so you are free to do so. But no matter how strongly you “believe” your religion to be true, it does not make it so.
As an example, many Atheists insist that Jesus never existed as a real person. Yet almost no historian in the World, except those who are ultra-fringe, agree with them. But more than that, there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus was indeed a real person, at the very least.
American culture has adopted this idea that if you believe something enough, and ignore the facts, then what you believe will come to be — reality and God will conform to your personal whims. But if that were how things worked, there would be no starving children in the world today, and no sick grandparents.
The fact of the matter is that facts don’t care about our feelings. Reality is what it is, and the best response is to seek out Truth, no matter where it leads.
Recognizing Junk Science — Analyzing the Facts
One of the biggest areas of misinformation on the Internet is with regards to science, especially medical science.
I was recently told about a doctor who supposedly cured HIV using ozone. As someone with two biotech degrees, this immediately raised red flags (as well it should). The idea that ozone could cure HIV makes absolutely no sense on the face of it. But that does not automatically make it untrue, so I decided to ask a few questions.
My first question was how did the doctor know that people were cured of HIV in the first place? Did he test for HIV before and after the ozone treatment?
The person I was talking to said this doctor did not test for HIV, and this was probably due to lack of money. (HIV testing is not that expensive.)
Keep in mind the person I was talking to is an amazing person, but just doesn’t have any background in science.
I explained that if this doctor did not test for HIV before or after, then he can’t say that he cured anything.
Not only did this doctor not prove that he cured anything, he did not prove that they even had HIV to begin with, or that it was cured at all.
So three questions:
How did he test for HIV to make sure they had it before the ozone? He didn’t.
How did he test to see if they still had HIV after the ozone? He didn’t.
How did he go about proving that it was the ozone that cured HIV? He didn’t.
The bottom line was that this doctor was a very very evil man. If anyone should be in prison for gross fraud, it’s him.
There was no evidence for the confident claims that he was making. It was a case of: Well, maybe these people had HIV, and maybe it went away, and maybe ozone made it go away — therefore ozone is a cure for HIV.
The entire thing was nothing but a room full of smoke.
I have to wonder how many people have already died, because this snake-oil salesman was pushing objectively false information.
I explained to the person I know that if this doctor didn’t actually test for HIV, he can’t say that he cured HIV.
In other words, it didn’t happen. If this doctor has no proof that he actually cured people of HIV, and didn’t even test for HIV, then for all relevant purposes, it did not happen.
The person I know then asked me how I can know that the person didn’t cure HIV if there were no tests.
The problem here is that the burden of proof is on this doctor. If this doctor cannot prove that he cured people of HIV, then it shows that his claims are intentionally deceptive. There is no reason that he would not at least test his patients, unless he was intentionally trying to pass off a deception. He is intentionally ripping people off. (Not to mention the unsafe conditions that would have gone along with such an unethical experiment, obviously lacking even basic medical facilities to monitor patients’ health.)
In other words, his methods are so dishonest, and so unscientific and unethical, that I no longer have to disprove his claim that ozone can cure HIV.
Even the idea that ozone could cure HIV, makes absolutely no sense, if we have even a basic knowledge of how HIV works
Just to play Devil’s advocate for the moment … let’s say there were a team of doctors who actually tested people with HIV before making these sorts of claims. Perhaps I turn out to be completely wrong.
Even if it could be shown that ozone cured HIV using actual science, and not just their feelings, this “doctor” should still be put in jail for fraud. It’s not hard or expensive to test someone for HIV, and the only reason this doctor would claim to cure people of HIV without actually testing them would be because he intended to commit an incredible fraud.
As of the writing of this article, there has only ever been one case of a patient cured of HIV. This is a man known as “The Berlin Patient.” Were a doctor to cure patients of HIV, by any means, it would be at the front of all scientific news outlets the next day.
…
Now let’s open up a box of “what ifs”. Let’s say that another doctor came along and claimed that his magical ice tea could cure cancer.
Biology does not care one way or another about my emotions. No matter how much I want this tea to cure cancer, it does not prove that it works. No matter how many people “say” whatever, “feel” whatever, or have “heard” whatever, it is completely irrelevant as to the validity of the claim.
