Federal agencies are overwhelmed with examples on online lying,
regarding the current political race.
They do not have the resources to notify those who post and perpetuate
lies, that they are lying. And when they do, those who post lies are often
very offended that ANYONE would call their opinion a lie.
“The defenders and protectors of our democracy need to become much more aggressive, much more assertive,” Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, told CNN, referring to federal agencies and media outlets alike.
“It is worth protecting and it is worth protecting vigorously,” he said. “And if people get their feelings hurt because you’re calling them a liar, let them prove that their lie is true in court.”
I think that America has been very backward in legislation about
freedom of speech, and outright lying.
We had freedom of speech, before the creation of the digital computer,
or online social media sites. Even if online mass lying were suppressed,
legally, that would not affect the right of "freedom of speech". Those who
argue against such online fact checking, unfortunately, (I assert), also correlate
heavily with American religious people who are anti-intellectual, or uneducated,
or who live by their emotions, and who assert that our shared reality is
whatever they assert it to be.
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Online sights such as this philosophical Christian apologetics site,
should not fear the discussion and debate about what is merely an
opinion, but does not match our shared reality, and what is demonstrably
true. Christians cannot avoid this discussion, as one of the core Jewish-
Christian moral-ethical commands is "You shall not bear false witness".
Continuall abusing this command, will, according to the New Testament,
exclude us from the kingdom of heaven.
Christians who hold to the biblical moral commands, but do not accept the
intellect as the prime tool to determine what is true, and what is false,
are not really holding to historical Judaism or Christianity. (Just to
point out the obvious....)
In America, the topic is more difficult, as some Christians come from an
anti-intellectual background, and are unused to demonstrating, intellectually,
why their interpretation of a text of Scripture is correct. Many of the discussions
on this site, are posted by Christians who are asserting some interpretation of
an ENGLISH translation of the Scriptures. And, they cannot make their case
from the original language of Scripture, using the world-class reference
tools for Biblical Hebrew, Aramiac, and Greek. (Why would you expect them
to do better, in hunting down whether a popular conspiracy theory was true, or
simply a falsehood??)
American citizens, and Christians in particular, need to get used to being told
when their opinion on something is false, or even irrelevant. We should not be
afraid of "testing all things, and holding on to what is true". And, if we leap to a
conclusion about what is true, we should not be offended by others who
present a solid intellectual argument aoubt why we are wrong, in our opinion.
Christians should avoid the conspiracy theories that are repeated over and over again,
by Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, and that are picked up on some social media
sites, and repeated hundreds of times a day as if they were true.
Just as Christians should avoid interpretations of Scripture, that are not based on the
world-class reference tools for the biblical languages.
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Lying is a serious sin.
And conspiracy theiries are a form of gossip.
Christians should have nothing to do with lying, or gossip.
