The MIT article was headlined: Why you don’t really know what you know. To cut right to the chase, the reason I am linking to the article is because our system for dispersing knowledge is breaking down. It is under attack by misinformation.
To paraphrase from the linked article, if society undermines its traditional systems of evidence and trust, our
ability to know anything and do anything will break down. I fear the breakdown has begun.
In the above cartoon, the angel is a little hard on the deceased. He was told convincing lies and he had no way to judge the merits of those lies. Journalists write good stories and talk show hosts are experts at pushing their personal agendas. The poor patient in the blue hospital gown was simply out of his league. He was no match for the purveyors of COVID-19 half truths and outright lies.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been an eye-opener. First, I am shocked at how little was in place to fight a global disease. It is not as if one could not see this coming. Heck, in just this century there have been at least three other pandemics. Pandemics are NOT rare. There have been about six pandemics in my lifetime alone. Our leaders let us down. Society's lack of cohesion prevented the launching of a strong, synchronized, educated response. A more unified response might have decimated the virus and minimized its ability to mutate.
COVID-19 appeared on the scene in late 2019 and by early 2020 I was wearing a mask when going to the grocery store. A newspaper reporter tweeted that if he saw me in a store wearing a mask, he would tell me to "get the hell out." His tweet resulted in my first "Aha!" moment.
The numerous horror stories I was told about mask-wearing reflected the stories appearing in the media. One thing all these stories shared was a lack of scientific rigour. A year and a half
later the scare stories aimed at mask use are hard to find except when
one does some Google research. The news media has moved on leaving the truth in tatters.
I actually got an apology of sorts from one reporter. He took down the error-filled info on masks that he had posted online. He admitted my mask wearing was probably a good idea. He said, he and his wife now wore masks when outside the home.
He blamed confusing information from medical authorities for causing him to make mistakes. I'd argue he should have associated with a better grade of medical authority. My authorities said wear a mask. Period. They did not waver on important points.
COVID-19 is a new viral disease. It is no surprise that there is a lot to be learned about this disease. The flip side of this is that there is often little solid to report. This fact does not stop journalists. Journalists are masters at packaging thin stories as completely fleshed out tales.
It is often too soon to point to a COVID-19 story and to be able to scream false with complete certainty. For an good example of what bad but creative journalism can accomplish, we must look back a few decades and examine the 1982 documentary, DPT: Vaccination Roulette, an incredibly flawed anti-vaxx report that won acclaim that led to a Peabody Award. DPT: Vaccination Roulette inspired changes in American law that are still being applied today. Bad science, in the right hands, can make for a damn persuasive story.
As a society, we insist on instant gratification. With certain news stories, the fast response is the wrong response. Journalists goad scientists for fast answers. Often the scientists comply. The scientists should be goading journalists to slow down, show some patience and wait for the release of peer reviewed and peer rated research.
I cannot speak for you, but I have been mislead more times by the mainstream media than by Facebook. Do you recall when COVID-19 was said to be no worse than the annual flu? In the States, that was 700,000 death ago. The MSM has published so many myths about the virus that there are Internet pages devoted to dispelling these myths and they number in the dozens.
There were vaccines for fighting COVID-19 ready to roll by late last year. Hundreds of millions of doses were made available in the States and tens of millions of Americans said, "No thanks." Many died.
The Americans who died were not, for the most part, stupid. The angel in the cartoon is being too harsh. The anti-vaxxers have been mislead and the misleading information came from a wealth of trusted sources.
The following is based on a post by Boston University.
The university noted, when so much wrong information is readily available, convincing people to get vaccinated has proven to be a huge challenge. Many myths have taken hold such as the vaccines are too new, the vaccine itself will give me COVID, I’m immune because I had COVID, getting the shot is more dangerous than getting COVID and there are more. None are true.
MYTH: The technology used to create the COVID vaccines is too new to be safe.
FACT: The technology used, called messenger RNA, or mRNA, is not new. Research on it began in the early 1990s, and two diseases that are very close to COVID—SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome)—helped bring the mRNA vaccine development to present day use.
MYTH: I already had COVID, therefore I don’t need the vaccine. I’m immune.
FACT: After people recover from a viral infection, the immune system retains some immunity. Studies have been unclear on how long this natural immunity lasts but most experts believe it will be anywhere from 90 days to six months, though it could be longer. In these cases, vaccination acts like a booster shot bringing the strength of the patient's immunity up to that achieved by the standard two-shot COVID vaccination regimen.
MYTH: Children do not need to be vaccinated because they do not become sick from COVID-19.