For the sake of having something positive in this ironically emotional section of this article, let’s say this magical tea actually works.
Let’s say the tea actually cures cancer. Let’s say we do a double blind study that proves that this tea cures cancer in 100% of the patients (hey, it’s a what if). The only way we can know this is true is through valid evidence — we have to actually test these patients to see whether or not they have cancer.
The mere fact that someone has “feelings” or “opinions” does not determine the truth. Even if the top 100 greatest doctors in the world say that this is a cure, it does not matter if they do not have the evidence to back it up.
After all, even doctors can’t know something like this to be true, unless they collect evidence to find out for sure.
Update: While writing this article, and before publishing, I decided to do more original reading about this so-called doctor who claims to have cured patients of HIV. After all, this is an article about critical thinking, and checking your sources. I figured this was either a con-artist, or a “doctor” who never went to medical school.
It turns out that in decades past there was research being done on whether ozone could be used to treat HIV (note: “treat” is not the same thing as “cure.”) But the results were that there was no evidence that ozone had any positive effect on HIV infected patients.
The best I can come up with is that this is a case of the telephone game — a lot of people have heard a story until it get’s mixed up and takes on a life of it’s own. But this just reiterates why it is so important to hear these things directly from the experts themselves, rather than from other people or from the news media.
In my case, I thought there was a fraudulent doctor pushing another piece of pseudoscience, until I went to look into the events for myself.
Find The Original Source
It never ceases to amaze me how often we fail to do any fact checking.
Seriously. We have the Internet. Take 5 minutes and find the original source. Even when it seems like an open-and-shut case, as it seemed with my last example, it can be good to go and find out for sure.
Say you hear that President X made a particular statement. It might sound wonderful, or it might sound terrible. But the obvious question is did he(she) actually make this statement? And if they did make this statement, what was the context?
There was an interesting social experiment during the 2016 presidential election where quotes from presidential candidates were read to passionate voters. When these voters heard quotes from their own politician, they avidly supported the quote, but when they heard the quotes from the opposing politician, they avidly rebuked them.
The twist here was that the quotes and their associated politicians had been switched. When confronted with an objectionable quote supposedly from an opposing politician, one voter was appalled and quickly condemned the politician, but upon finding out the quote was actually from her preferred candidate this voter said that she would have to verify it.
Furthermore, these quotes were basics of the platform of each candidate, and the covert switch should have been obvious.
Amazingly, news outlets, including mainstream news outlets, will often give a partial out-of-context quote, or a quote that is even false. But I find it painful that with a quick Google search, I can watch the original speech, yet so many people, on all sides of the political spectrum, will so often fall for misinformation.
One Issue At A Time
It’s important when analyzing a debate to focus on just one issue at a time. A good friend of mine will often jump from one topic to another in rapid fire when trying to analyze everything.
As brilliant as this person is, no human being can handle all that.
One of my favorite topics is Creation VS Evolution. On my YouTube channel, this is the topic I talk about the most. I often point out that, despite what you may have heard in school, there are scientists who are Creationists, those who are Evolutionists, and those who are Intelligent Design Advocates.
Yet to try and discuss dinosaurs, genetics, “hominids,” peppered moths, finches, fossils, and everything else all at the same time would be impossible!
So what is the best way to approach such an all-encompassing topic seemingly with a “mountain” of evidence?
Simple answer: one “stone” at a time. Look at one piece of evidence at a time, such as Galapagos Finches, and hear what scientists on all sides of the debate have to say.
Not to mix metaphors, but the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. In the same way, the way to analyze the putative “mountain” of evidence for Evolution is one “stone” at a time.
And be patient with yourself while doing so.
Unfortunately, far too often I have had critics who will comment on my videos criticizing me for not covering topics that were outside of the scope of that particular video.
Conspiracy Theories
A lot of people claim that jet fuel cannot melt steel beams. …Let’s see how this claim holds up to scrutiny using the methods we discussed here.
Keep in mind, this video is only dealing with one specific argument of the 9/11 Conspiracy crowd. Far too often people want to switch arguments when they see that one argument cannot be defended. This is a staple of conspiracy theorists, (and the same technique used by groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses).
