There is a lot of discussion about “fake news” today. I raised the issue in my Inklings group and more than a few students told me that it is already being discussed in their Philosophy classes (as an exercise in critical thinking). The news stations are in a whirlwind over the term, and political commenters are boiling over in their allegations of what is and what is not fake news. Every day there is a battle being waged over who is, and who is not authorized to identify the truth in our social and political culture.
The brief history of “fake news” is both complex and a little ironic. The idea that mass popular opinion had been swayed by misleading, or inaccurate, or baldly false reports planted in social media by certain “political operatives” was originally circulated by the Left in order to explain why their political candidate lost the election. After many bold assertions of authority as “fact checkers,” the mainstream media set themselves up as the proactive agents of authenticity bent on ensuring that such broad sweeping manipulation would no longer impact future elections. The unspoken (and often brashly spoken) implication was that if these fake news stories had been properly exposed prior to the election, then the results would have been swayed the other way. The idea that the election represented the voice of the people was inconceivable, so another explanation had to be found and “fake news” became the best alternative. Then came the humor. A series of very unfortunate news stories published by these same mainstream media outlets were exposed as misleading, inaccurate, and baldly false. The “fact checkers” who were attempting to discredit the “political operatives” responsible for fake news were themselves exposed as the purveyors of fake news. A war of words erupted between politicians and the mainstream media moguls over who was fake and who was legitimate. It still wages today.
This is not going to be a political article – I try my best to avoid engaging in political debates online (or in person). From my perspective, the question of “fake news” is not political, but cultural. Our society is waging a war over issues that have been fought over for several decades in various forms. The current manifestation of “fake news” ultimately boils down to questions of authority. Who holds authority in our modern society? Where does that authority stem from? In this case, we are struggling over the authority to designate one ideology as “fake news.” In previous cases, we struggled over the authority to designate “fake science” (Global Warming), or “fake justice” (racial politics), or “fake biology” (homosexuality), or “fake compassion” (scandals in the Church), or “fake equality” (“white privilege”). There are dozens of cultural debates that may be reduced to questions of who has the authority to define authenticity: illegal immigration (who defines a security threat?); gender fluidity (who defines sex?), gay marriage (who defines marriage?), abortion and euthanasia (who defines human life?). Take almost any cultural debate and one side of the equation will argue that legitimacy is determined by their authority, while the opposing side argues for another.
Ultimately, expertise and authority resides with those people who know best about a thing. An expert knows the reality, and his authority is derived from the presumption that what he says is a reflection of that reality. Something is “true” when it most reflects reality as it is.
When we boil it all down, the most important question to answer in determining authority is, “what is truth?”
What is truth?
At this point in the conversation, I realize that I am inviting debate when I raise the specter of using “truth” as the ultimate standard for evaluating our ideologies, or our policies, or our behaviors. If this were a face-to-face conversation, and if the other person disagrees with me, they might ask the inevitable question: “but who decides what is true?”
It is a fun question… but it is usually posed as a rhetorical statement. Seemingly, it is asked because the person asking it does not really believe there is any such thing as an objective truth. Or if they concede the possibility of some absolute standard of truth, they then assert that it is unknowable, or that no one can actually know truth, and therefore anyone who asserts the authority of truth does so to avoid other types of discussion. In this view, the world is filled with preferences and desires and power, and those with the most power get to assert their preferences and fulfill their desires and thereby make it true.
I think the question is itself rather cynical. Nevertheless, it is also a fun question because it is easy to answer. My answer: “No one decides what is true.”
Truth is not something that is up to us to decide – it is something that we investigate, or uncover, or identify, or explore. We do not choose our truth, or make it. It either is, or it isn’t. If we choose that it isn’t, then we can make up whatever we want and claim our own authority in this subject. If we choose that it is, then we must adhere to its reality.
In matters of natural science, we are supposed to be able to associate “truth” with “factual accuracy.” In Chemistry, if we combine two chemical reagents in a predefined way, then we should always produce the same results. The truth of that chemical law is based on a collection of facts that explain how and why these given processes will always produce these same results. Similarly, in Physics, we might measure heat, or the distance between one body and another, or their relative velocities. The physical truths are reflected in the accuracy of our measurements and our theories are tested against our observable facts. Among living things, we can identify the biochemical processes that ensure healthy functioning and those that control the spread and containment of unhealthy diseases. Biological truth is not always a matter of facts alone, because the effectiveness of various medical “practices” is not often easy to measure. Nevertheless, we still define the “truth” of a medical theory according to whether it leads to predictable results.
In most matters of science, we deal with quantitative measurement to isolate and analyze current conditions and processes, and which help us make predictions for future situations. Most of our scientific truths are comprised of observable and measurable facts. Our theories about these facts are tested by our ability to predict the outcomes of future cases.
