The Left and the Truth

Bill Whittle explains why the so-called "progressive left" cannot make do without epistemological relativism. It is essential to their political ideology.



Why be conservative? The reason is that the facts and logic are stubbornly in favor of free enterprise and political liberalism and against socialism. If you want to be rational, you cannot embrace left-wing ideology. Bill Whittle does an excellent job of explaining how this is so.

John Paul II - Defender of Truth

William Oddie has an excellent article on John Paul II on the occasion of the beatification of the former pope in The Catholic Herald. He begins:

"We have short memories; we take our recent history too easily for granted. Few people, it seems – at least among those who imply that the problems we still face as a Church were actually Pope John Paul’s fault – remember the state of the Catholic Church at the end of the reign of the unhappy Pope Paul VI, during which forces of disintegration were unleashed within the Church which brought it to the edge of losing all credibility as a defender of basic Christian orthodoxy.

This work of darkness was brought about, not by the Council itself, but by some of those, certainly, who had attended it. It was certainly not the work, as some still confidently claim, of a liberal pope: for if Pope Paul was such a convinced liberal, what about Humanae Vitae? What happened during his pontificate was clearly far from his intention. At a homily he preached in 1972, he is reported as saying, now famously, that he had “believed that after the Council would come a day of sunshine in the history of the Church. But instead there has come a day of clouds and storms, and of darkness … And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that … there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil. It is as if from some mysterious crack… the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”

He was speaking particularly about the liturgy: but just as disastrous was the unchallenged rise during his pontificate of the so-called “alternative magisterium” of Küng, Schillebeeckx and the rest of their malign brood. It was a time of great destruction; and to destroy is always easier than to rebuild. Recovering from the aftermath of the Council will take 100 years. But Pope John Paul began the fightback: he set the barque of Peter, and the Church with it, firmly back on course."

- - - snip - - -

That is why I was elated at the news of his beatification: because of his re-establishment of the simple fact of the Church’s authority to declare the objective truth of Catholic doctrine (Veritatis Splendor, The Catechism of the Catholic Church and on and on), I had been enabled at last to come home, to escape finally from a Church in which there was absolutely no means of coming to a mind about anything, a Church which actually requires of its clergy no more than a formal acceptance of the creeds – not as declarations of beliefs held to be actually true, but as what the C of E sanctimoniously calls part of a “heritage of faith”. That is why I was at first so depressed by the hostility in some quarters, even within the Church, to the announcement of Sunday’s beatification. I had thought, in Pope John Paul’s final years, that we had moved beyond all that.

Read it all here. For me, it was not so much "the re-establishment of the Church's authority to declare the objective truth of Catholic doctrine" as it was the courageous and powerful reaffirmation of the existence of objective truth of doctrine! Pope John Paul II will be remembered for many things, but Evangelicals will always honor him for his stand for truth against relativism and liberal compromise.

Will Relativism Cause Modern Civilization to Be Destroyed by Global Warming?

You have to either laugh or cry when observing in the frustration of the ever-so-very-earnest climate alarmists as they emote about how the population just does not believe the scientists and the "experts" who make wild claims about how New York and London will soon be under twenty feet of water and so the Western nations had better fork over hundreds of billions of dollars raised from ordinary, middle-class taxpayers to fund so-called "clean" development in Third World countries.

The idea that the corrupt kleptocrats that run these countries could do anything "clean" is laughable. The money is destined to buy arms (mostly from the West) to fight endless civil wars and to languish in Swiss bank accounts owned by the socialist leaders and their families. Meanwhile, nothing whatsoever will be done actually to help the people of those countries and the effect on global warming will be zero.