FACT: As a rule, children have much milder symptoms and are less likely to be hospitalized. But since children can become infected and transmit the virus while remaining asymptomatic, they can serve as an insidious and ongoing source of disease transmission. Such children can infect older, at risk, family members such as grandfathers and grandmothers or pregnant friends and relatives.
Children have a role to play in society achieving “herd immunity.” This is the point of community immunity that stops the disease from continuing to spread. Now, with the Delta variant, an even higher percentage of the population must be vaccinated to reach “herd immunity.” It will be harder to get back to some normalcy if a large proportion of the population, the children, remain unvaccinated.
MYTH: I’m vaccinated. So I can drop all my COVID precautions, right?
FACT: No!
Studies have shown that a person infected with the Delta variant of COVID has roughly 1,000 times more copies of the virus in their respiratory tracts than a person infected with the original strain. On the plus side, Delta is causing outbreaks mostly in unvaccinated people. But Delta is more easily spread, and we are quickly learning that it can lead to vaccine breakthrough infections and even be spread from one vaccinated person to another.
The vaccines are safe, and remarkably effective. But what precautions we decide to take depends on a lot of factors. For example, where you live. Are you in a place with high vaccination coverage, like Massachusetts, or a southern state with low vaccination coverage and a high case rate.
It also depends on what activity you are engaging in. Outside not in a crowd, that’s safe. You don’t need a mask, but inside in a crowd where you don’t know who is vaccinated or unvaccinated, then you may want to follow strict public health measures.
If you have children less than 12, you must be a little more cautious. In addition, if you have a compromised immune system (a pregnant woman, for instance), then you also need to take some extra precautions. And, of course, there is your level of comfort with risk.
On occasion, newspapers are among the poorest sources of accurate information. I was wearing a mask in March of 2020. A journalist with whom I once worked was retweeting to his followers that if they wore a mask into a store they should be told to get the hell out. Masks were not welcome in public spaces according to this long time reporter.
I got into heated discussions about the value of masks with a number of reporters. I was told that pushing the wearing of masks made me a troll. They all argued that they, not I, were following Science with a capital 'S'. And they were all wrong. The trolls, if you insist on using that word, were the reporters attacking those who disagreed with them. I was stopped on the street once and verbally attacked by an irate reporter.
Many people are fearful of vaccines and vaccination. These people often have doubts about the value of masks and social distancing as well. I do not hold these people totally responsible for their negative views, of their fears, for their wildly inaccurate beliefs. They are inundated with bad information. It is not fake news. It is not produced with the goal of deceiving people but it does deceive people. And if journalists think that they never mislead, they are deceiving themselves as well as the public.
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-misinformation-advisory.pdf
Journalists, editors, and others must recognize, correct, and avoid amplifying misinformation.
Attacks on evolution, often very complex arguments rooted in religion, leave me shaking my head and thinking, "Here we go again. Dancing on the head of a pin." One of the more popular dance numbers is Young Earth Creationism. This Christian fundamentalist argument against evolution sells God short. It diminishes God.
I like to think God's approach to creating our world was done in the spirit of the following aphorism: give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
The evangelicals claim their God is all powerful, all knowing, all wise, yah-da-yah-da-yah-da. Then these religious folk toss out evolution and all the evidence surrounding it. Anything is possible for their Lord, it seems, except for evolution.
A favourite argument against evolution involves the eye. They claim the eye is proof evolution is a fraud. Something as complex as an eye just didn't happen; it didn't evolve. Impossible. These fundamentalist are certain that something as complex as an eye must be created at once, complete, fully functional.
Balderdash! That's the thinking of a human. That is hardly the thinking one expects from an all wise, all knowing God. That's the limited thinking of a child. These are people whose God was made in the image of man.
I prefer believing that God created our universe with potential, great potential but unrealized potential. Evolution is but one way this potential is realized. Study the eye and and the more you learn about it, the more its evolution seems reasonable. (Read: Evolution of crystallins for a role in the evolution of the vertebrate eye lens.)
I had the lens in my right eye surgically replaced with a plastic, man-made lens. That plastic lens did not evolve. It took a lot of human effort to make that little plastic disk: chemical factories, sophisticated manufacturing facilities, imaginative surgical procedures and, in the end, it is not as good as the amino acid one it replaces. For instance, the plastic lens suffers from flare when viewing a strong light. Before the cataract damaged my sight, the unusual amino acid compositions of the natural lens worked exceedingly well. No flare.
God didn't have to create a fully developed eye, God took a more complex, more Godlike approach, and created a universe where eyes could develop or evolve. Only about 22 amino acids are needed to make all the proteins found in the human body and that includes the lens in the eye. Creationists diminish God. And who knows, maybe God is not above putting a thumb on the evolutionary scale.
