In this awful Trump era we’ve learned that whether people consider something to be true or not may not depend very much on, well, whether it is true or not. Deeper than truth, we have learned, lies allegiance.

But this is not our first disobedience! Wise societies have long accepted that while it is appropriate to reason from facts in other areas, rationality becomes boorish and simplistic when the subject is religion. In that department, one must respect a deeper source of knowledge called “faith”. So, long before the current era, we’ve all had plenty of practice with the intellectual dishonesty needed for a world of fake news. Learning to shut off our minds when discussing religion was our original sin as rational citizens, the tasting of the tree of disknowledge.

[28 November 2018]