Unfortunately, though, scientific methodology does not provide certainty. At best, it can only provide a mechanism for testing by negation. If we make a specific prediction about something based on a scientific theory, and if that prediction fails to come true, then the theory is refuted. By contrast, if we predict something based on prior factual observations, and if the prediction comes true, it does not mean that the theory is a fact. It only means that we failed to refute it. It is possible that some other combination of tests might find a hole in the theory, and then the theory would collapse. Even in the natural sciences, the inductive method of reasoning does not guarantee absolute certainty.
The lack of factual certainty is even greater in the social sciences. As much as we study economics, we are still unable to predict with any kind of certainty future upturns or downturns in the market. As much as we study political science, we are still incapable of perfectly predicting election results (as in our last election), or of creating a system that eliminates dissent or discontent. As much as we study psychology, we still cannot adequately predict human behavior, or prevent people from engaging in criminal acts or falling into addiction or harming themselves. That is because, unlike the natural sciences that involve inanimate or unconscious elements, the social sciences necessarily include the human element – and that always involves free will, which is unpredictable. Free will is not governed by material circumstances alone. It is, by definition, a product of our own choices – good, or bad, or reasonable, or irrational. Free will often follows no set rules at all and science has no way of accounting for that sort of variability.
How then do we determine truth in matters that involve human relations? We cannot rely on factual evidence alone (though, obvious factual errors should indicate some error in truth). In human relations we are most often debating the value and credibility of human opinion. How can we identify “wrong” opinions? Or wrong beliefs? Or wrong choices?
In a world that is governed entirely by material and quantitative measurements (by inductive reasoning alone), there are no answers to these questions.
Thankfully, our world is not governed by material science alone. We are a world governed largely by faith – whether we choose to admit it, or not. God created this world with its own rational order, and we have striven to uncover that order both in terms of material observations (science) and in terms of immaterial standards (morality and virtue). Traditionally, we call that order “the law of nature” and we usually speak of it as “natural law.”
Historically, and especially in the prescientific eras, truth has been defined by its relation to God. We knew certain immaterial truths because they spoke to our hearts, not because they were scientifically measured. We did not have to measure the morning to know it was beautiful. We did not have to measure our relationship to know that we loved someone. We did not have to measure God to know and feel His influence in our lives. These truths are matters of faith, and unlike science, faith provides a sense of certainty. Faith is defined as a sense of personal assurance that exists outside the bounds of quantitative measurement.
In this context, we know something to be “true” because it matches our sense of truth. In older days, we used to call it our “conscience.” We are born with it, and it tells us whether something is right or wrong. It is like a built-in truth detector, except the sense of truth does not depends on factual observation, but on an immaterial understanding. It provides greater certainty than the scientific method, but it is also more liable to corruption. Our consciences may be abused, and may be deformed through ill usage. Fortunately, though, our hope resides in the fact that each generation is born with a clean conscience, and even as adults we may take advantage of Grace and repentance to make it again as fresh and clean as it was at birth.
From a political standpoint, our American system presupposes the existence of such clean consciences as the starting point for our modern democracies. The mission statement of our nation begins with, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights…” This means that we are created with a certain set of skills to discern truth with. In moral terms, our consciences are useful because God inserts in our hearts certain standards that we listen to judge good and evil. When we translate this in the political terms of democratic process, we argue that most people will choose the right path most of the time (which is why we defer to majority rule). Collectively, we trust in the authority of so many “clean consciences” choosing the right decisions. Regardless of whether the society in fact chooses to follow the right path, or not, our democratic system presumes that the standard by which we judge the “good” idea or a “bad” idea is built into our conscience. We may educate ourselves on all the details of a particular issue, but in the final analysis our judgement will be based on whether those details conform to our sense of “rightness” that is born in our hearts.
Our ability to detect truth resides in our hearts. Factual details always matter, but we do not always evaluate facts according to quantifiable evidence. Most social or cultural questions are not based on facts alone, but are based on presumptions or assertions about human nature. We evaluate these questions according to how they match up with our internal convictions of what is “right” and what is “wrong.”
In a perfect world, our hearts would always be clean and our consciences would always be well formed and our knowledge would be well informed. In a perfect world, we would have no reason to debate theories or authorities or other questions of “fake news.” Obviously, we do not live in a perfect world. The cleanliness of our hearts, the blank-slates of our intelligence, and the built-in “truth detectors” of our consciences can be easily corrupted by sin and by habits of sin (vice). Unfortunately, sin follows when we choose to do something wrong even though we know what is right. Perhaps worse, we can develop a tolerance for sin that can weaken our built-in truth-detectors.
