Well, this is a very good post and I agree with most of your thoughts here. Also if you have to be direct with me in order to get to more middle ground , then go right ahead. I don’t mind that, since I also use that type of approach with reaching some truth. I’m very direct too but I can also exit quickly when the other party becomes too extremist in their reasoning.
The post that you made is an excellent argument on popularity and cheerleading from either side and how we forget to establish some basic facts.
As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like Fauci one bit and he’s too politically involved at this point where he doesn’t hold much credibility.
But I can’t take Alex Jones seriously either. I also share your distrust of Government or any private company whose MO is basically : Profit.
Despite this, I also realize that governments or private companies are not in the business of killing millions of people.
I also acknowledge that this was a lab made virus in Wuhan China, and the world doesn’t have the guts to hold China accountable because they make our stuff and PROFIT is way more important than ruining the Chinese relationship.
When the internet first started, I participated in message boards where I might engage in Christian apologetics. I bought several books including "The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics" by Norman Geisler, and "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel, and others. (I also had a Doctor of Philosophy, who was also a Christian believer, help me.) In order to discuss theology and atheism with an unbeliever one needs to find middle ground. Most of our arguments began with first principles, on which almost all people can agree. For instance, most reasonable people, theist or atheist will affirm the law of non-contradiction.*
After a couple of years, I discovered a strange phenomenon that I couldn't explain at first. The middle ground was shrinking very rapidly. Long story short, as postmodernism began to take root and grow among the population, apologists like me were having a hard time finding folks that believed in first principles. For centuries, most philosophers would agree on this one self-evident fact: though we argue over what is true, we all agree that a universal, common truth, exists for us all to find. We may not agree about what is true, but we know that truth exists.
Much of what I learned about the course set by those who were leading society and culture came through dialogue with college students. What were they learning from their teachers and professors? The up and coming fad in philosophical thought was postmodernism, which affected all areas of life including architecture, fine arts, dramatic arts, college campuses, until eventually it was common thinking among the regular populous. Postmodernism, by contrast to previous areas of human thought, not only doubted whether truth could be found; it question whether universal truth actually existed. The core principle of postmodernism is the belief that "truth" is simply the consensus opinion.
When I finally realized what was happening, I began to hear the following verses ringing in my ears. "[the man of lawless is coming] in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness." 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 College-aged kids were not receiving a love of the truth. And the atheists with which I engaged would not accept the truth in order to be saved.
So I wondered if God was finally sending a deluding influence now. I kept on the look out for signs that this was happening. I wondered who this deluding influence might be and how a lack of love for the truth might manifest itself. During that time I read a lot of books and a couple of books stand out now in my thinking. "The technological society" By Jacques Ellul, and "Propaganda: the formation of men's attitudes." also by Jacques Ellul. These two books, among others, became the framework of my new perspective on the state of truth-telling in the United States and perhaps the world.
Without giving you a complete argument at this time, I identified the sources of the "deluding influence" were mainly academia, Hollywood, and popular culture. And there are two competing, reality shaping forces in play: the old guard, consisting of the typical political structures, and the "new" elites consisting of the technocrats, who want to eliminate government altogether in favor of a technical elite consisting of so-called "scientists" who think that technology and especially "technique" should be the tools of the dominant class. (China is attempting this sort of rule via mass surveillance and social credit scores.) The more technocratic, the less human; and the highest value of a technocrat is efficiency.
Among Jesus-followers, the highest values are truth, goodness, and above all, love. Among Jesus-followers, the unit of highest value is the individual person. Among the technocrats, the unit of highest value is society, especially the technological class. (I took note of the emphasis on STEM at the expense of the humanities in colleges and universities.) Over time "the Good" has changed. Whereas, in ages past, "the good" was human fulfillment and thriving; today, the good is "the most efficient process in any given situation."
With regard to the Corona Virus, I have been following this story since it first started, and even before it was generally known.** And eventually we discovered that the mind-virus I described above, i.e. "efficiency" is the highest value, has infected the nation's hospital system. Whereas, in times past, the hospital would do everything in it's power, even lose lots of money, to save a dying patient. Today, unfortunately, the hospitals have changed their position on the treatment of those who fall outside the standard deviation. In other words, to put it bluntly, marginal patients are being allowed to die, rather than treating them. This is a nightmare situation. No more experimental treatments, no more experimental drugs, no more fighting for the patient until the last breath. Hospitals are now triage centers in which each patient is evaluated against the standard deviation, and those within the standard deviation are treated first and more effort is used to save them.
Sorry about the length of this post. Thanks for allowing me to get this off my chest this morning.
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*contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time
**Before it was generally known as "Corona" virus, we were hearing anecdotal reports from around the country, especially the coastal states about an unusually strong flu that continued to hang on for a couple of weeks and unusually with aggressive symptoms. We suspect that folks were actually catching Corona Virus without knowing it. This led to speculation that some people were naturally immune to the virus, but I think, rather, that these folks were infected with Corona and gained an immunity.