That’s not to say that conspiracies don’t exist, it’s just to say that it’s important to evaluate claims one-at-a-time against the facts and evidence to the best of our ability.
Don’t Attribute Motive
Far too often in debates I see people accuse others of having the worst possible motive. If you are opposed to Affirmative Action you must therefore hate black people, but as we saw with Dr. Thomas Sowell earlier in this article, that simply is not the case.
If I had a nickel for every time someone called me a name, I would be a very rich man. But name calling does not an intellectual argument make.
As Whoopi Goldberg, a very Liberal celebrity, once pointed out: we all want a better future for our children, but we do not agree on how to make that happen.
Unfortunately in 2018, with the dishonesty of so many on the Left, including those calling Ben Carson a white supremacist, I often wonder if that is still the case.
That’s not to say that everyone on the Left is bad, but it is to say that if they want to be taken seriously, constantly calling everyone who does not think like them a “racist” has got to stop. Otherwise, I’d be more than happy for mainline America to vote Conservative for the next hundred years.
But as Steven Crowder, my favorite TV show host, comedian, and political commentator points out, we should always try to assume the best possible motive of the other person in a political discussion.
After all, whatever the politicians or news outlets do, most of the average people on both the Right and the Left really do want to live in a better world, but we just do not agree on how to make that happen.
Also, even if someone is downright wrong, unless they are intentionally telling a lie, and you can prove they are intentionally telling a lie, at least give them the grace to be wrong. Most people out there who are saying what is false are only repeating what they’ve heard, and most do not have any intention of deceiving others.
At least that’s what we assume, and if we can at least assume honesty up to a point, we will be starting in a much better place.
Self-Righteous Pharisees
Unfortunately, there are those out there who are so certain of what they’ve heard, that they will demonize anyone who disagrees with them.
Generally these are people with unearned confidence, who do not know how to think critically. And when their worldview is threatened, all they know how to do is sling dirt at other people.
So when you see a public speaker who throws around terms like “racist” or “sexist” like candy at a parade, look very carefully at what this person is saying, because chances are, they are merely trying to stir up hatred for those who think differently, and those who are in the “other” in order to get people to rally around them.
In the United States today, Liberal “Social Justice Warriors” have this idea that they are fighting the new Hitlers, and walking in the path of those who opposed racism in the past, by demonizing straight white men.
Ironically, it was Adolf Hitler who pointed to the Jew as being an oppressor for being rich. Demographically, Jewish people were more wealthy than non-Jewish Germans. Once he labelled a particular ethnic group as the oppressive enemy, it became politically correct to persecute that enemy. And Hitler’s party, the National Socialist Worker’s Party, or NAZI for short, had goals which were in many ways very similar to the political goals of Socialists living today.
Reaching Out From The Cave
As with the Allegory of The Cave, we should always be seeking Truth, trying to reach higher and higher in our understanding of the world around us.
There will always be those who choose to close their eyes and ears to hearing Truth, but as Lady Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs called in the streets for people to come and receive understanding, so we should invite others to come with us as we eat at her table.
Conclusions
There is much more that could have been added to this article. But the key here is to look at the facts and the reasons for particular claims. Be open to hearing what voices from a wide range of views have to say on a particular issue. (As the old cliche goes, you have two ears, and one mouth, so listen twice as much.) Also, seek out expert opinions. While experts may not be God, they are considered experts for a reason, and that’s why we have expert testimony in the courts, where comedians in a lab coat are not allowed to testify as to their particular opinion.
Also, weigh the arguments and the evidences against one another, as Darwin, King Solomon, John Stuart Mill, and C.S. Lewis all recommended. Find out why a particular expert might believe what they believe, and look at their reasons for it.
Finally, fact check. Far too often people get lazy with this last point, but it can be crucial for separating the validity of the claims in question. (P.S. Facts don’t care about your feelings, no matter how loudly you scream.)
The bottom line with all of this is to really do your homework. You never know what arguments or what evidence will be brought forth until you actually go out there, and take the time to hear those who honestly argue from a particular point of view for yourself!
God bless, and thanks for reading!
G.S. Muse