When we are children, our sensitivity to sin is very acute. We know right away when we have done something wrong – and we immediately feel bad about it, and often we try to make amends for it. In time, though, even as children, we may try to avoid taking the actions necessary to make amends. We may even lie to ourselves and try to hide from the feeling that we did something wrong (guilt), and may try to justify our wrongs by making them sound right. In truth, this sort of behavior makes us feel worse, yet we often persist anyway. We may even try to hide our shame from others by encouraging others to share in our actions. At heart, we know that what we did was bad, yet through our free will we still choose not to change our behavior. We may continually prefer to follow the bad thing, and we may choose to accept the pangs of conscience, because in the end we do not want to resist the pleasures that the bad thing provides.
As we get older, these habits turn into vice. We can become desensitized to those pangs of conscience, and we learn to live with a continual sense of guilt. If we live with our vices for a long enough time, we may even forget what it felt like to be free of such pangs. Pain of conscience may become the new sense of normal. When this happens, we lose our ability to distinguish between a “good” thing and a “bad” thing – we lose our ability to recognize truth, even when we are confronted with it. That is the sign of a corrupted, or malformed, conscience.
At heart, a malformed conscious results when we substitute our own authority for another. When we choose to follow our own desires, rather than listen to our own conscience. When we set the pleasure of our discordant choices over the satisfaction of a clean conscious, then we are ultimately rejecting one authority over another. We make the decision that the things that we want to do are more important than the things that we should do.
The threat of sin originated with the start of human history. Biblically, this is the fundamental dilemma faced by Adam and Eve. The serpent lies to Eve and tells her that if she eats of the forbidden fruit, then she will be like God. That is like saying that if you choose to follow your own desire rather than follow your well-formed conscience, then you will be your own authority – you will become your own god. Why follow the God who made you, when you can become your own authority? The decision of Adam and Eve to break God’s command is the birth of sin – it is the first debate between competing authorities, and mankind ultimately chose to follow its own authority rather than to follow God’s authority. Insofar as we broke away from God, we also broke away from truth.
This problem of identifying truth becomes a constant theme in the evolution of human society. It is the root of virtually every philosophical question. If we begin with the Bible, we can follow very ancient philosophical debates on man’s pursuit of knowledge versus his pursuit of truth. This is the primary theme of my favorite Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes. The wise King Solomon tries to find meaning in his human life, and concludes that “vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Searching for truth in the world itself, without recourse to any non-earthly authorities, is like chasing after the wind. The material world will only repeat itself, it does not offer any new truths. In the end, he concludes, “My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” Truth does not come from our own devices, but from God alone.
We see the same intellectual struggle to identify and define truth in the pagan world. The overarching question of Plato’s Republic asks whether it is better to be evil and prosperous, than to be good and poor. He takes hundreds of pages and dozens of extended allegories to answer it, but in the end Plato affirms the truth of enduring goodness over temporary advantages of evil. Good offers its own rewards because it is not based on human effort alone. Like Ecclesiastes, the question even for the Greeks ultimately boiled down to a matter of authority – do we judge our behaviors according to our wishes, or according to some unseen, invisible standard of truth? For Plato, he also affirmed the power of a well-formed conscience, which he believed was linked to a higher “form” of truth. The very method of discourse used by he and his mentor Socrates was based on the existence of built-in truth detectors. They asked self-evident questions that the student instinctively knew the answer to, and with which the teacher could slowly move the listener to a point where they come to recognize the truth of their philosophy on their own, without having to be convinced by argument. In the Socratic Method, the teacher relies on the interior understanding of the student to bring the student to higher knowledge.
The question of Truth is the defining theme in all of Christian theology, but we also see hints of religious and Roman secular authorities debating the reality of truth in the New Testament. It is posed explicitly during the trial of Jesus before the Roman Prefect. All the Gospels tell of the civil reaction to a “Jewish Problem” when Jesus is brought bound before Pontius Pilate. Initially, Pilate does not want to be bothered by dealing with a religious problem. He is concerned only with political order, and not with local religious issues. He tells the high priests to take care of the matter themselves, but they insist, and bring up the fear of conflicting authorities. Deferring to Rome’s authority, the High Priests affirm that they are not allowed to put anyone to death, but they want to put Jesus to death, so they bring him to Pilate out of respect for his authority. Pilate recognizes the deference and he does not want to deny his own authority in this matter, so he takes the case. Immediately after speaking with the High Priests, Pilate enters his hall where Jesus is and begins the interview with an obvious question, “Are you the king of the Jews?” In plain language, Pilate is asking if Jesus is setting himself up as an alternate authority to Rome. If he is, then Pilate has no problem executing justice by having him crucified. There can be no rival to Roman authority.