So it is very difficult for ordinary people to believe a word coming out of Copenhagen. First they tell us emissions have to be cut by a certain amount to avoid floods, famine and the end of civilization as we know it. Then they tell us that they propose to cut emissions by a quarter of that amount (and just let the disasters roll out?), but we should not worry because a global energy tax is going to fund the handing over of 100 million dollars to Third world governments, many of whom, like Hugo Chavez, hate the West and all it stands for. You can forgive the average person for responding by saying "Huh?" Skepticism about AGW is growing in the US and in many other countries (such as Australia and the UK) as well. From Rasmussen Reports we learn: [my bolding]

"Public skepticism about the officially promoted cause of global warming has reached an all-time high among Americans. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of likely voters now believe that global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends.

Just 34% say climate change is due primarily to human activity, even as President Obama and other world leaders gather at a UN summit to limit the human activity they blame for global warming. Six percent (6%) say there is some other reason for global warming, and 10% are not sure.

Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly over the past year. In April 2008, 47% blamed human activity and only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change."

So it is with interest that I read yesterday in the lefty, Toronto Star, this story lamenting the failure of ordinary people to believe in objective, scientific truth: [my bolding]

LONDON–The leader of the Maldives, an Indian Ocean island nation whose existence is threatened by global warming, was emphatic.

"In all political agreements, you have to be prepared to negotiate," he said in Copenhagen this week. "But physics isn't politics." President Mohamed Nasheed is wrong. These days, everything is politics. And now, amplified by the Internet, anyone, knowledgeable or oblivious, can share his or her view with the entire world.

Not so long ago, the planet's prevailing voices were those of experts – people with years of training to back up what they said. Then came the Internet and that all changed.

Consider the global warming debate: scientists insist they have research in their corner. But public debate has shifted from the provable to the spectacle of argument. And in this age of constant, instantaneous comment has come suspicion of the expert.

"What you have is the (presumption) of expertise by ordinary people who feel their opinions are as valuable as anybody else's," says Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent and author of Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? "Society," he says, "has authorized everybody's opinions."

But, one wants to protest, that is the point. Everybody's opinion is as good as everyone else's. That is the whole point of modern relativism. Are we not modernists?

The Star has been leading the charge for decades on the sexual revolution, arguing that everyone gets to make up his or her own morality - even if other people, like the children, or society as a whole get hurt. No one can say for sure that male and female bodies were intentionally designed for each other. No one can say that divorce is bad and to be avoided in every case possible. No one can say that traditional marriage and family structures are actually better than individualism and promiscuity. What is right for you is not necessarily right for me. There is no such thing as "the family" - only "families."

But, you might protest, AGW has science on its side. Everyone should respect science. But traditional sexual morality has science on its side too and a fat lot of good that has done. Study after study shows that children brought up in homes with their own biological parents do better statistically according to dozens of measures from rates of incarceration, to rates of sexual abuse to rates of mental illness to success in school and so on. With biology, medicine, psychology and sociology all confirming the value and rightness of traditional morality, late modern Western society still feels free to throw it in the garbage and embark on wild-eyed experiments in sexuality and family. So why should it be any different with AGW? After all, lowering emissions and avoiding promiscuity have something important in common: both cramp my individualistic, hedonistic, self-centered lifestyle.

Let us suppose that AGW is completely true and that the science is impeccable. That is a disputable proposition, but for the sake of argument let us suppose it turns out to be true - objectively. Suppose half of Florida, New York and London are destroyed in a few years and most of the US turns into desert or whatever. When we look back at the 20th and early 21st century and try to analyze why Westerners did not act when they should have acted and instead allowed their civilization to be destroyed, we will have to ask if the widespread growth of relativism among the population was not the culprit.

At some point in the 20th century, relativism escaped the ivory tower and became a widespread belief in society - even the new socially-endorsed orthodoxy - which led to the sexual revolution and to many other pernicious effects. But the worst effect it may have had is to destroy once and for all the willingness of the average person to believe in absolute truth when it is against his immediate, short-sighted, self interest to do so. Truth, schmooth. Let's get back to our video games and forget about what those dodgy scientists with their doomsday predictions have to say. And pass the Playboy and a beer. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow the planet warms.

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UPDATE: See this James Delingpole post. I just read it and it says what I've said here and it has a lot of excellent links as well. It is worth a read.