As I mentioned in my last post, a close relative has tumbled down the Extreme Religion Rabbit Hole. This person told me that even as a child they were wise enough to recognize the false nature of the theory of evolution. They had no interest in Charles Darwin and his theories. There is no way, in their estimation, that humans and monkeys shared a common ancestor.
I'm an ex-Sunday school teacher but I quickly discovered I am not up to the task of defending science from the likes of my relative. Admitting that, I found the following essay by Michael Ruse, a philosophy professor with a background in the Quaker religion:
If you don't have time to read the entire essay at this time, please study the following:
The essential characteristics of science are:
Creation Science … fails to meet these essential characteristics. Whatever Creationism is it is not science and should not and cannot be taught in science class.
A close relative has tumbled down the Extreme Religion Rabbit Hole and entered a veritable Alice in Wonderland world. One of the strangest beliefs she now espouses is the belief in young earth creationism. According to YEC, the earth is no more than 10,000 years old.
My relative can mount quite the defence of what many would immediately label indefensible. It is not. If a an argument is posed outside the normal restraints of logic, it can be damn near impossible for someone just encountering this madness to argue successfully against it. The totally illogical can be an amazing solid position for a believer once all reason has been sacrificed on the alter of Christian evangelical fundamentalism.
And so, admitting that I am not to the task, I am posting this link:
What exactly is socialism and why should we fear it? First, it is democratic socialism that most of the West's left-wing politicians embrace. According to the World Population Review, a democratic socialist believes that the government should provide a range of essential services to the public for free or at a significant discount, such as health care and education.
Unlike socialists, democratic socialists do not believe the government should control everything. Government should only provide support for basic needs and help all of its citizens have an equal chance of success. Democratic socialists are committed to democracy and so are guided by an adherence to democratic principles.
Doesn't sound so bad, does it? So, why are so many folk so frightened by the term? Right-wing lies. It is that simple. Think of the term cancel culture. The Republicans in the States have managed to brand the Democrats with the term. Yet, it was the Republicans who tried to upend the 2020 presidential election, toss out millions of legitimate votes, and shove their candidate back into power in a very undemocratic power play. Now, that is cancel culture.
What countries have democratic socialist parties and, in some cases, democratic socialist governments? The following are but a few.
The following is from World Population Review:
Swedish workers do pay more in taxes than workers in non-socialist countries, like the United States. The reason they do so is so that the government has money for generous social services, including maternity and paternity leave for new parents and the school voucher system. There is also more income equality in Scandinavian countries than in the United States.
However, Sweden is not a “pure” socialist country. It has a free-market economy with very few government regulations, something that is a capitalist’s dream. Perhaps the lesson from Sweden is that both socialism and capitalism can co-exist. Now, does that sound so bad?
Then there is Finland. The land of compassionate capitalism. Finland has a free-market economy with minimal government regulation and interference. The government supplies free schooling, including college, for all students and generous maternity and paternity leave for new parents. Healthcare will not bankrupt someone living in Finland.
The last democratic socialist country we will look at is Denmark. Denmark is probably more capitalist than the United States. Its government encourages businesses to run solely on market principles rather than government policies. Additionally, it has better rates of healthcare, education, and social security than many other capitalist countries because the high tax rates create a redistribution of wealth in the form of social programs.
One caveat: There are concerns that Denmark’s social programs are unsustainable. In the coming decades, substantial changes may be necessary and the social programs may suffer. Time will tell.
The United States is a democracy. Donald Trump gained power because enough wrong-thinking individuals voted for the man. What has troubled me right from the beginning of his march to the White House was the support Trump received from Christians, especially from the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist group in the U.S.
Donald Trump terrifies me. He also terrifies my wife. Years before Trump's fascism was evident to all, my wife saw through him. For her it was easy, but then she didn't have Jesus blocking her view. Quoting scripture many Southern Baptists saw Trump as the right man for the time. Without the support of the SBC, Trump would never have been elected.
Their mistake, one among many, is seeing the Bible as the instruction manual for life. Got a problem? Turn to God. How? Read the Bible. What a huge, unfair burden to heap on the Good Book. There's a pastor of a London-area church who refuses to follow covid-19 restrictions. He likes to do the-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin as he defends his position. When it comes to stuff like this, my dance card is full. I'd tell him to get on board, make his God proud and do the right thing: wear a mask, practise social distancing and wash your hands.