Jesus responds by asking Pilate if he was really wanting to know this, or if he was merely serving as the pawn of the high priests. “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” This upsets Pilate because it questions his own authority – is he acting at the behest of the Pharisees? Or is he acting on his own authority? Pilate does not want to be anyone’s pawn, so he pushes on and asks again, “So you are a king?” Again, Jesus does not answer the question as Pilate wants him to, but says simply “I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.” This is where the pagan secular authority comes in conflict with the primary authority of individual human conscience. Pilate scoffs and says, “What is truth?”
Pilate was not really looking for an answer and he was not interested in the details of the High Priest’s case against Jesus, and he has no interest in the “truth” per se. For us who see this scene in hindsight, we realize that Pilate was speaking directly to Truth itself. Jesus is the Truth, and yet Pilate did not recognize it. Instead, he was too busy worrying about whose authority was being tested. Even though his heart (and his wife) repeatedly told him that something was wrong with this case, and that this was not right, he eventually bowed to outside pressures. Several times, Pilate tries to find a way to let Jesus be free without undermining his authority, but he is continually faced by the political pressure of the High Priests who cry out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend; every one who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar.” They were using the threat to Pilate’s authority, and the accusation of a threat against Rome’s authority to compel action. The Gospel of Mark states simply that Pilate, “wishing to satisfy the crowd,” deferred to their authority and ordered Truth to be destroyed rather than risk a conflict with the authority of man (Rome.)
Pilate order the death of Jesus 2,000 years ago, but this scenario is not an isolated situation. In almost every case where we question the reality of truth, we do so because we choose to insert our own authority ahead of the reality of natural law. Often, these personal questions of conscience are exacerbated by a culture that prefers to deny the real authority of natural law in favor of its own authority of human preference.
More Practical Question: Is it the Fault of Social Media?
I suppose it may appear like “ducking the question” by devolving into a theological discussion of truth. We began by asking about “fake news” and how we might deal with this in our modern society? For much of the public debates, there is a fear that our new social media is unregulated – that we need to impose more stringent policies to “police” fake news, and eliminate the posts that try to promulgate it. This is a high sounding goal, and I have written articles in the past that strongly criticized Facebook and other social media forums as imperfect vehicles for public discussion. They can be easily manipulated by prejudiced algorithms working behind the scenes to promote some stories and squelch others. On its face, a strong commitment to reclaim “neutral” news, and to crack down on the “fake news” sounds very laudable.
Except… it is meaningless if the people implementing this policy have no clear definition of “fake news” or “truth.” If the self-proclaimed fact checkers are just as guilty of obfuscating the truth and promoting fake news as those they have denounced, then the process will be flawed and corrupted from the start. 
Let us consider a famous example. Facebook promised to include “Snopes” as one of its fact-checkers… Snopes gained its fame by uncovering the urban legends that swept through social media in its early days: the sick boy who wanted one million likes before his last chemo treatment… the secret program by Mark Zuckerberg to give away millions of dollars to people who agreed to repost the discovery… the “news” that Facebook will begin to charge its users. All these were examples of early “fake news” stories that were genuinely circulating Facebook (and other places), and Snopes earned a reputation for debunking them. In fact, they gained such a reputation that people began to defer to Snopes on all sorts of matters – even those that did not have certifiable answers: did this politician lie about this statistic in their speech? Is global warming made by man-made industry a genuine scientific fact, or is it a hoax? Is Facebook biased or not? These are not questions that have yes/no answers, and the interpretation of the facts depend largely on other premises that involve personal opinion. Snopes.com made millions of dollars in advertising based on the numbers of hits to their website.
I was one of those who initially accepted Snopes.com as a legitimate “fact-checker,” until one day when I looked into whether or not Facebook was inserting its own political agenda into its newsfeeds. Snopes answered strongly that Facebook had never done such a thing… and as proof, they asked Facebook executives. And sure enough, they all said that they had never done such a thing. As far as Snopes.com was concerned, the question was answered. There was no use of statistical analysis, or other quantitative facts. They had no outside or external authorities for evaluating the truth of the assertion. They simply rested on the honesty and integrity of the Facebook executives. This caused me to question the authority of Snopes.com.
