I have noticed a
willingness in many people to abandon reason and fact confirmation in pursuit
of social acceptance of political ideology as a replacement of objective
reality.
Imagine a community of
people who would prefer to recognize eleven inches as a foot rather than the
conventional twelve inches. Take it one step further toward that community
insisting that eleven inches is equivalent to twelve inches.
When we exchange actual
fact confirmation for community preference the results can be disturbingly
absurd.
I write in defense of
fact confirmation. Or to use the more prevalent term “fact checking”.
Consider the following long-held
examples of fact checking…
*There is a term in
ecclesiastical circles that describes the process toward “fact checking” Biblical
and preachable ideas. This term is “exegesis” which is defined as the critical interpretation of the
biblical text to discover its intended meaning. When I prepare a sermon I seek
out the original language and context of the verses on which I am preaching so that I don’t drift away from the true
meaning of the Scripture and replace it with “fly by the seat of your pants”
meandering from the pulpit.
* It has been a practice
for centuries that we refer to dictionaries to discover or confirm the spelling
of a word, that word’s history and origin, and examples of usage.
* We have referred to
various encyclopedia for credible and reportable information regarding subjects,
histories, and processes.
* From the time that I
could read a newspaper I was proud to have a “World Almanac” as a means of
discovery of facts.
* When writing papers for
high school or college classes, we are required to cite our sources of
information.
Imagine…rather than actually citing credible sources for our information, we merely distribute our papers to other students in the class and acceptable “facts” are determined by popular accord among those students.
The result is the blind
leading the blind…the uninformed affirming the uninformed.
I learned early, on the
playground to be skeptical of a report from anyone claiming “a friend of mine
said…”
As for my practice, I
will continue to seek authoritative and credible sources of information as a
means of fact-checking rather than a “community of the uninformed”.