But taking a wrong-headed message from the Good Book is not new. I encountered this more than sixty years ago when some Bible-thumping, God-fearing folk tried to frighten me into joining their Christian movement with talk of the end-times and the rapture. These were two ideas that even a ten-year-old could see through. The emperor had no cloths, as they say. For a deeper discussion of these two crazy ideas, still sadly making the rounds, read my essay: The Rapture Is Back. Did It Ever Leave?
More and more, people are comparing Donald Trump to Hitler. I think these people are missing the true comparison to be made: Trump's followers compared to Hitler's. Without followers, these two would just be two lonely lunatics. Mean, nasty lunatics. Two hate-filled crazies. One has to add followers to the mix and then, and only then, does all hell break out.
I'm going to end this with a short quote from Hamilton's post.
Trump has exposed a lot of things we never wanted to see, and many of us didn’t think were true.
He has shown us the sheer stupidity of a lot of people. The easy way he has duped people that we’ve known and loved all our lives into believing, supporting and echoing his blatant lies, misogyny and racism has been, to say the least, demoralizing for the rest of us.
People we love, people we’ve looked up to and trusted, have demonstrated that they are at best easily deluded fools, and at worst, hypocritical phonies. They either don’t believe a lot of the things they have said they believe, or their discernment and judgement are seriously flawed.
At the same time, our religious leaders, whose discernment and judgement we have been taught to trust without questioning, have demonstrated a callous disregard for the plain teachings of the Scriptures that they claim they represent. This disregard of the Gospels is such an absolute display of faithlessness that it is both breathtaking in its arrogance and faith-challenging for those of us who trusted these men and their leadership.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Creative Commons Image)
My wife wisely recognizes a fascist when she sees one. She always took the Trump threat seriously. While everyone from opinion piece writers to pollsters were assuring us that the American public would never elect Donald Trump, a second-rate reality show entertainer, my wife was telling me to be worried. Very worried. He might win; He might be President, she told me.
All that is now history. Four years of a Donald Trump presidency has changed me. Trump, and the world's reaction to him, has left me shocked, appalled, sadden, frightened . . . You get the idea. If not, the following tale should put all into perspective.
The other night I caught the end of The Bourne Ultimatum on television. On-the-run CIA agent Jason Bourne is giving CIA Deputy Director Pam Landy incriminating evidence that discloses the depth of perversity infecting the CIA. The disease had a name: Treadstone.
Landy is able to fax the top secret Treadstone files to someone outside the agency and the whole sordid mess becomes a public embarrassment for the U.S. At the end of the movie Landy is testifying before the Senate. Today we know how that might go, and it is not good.
The men behind Treadstone believed in what they were doing, as wrong and evil as it was. Many of the senators, Landy discovers, are more in tune with the goals of Treadstone than with Landy. The senators critically question Landy, a huge television network attacks Landy with numerous, blatant lies. The network with the support of a network of extreme Christians successfully cast doubt on her motives .
In the end, Landy must go into hiding to evade a trial for treason. After all, she did disclose highly sensitive Top Secret information and she never claimed otherwise. Influenced by lie-peddling radio and television talk show hosts, half the American public wants to see Landy executed and the President has threatened to do just that if she is ever found.
I see the world differently today. And I feel foolish. Naive. I was born just two years after the end of the Second World War. I was raised with the memory of a very real Hitler lurking in the shadows. Many of my friends only lived in Canada because their families were seeking a new life in a new country after their lives had been shattered by the war.
Trump rose to power partially by promising that he was the "law and order" candidate. Hitler's platform contained the "law and order" plank.
Which brings me to one of my biggest fears: religious folk. (I must note that religious folk did NOT play a big role in the ascension of Hitler.) Religious folk have always scared me a little. My Roman Catholic friends worried they would miss me after they died. They were going to heaven. The best I could achieve was limbo, or so I was told. My mom assured me that there was no limbo and I was destined for heaven, and for good measure, she said my friends were going to go there as well.
Then there were the fire and brimstone preachers. My earliest memories of of this approach to finding Christ was a chap shouting from my bedside radio with me under the covers fighting a fever-fueled, delusional bout of the measles. I had to follow the teachings of the Bible or face eternal damnation. I had a Bible and I had tried to read it. I knew I was doomed.
And lastly there were the End-Times and the Rapture-Is-Coming contingent of Christians. After attending a rally where these two subjects were the theme, I sought counseling from my Anglican minister. Forget it, he told me. It just isn't going to happen and, as we all know, he was right. (Well, not all. There are still those running around Chicken Little style warning that the end is nigh.)
Now, at the ripe, old age of 73, I've encountered the most fearful group of Christians ever: right-wing Baptists. And, I have a relative who posts stuff from these misguided believers. He assures me that he doesn't follow these deviants from the Christian faith but then why post stuff connected them? Why muddy your own Christian message?