Later, I found out that Snopes.com is not an impersonal “institution” or an authority with any particular expertise in anything. It is run by a married couple – now going through a divorce – who took a special interest in debunking public rumors. Unfortunately for them, the dirty laundry of the divorce proceedings revealed a number of very unsavory facts about the human beings that actually run the organization, and the policies they use to hire (or screen) their employees, and the procedures employed to assess “facts.” I do not want to dwell on the salacious details of the real people behind the authority of the Snopes.com brand, but it is sufficient to say that moral truth is not a priority in that website. In fact, it turns out that the website has no set procedures for evaluating any type of truth except old fashion human collaboration – they look at a social issue, and decide for themselves whether or not they believe it, and then assert with authority whether it is true or not.
News of the practices of Snopes.com sent some ripples through the journalists community (on both sides of the fence) because if it turned out that the main “fact-checker” had little or no real credibility beyond bold assertion, then who is an authority? The company could not really refute the charges against it. Like their coverage of the Facebook algorithms, Snopes.com relied on its own authority to verify its own expertise. This was a devastating blow to their credibility.
You cannot be your own authority.
The underlying problem is that the “truth” that Snopes.com (and other fact-checkers) are evaluating is not discernable by simple quantitative measures. We denounce a news article as “fake news” when it is obvious the facts are clearly contrary to reality… this person never said those things, and that event never actually occurred. But, equally, we also denounce as fake news those articles which assert that some event was culturally significant or not – Did this politician’s action really haunt and traumatize that group of constituents? Was that gaff in a speech genuinely reflective of deep-seated prejudices against those categories of people? Are the expenses of this politician more significant than the expenses incurred by their opponent? These are not factual questions, but questions of relative priority. In this way, the real question of fake news is not merely whether the particular article contains factual accuracy, but whether it truly represents what it claims to represent. Not all “fake news” has to be a bald lie – sometimes it is simply misleading, and sometimes it distorts a truth without explicitly denying or breaking it. Sometimes it speaks of a moral falsehood as if it were a truth.
How do we detect those kinds of “fake news” stories? We cannot rely on “fact checkers”, we must rely on some larger universal definition of “truth.” Is Snopes.com qualified to detect that sort of truth? Is any natural scientist qualified to do so? Are we asking the “fact-checkers” to simply assert their own authority?
Is it the fault of the Internet itself?
Before I answer that… let us consider one other possibility. Perhaps the problem with our inability to easily detect “fake news” stems from the overload of information pouring in from our new vehicles of online communication. Perhaps the fault lay in our modern technological society. Is there something about the internet itself which obscures truth and makes fake news more appealing?
This is a good question. In our virtual electronic world, the vast majority of our experiences are gained from a virtual experience – not from real face to face interaction, but from pretend, virtual interactions created by numerous layers of digital content. This is an emerging phenomenon. Over the past dozen years, a strong percentage of Americans have begun to rely on Facebook for their news content (estimated at roughly 18 percent rely on it “mostly” and nearly 50 percent get “some” news from Facebook). For the rest of society, Pew research polls indicate that just over 50 percent get their news from television, and about 25 percent get it “mostly” from the radio (hardly anyone reads newspapers anymore, but that figure is estimated at about 20 percent). Facebook is just the most obvious player in the broader category of “social media” and other “online sources,” which an estimated 38 percent of people use for their daily news. The point is that a strong majority of people learn about the world around them from sources that are several steps removed from direct physical interaction (online or through 24 hour cable news channels).
Surely, any source of “news” is removed from its source. A man who gossips at the coffee shop is giving news through direct personal interaction, but it is not necessarily any more legitimate or trustworthy than an online version of the same story. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the “virtual platforms” online and the “personal interaction” of face to face communication. It mostly involves the quantity of the news and the relationship between the news provider and news consumer.
Modern internet provides continual news coverage 24 hours a day, with no perceivable “down time.” Moreover, the breadth of the news coverage allows consumers, potentially, to draw their information from thousands of different sources. In the coffee-shop, or even in the old-fashioned daily newspaper, people only had a few pages of political news. There was a clear physical distinction between the source of commentary (the neighbor at the counter) and the source of the news (the event itself, which may require a trip to the library to get first hand access to). In times past, the equally old fashioned news hour on television may have only had a dozen in-depth stories. Yet now, modern internet sources can compile hundreds of stories together on a single page, and thousands of news stories through various links – most of which are written by “commentators” who are giving their insights to the news that has already occurred. The cable news channels are completely integrated with their online presences, so the fluidity of both platforms makes each most indistinguishable from the other.