Why does the pastor now support Trump? In his words, it is to fight "cancerous ideas" that are growing in America. Can one really imagine Christ fighting cancerous ideas by throwing his support behind a man filled to overflowing with cancerous ideas.
Christ never hit me as a "Let's Make a Deal" kinda Guy. "You give me this and I'll let you get away with that," should not be at the core of one's Christian beliefs. I hate to tell you Pastor Buice but Satan has conned you. If there really is a heaven, we'll miss you.
If the pastor were alone in promoting this corruption of the Christian faith, it would be disconcerting but that's about all. But no, million of Christians are spouting the messages preached by the pastor. Elmer Gantry may need a rewrite. A new, bleaker ending, more in keeping with today, may be demanded.
A few years ago my wife and I attended the 50th anniversary party of the Morgan Sports Car Club of Canada. It was well run and well attended event but what else would one expect?
Asked to say a few words after dinner, I was honored. Given five minutes to reminisce, I was told to tell a good story, I took ten minutes and told a pretty poor tale. I apologize. The night deserved more.
For those of you who don't know, Morgans are said to be the first and last of a long line of well respected English-made, traditional sports cars with most ending production in the middle of the last century.
Why is Morgan called first? Because it was founded in 1909. Need I say more? Why last? Unlike Austin Healey, MG, Triumph and the rest, new Morgans are still being made in Malvern Link, England. No longer exported to Canada because of an ongoing dispute with Transport Canada, today the Chinese are big buyers. Check the link: China Morgans.
And then, in late December '68, the answer to my predicament appeared in the window of Metro Motors in Windsor, Ontario: A dark green Morgan Plus Four sat in the showroom.
There was only one hurdle blocking my path to ownership. Curly, the dealership owner, refused to sell me the car without first chatting with my mother. I was 21! But, Curly was firm. I lived with my mom and the Morgan would be the family car, a daily driver.
Curly sought confirmation that my mom wanted to mother a car along with a young son. The answer was yes; Mom loved the little roadster. It brought back memories of the early thirties and the cars my father drove while courting her. Curly acquiesced, and he sold me the car. My mother did not disappoint. Her affection for the Morgan never wavered. In the spring, I rewarded her with a quick trip to Jekyll Island, Georgia, to visit her sister.
It was the mid '50s when I first encountered the rapture, the belief that Jesus would do a beam-me-up-Scotty routine lifting his earthbound believers to heaven. It would be a now-you-see-me-now-you-don't moment. If you sense that I don't take it seriously, you're right.
It was in the '50s as a ten-year-old boy that I attended a rally where a discussion of the rapture played a central role. Afterwards I discussed the rapture with my Anglican minister -- a minister who went on to become a bishop. He assured me it was a hoax based on a misreading of biblical text.
In the early '70s I worked with some young men who lived each day waiting to be raptured and with joyful glee, I might add. One warned me, "If we are playing catch and you have to run to catch the ball, if you don't see me when you turn around, look up. I may be floating skyward. The rapture may be happening." I didn't laugh. This was madness. And when the rapture didn't happen, I worried he might become violent. Would he hold the disbelievers like me responsible for the failure of the rapture?
It is now 2021 and some of my relatives are falling victim to the rapture story. I don't worry about them harming me when the rapture fails to come, and it will fail to come, just as it has for well over a century.
No, I worry about losing these relatives, of being ostracized for my lack of belief. I love them dearly and think very highly of them. To consider my life completely without them is a line of thought that leaves me very sad.
If they want to believe in the rapture, that's fine with me. As long as they are not making decisions today based on being raptured tomorrow, I'm comfortable with their beliefs. If my liver wasn't failing, I'd drink a toast to them and to the rapture. "God bless," I'd say. (I may be too generous.)
After I wrote the above I found this on a site maintained by The Johns Hopkins University:
No less a figure than President Jimmy Carter expressed contempt for the rapture. He refers to it in his book Keeping Faith. The Johns Hopkins paper calls the rapture a racket. And the paper chooses to quote Barbara R. Rossing, a Lutheran minister and educator, who wrote The Rapture Exposed.
Paraphrasing Rossing and condensing some of her arguments:
Believers in the Rapture are not only in error, but they are an obstacle to building God’s Kingdom on earth. These misguided believers anticipate miraculous rescue from the catastrophes associated with the end-times and thus they do not place enough importance on working to solve crucial issues such as pollution, crime, poverty, and war. A belief in the rapture is dangerous for planet Earth.