Therein lies the problem. The vast majority of these “news stories” contain very little “news” – at least in terms of news as defined as a simple exposition of names, dates, and events. Mostly, these news stories consist of commentaries from observers who write about (or if on cable news, speak about) a particular event. One single 75 minute event (such as a Presidential news conference) can spawn thousands and thousands of online articles, round-the-clock news commentaries on the cable networks, and an untold number of sarcastic memes and other tirades on Facebook and social media… and these commentaries can go on for weeks on end. The consumer does not often distinguish between the original “news story” event and the re-dressed “commentary” that followed it. In most cases, the vast majority of consumers who read about a particular event did not actually experience that event – they did not watch (or even read the transcripts of the event if they were available). The internet is vast, and the primary sources are almost always available somewhere — though usually hidden or obscured. Instead, most consumers of news see only the selected bits and pieces and reiterations provided by the thousands of secondary commenters who filtered and augmented and passed enhanced copies of the news. On social media, such as Facebook, those pieces and bits may be reduced down to a single image, with four or five sarcastic words pasted at the bottom. This is not “news” in the technical sense. It is commentary.
The virtual platform of online communication creates an artificial world, many steps removed from the actual world. Yet, it is so immersive that we often “feel” like we are actually experiencing the events first hand. We might speak of an event as if we were physically present. We might speak of politicians or a public face as if we actually knew them personally. We make instant judgments and decisions as if we were fully educated on the issues and informed on the details – even though, in truth, most people experience only a shadow of access to the actual facts and the actual events. Nevertheless, we have trained ourselves to accept the “virtual experience” as if it were the “real experience”.
Our online outlets of information make it difficult for our hearts to distinguish between truth and virtual reality – that alternate reality that we really wish were true. It may even be more accurate to say that our online outlets make it easier for to “prefer” the virtual news compiled by the thousand-plus filters and the actual reality as it happened in the real world.
There is a legitimate question about the nature of our online source of information. Like Adam of Eve, we often want our preferences and desires to be true. We want to set ourselves up at the ultimate authority on every issue – we are the fact-checkers, and if a story does not conform to our desires, then we want it to be fake. The virtual experience provides us with so many alternative options, that it is much easier to choose the “reality” that we find most comfortable. Unlike the one-on-one conversation in the coffee shop, we are not limited to a single source of information that we evaluate as good or bad. The man at the counter may be trustworthy – they may be a personal friends that we have known for years, and with whom we have shared experiences with. We may be able to trust their words. Or… by contrast, the man may be a liar and our personal knowledge of the man may lead us to distrust their words. We would not, in good conscience, listen to what we knew was a suspicious source. We might, in good conscience, listen to someone we do not know – even if the news itself sounds suspicious. If we like what the news says, and if we have no specific evidence to the contrary, then we might choose to believe it.
In a virtual world, we know no one – not intimately. Yet, we can find thousands of friends or fellow-travelers who share the same worldviews as we do. If we have corrupted our own hearts, and if we have trained ourselves to ignore the pang of conscience, or if we have become callous to the pain of continual guilt, then we might find some communion with others who are in the same sort of moral denial. If we choose to set ourselves up as the primary authority on reality, and if we make a habit of denying the most real experiences that traumatized our own hearts, then we will go seeking the company of those who share the same sort of denial. In the virtual world, that company is easy to find. In the virtual world, we evaluate news and opinion according whether it matches our comfort zones. We usually do not evaluate it according to whether it is true or not.
Nevertheless, I would still hesitate to blame the internet for our crisis of assurance (or crisis of faith). Pontius Pilate had no internet, and yet he was clearly swayed by political pressures more than he was swayed by truth. The online virtual environment may make our discernment process more difficult, but it cannot determine our own choices. In the end, we always have free will. In the end, we know full well whether we are seeking something that is convenient, or whether we are seeking something that is true. We know if we are being intellectually lazy, or if we are being diligent. This does not change in an online environment. Virtual reality may make it easier for us to become lazy, but we still must choose to take the easy path.
There are other sources who share in this blame.
The Greatest Lie of All
Our modern society struggles with fake news because we struggle with the meaning of truth. This is not new, but it is becoming increasingly more explicit. Our schools often reject the idea that there is any such thing as an “objective truth.” Truth is defined by how we feel about it. It is defined by our sensitivities and our feelings of pride or oppression. It is culturally determined, and has nothing to do with facts, or even science.
When I was a boy, back in the old days when we used to have daily newspapers, I used to read the comics. One comic strip that I remember was “The Born Loser.” It is an old strip and featured a man and his wife and his kid in a typical home. I remember one of the strips which began with the man and wife arguing over the spelling or a word. Eventually, the wife told the husband to go “look it up.” Dutifully, he did. He pulled out the Webster’s Dictionary and opened it up. The final frame of the strip has the man staring thoughtful off into space, and saying, “Huh… Webster got it wrong also.”
I laughed out loud when I first read that strip. I was probably nine or ten years old, and it was so ridiculous to think that someone might insist they were right in the face of another obvious “authority.” In his mind, the Born Loser was right and Webster’s was wrong, just because he did not like Webster’s answer.
It is a funny idea, and yet, I find that I experience this sort of phenomenon quite often. If a student comes into my classroom – a pretty young girl – and they assertively declare, “I am a boy,” the culture of our institutions of higher learning compels me to simply agree. Obviously, according to all measures of reality the statement is factually false. The girl looks like a girl, has a voice like a girl, has skin and body parts like a girl. If we were to take a blood test, the blood would reveal an excess of estrogen like a girl, and the DNA would reveal 46 XX Chromosomes of a girl. Without going into personal medical history, my guess is that her body would experience monthly cycles of a girl, and as she grows older she would become more vulnerable to a hundred different diseases that only girls can contract. The material reality is that she is a girl. Yet, her simple decision to define herself as a boy means that I must deny the mountain of evidence of her material, biological gender identity, and must defer to her self-proclaimed identity instead. Our modern culture demands that I ignore truth to cater to her wishes.
Clearly, this carries with it a host of social political issues of tolerance, and sensitivity, and political correctness, etc. At the same time however, in my mind, it is equally clear that we are engaging in gross academic malpractice when we cater to these delusions of artificial self-identity. We are allowing our students to deny reality and to deny truth by simple assertion.
If we remove any semblance of truth from our test of authenticity, then anything is permissible. What if I declared that I was a black, 19 year old woman? I realize that I do not appear to be black, or 19 years old, or a woman… but if I am free from the bonds of material truth, then I should be able to assert anything. Of course, if I “came out” as a young black woman, most people would think I was delusional – especially if I insisted on it.
Or… and this is my favorite example because it carries with it no political baggage… what if I suddenly declare that I am an alligator born into a human body? And what if I began demanding that my co-workers acknowledge my non-humanoid identity, and address me as they would any other friendly alligator, and what if I demanded that I have a separate feeding schedule and that I be allowed to surgically implant scales, fangs, and a tail? My guess is that my co-workers would send me to seek professional psychiatric help. Obviously, I am a white, middle aged man. I cannot choose to be something that I am not. To do that is to deny reality.
The advocates of transgenderism demand that we ignore the authority of the material world in determining identity – we should ignore what biological science tells us, and rely instead on that very small voice inside that says which gender we wish to be. This is ironic because it (in some broad terms) the same suggestion that the Church makes for all people when they discern truth – we should look into your heart and ask yourself if this conforms to your well-formed conscience. The difference between the position taken by the Church and that taken by the transgender community is that the Church actually believes there is a single absolute truth. Our conscience does not make the choice arbitrarily, we are doing so because it reflect the One who created us. We believe God speaks to us through the assurances gained from a well-formed conscience. Truth is a reality, and we must seek to discover it.
By contrast, the “gender fluidity” ideology argues that there is no truth at all, except that which we create. This is a big lie. And it is very destructive. We take young people who are already facing great insecurity as a natural result of growing up and trying to find their vocation in life. Add to this a constant barrage of media images that define beauty in purely material terms. Add to this again a hypersexualized culture that esteems sexuality as the primary source of pleasure and satisfaction. And enter into this mix some young boy or girl who already feels like they do not match the standards of beauty, and who may not feel competitive in the marketplace of sexual attraction. And then tell them… you can find your own identity by being something complete different. You are not meant to be attracted to the opposite sex. You are not meant even to be your own sex. The reality of the world around you is hostile, so transform your identity into something that is more comforting. If there is no truth, then you can choose anything that makes you feel special.
It is a tragedy because we can destroy lives in this way. We tell the young person that the pangs of guilt that they feel, and the sense of inadequacy for failing to meet some external measures of reality… if we tell them that these warning signs are all the fault of bigots and homophones, and those who “do not understand,” then they have a ready-made justification for ignoring their individual conscience. This instruction tells our youth to ignore the built-in truth-detectors that they were born with. In truth, however, those feelings of oppression that a young gay or transgender students feels does not come from bullies, or from homophobes or from bigots. It comes from the cold, indifferent, reality of nature itself. That means that no matter how much indoctrination of tolerance and sensitivity we try to impose on other people and the culture at large, they will never escape the reality of nature. Those who are caught up in the transgender delusion will be continually beset by an unchanging and unalterable natural world that will never affirm their personal fantasy. It is no wonder they are suffering – it stems from internal sources.
The scope of this tragedy is magnified by the fact that it is promoted by the mainstream media, and those other “voices” of modern cultural – the very same outlets of cultural authenticity who seek to proclaim themselves the arbiters of fake news. It was not a groundswell of public opinion that pushed the homosexual agenda forward, and that pushed the question of gay marriage forward, and that turned specific gay voices into public icons and role models, or who turned confused transgender persons into champions against an oppressive society. These were not reflections of innate universal truths. These cultural goals were the product of our mainstream media, our entertainment industry, our academic, and our mainstream culture.
This is the real scandal of fake news. It is not a single fabricated story in the news, or a misspoken gaffe during a press conference. The real scandal is that we are pushing cultural narratives that are toxic to the moral health of our society. Worse yet, we are targeting our youth with these lies. That is the very definition of scandal, “to lead someone else astray through your bad example.” When we push giant cultural lies that deny the reality of natural law and objective truth on to our children, then we undermine the tools that they need to make informed decisions, and we cloud their ability to activate their internal truth-detectors through a well-formed conscience.
This is one of the greatest sins of modern society – we have taught our children that there is no such thing as truth. Jesus warned us very explicitly, “but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
Yet, we are not heading the warning.
Conclusion
I am closing with the case of “gender fluidity” because it brings the discussion of an objective truth to a complete circle. Who is responsible for “fake news” in our society today? It is not a question of a single news story, nor does it reflect some broad opposition to a free press. The question of fake news involves a deeper question of truth. Who is promoting truth, in all its forms? And who is trying to deny the reality of an objective truth? And who is contributing to massive cultural lies that distort truth in a thousand little ways, on a daily basis?
The Church calls on us to defer to our well-formed conscience in discerning truth. It asks each person to look into their soul and discover the truth. In our modern secular culture, the icons of moral relativism also ask us to look into our hearts, but they are asking the unsuspecting (and sometimes the willful) soul to become truth itself. They encourage each of us to make ourselves the ultimate authority of reality – even it is contradicts all the visible evidence around them. It is the definition of cognitive dissonance, and there is no wonder that people who have found themselves victims of this sort of ideology also suffer from lifelong bouts of depression, substance abuse, and other self-destructive behaviors. Gender-fluidity is just one example of an ideology that asks their supporters to deny all other realities except the one they wish were true.
How many other lies are included in this relativist ideology? Is the assertion that are society is perpetually victimized by unrelenting racism, sexism, elitism and religious bigotry really reflective of our current history, or it is also fake news? What about the blanket assertion of “white privilege” which seemingly justifies the imposition of reverse discrimination in order to offset historical wrongs? Is that really justice, or it is another item of fake news pushed by an ideology that seeks to destroy rather than to reveal truth? And the latent fear-mongering behind the predictions of a man-made environmental holocaust? Is this true science, or is it truly fake news? These and other similar theories that seem to justify the assault on any presumption of providential order and natural law are not honest observations based on scientific inquiry, but are human constructs designed with political aims in mind. They are lies – the substance of the bulk of society’s “fake news.” They all aim to replace one authority (natural law) with another (human constructs).
How is that different from what the Serpent promised to Adam and Eve? If you do this, you will become like God. If you believe this, then you will not have to suffer those restrictions.
Our modern society has tried to rid itself of any belief in a single, objective, unchanging standard of truth because it compels us to conform to established rules of morality and behavior. The existence of an absolute standard of truth would mean that some types of actions were categorically wrong – that they are sinful, and that they lead to self-destructive results. It would mean that divine order is the only true authority, and all other forms of authority derive their authenticity from that faith – in one way or another. This theistic view of the world runs contrary to the prevailing desire to make the world fits our wishes (rather than to make our behaviors fit the reality of the world).
The problem with fake news is that, as a society, we fundamentally disagree on what truth is. By extension, we also no longer share a consensus on the meaning and definition of authority. It used to be “God” or the “Church” or our faith. Then later, it was “science” and “facts” – but even those authorities seem to be a weak standard for our modern preferences. At heart, we desperately want to be our own authorities – we resent humbling ourselves to another, even if that “other” is reality itself. This is the nature of all sin. We want to be God, and we want to choose for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.
Fake news and political spin does not necessarily involve an explicit decision to commit sin, but it stems from the same basic problem. We reject any authority except our own. Those who promote fake news want to set the narrative of the society at large. They want to define what is and what is not important to civil society. They want to be the only authority in people’s lives. This is not a journalism issue, it is a cultural issue that reflects a certain moral confusion. Fake news stems from our unwillingness to accept the reality of truth – the permanence of natural law, and the overarching authority of divine love.
If we really want to fight fake news, we must learn to better recognize truth as it is. Not as we define it, or as we wish it were, but as it is revealed to us… through the natural world, through the revelations of our faith, and through our own well-formed consciences. And for that last part, our well-formed conscious requires a powerful act of free will. Our reception of Truth requires personal humility.
To this end… I might recommend frequent acts of confession.
(and the Easter season is just around the corner).
