Mar 19, 2006

Regarding the SLIMC (Secularist Liberal Intellectual Media Complex) and its treatment of the Truth

Vic Biorseth, http://www.Thinking-Catholic-Strategic-Center.com

This is just to put down some thoughts regarding a seemingly hidden or perhaps semi-conscious, yet easily detectable undercurrent of collectivist, redistributionist, anti-property, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian agenda among our so-called intelligentsia. As discussed in the page under the Modernist Heresy navigation button, the quest for ultimate Truth has been split into two seemingly divorced areas of expertise: Theology, and Science, and, thus, two different views of what constitutes external objective reality.

Before going any further, let me make clear that there is such a thing as objective truth, which is completely independent of the mind of man. It is unaffected by subjective truth, or the "truth" that comes from within man, or from his intellect. Objective truth doesn't care what we think about it, how we feel about it, or even if we think about it, it remains Objective Truth, the truth that comes from somewhere outside of us and that we cannot change or affect.

Catholic theology deals with the other-worldly issues of Catholic religion; I will leave other theologies aside for this discussion. In Catholic theology, objective truth consists of those truths contained in the safeguarded Depositum Fidei, our Deposit of Faith, which comes to us from Divine Revelation. This deposit of truths was closed and sealed with the death of the last Apostle; It consists of the truths given by God to His chosen people Israel, and to His Church, through Jesus Christ and His chosen Apostles.

Science deals with worldly issues of purely material, observable things that may be seen or touched or detected by the senses, and thus may be experimented upon. In science, objective truth consists of scientific facts, which begin as hypotheses and advance up the scientific-method ladder to theories and finally to laws. A hypothesis is nothing more than an idea regarding something; a scientific theory is a hypothesis supported by an overwhelming preponderance of independently gathered evidence, supplied by independent experiment and peer review, and falsified by none; a scientific law is a theory agreed by all experts in the discipline to be proven beyond a doubt, and may from that point on be taken as an axiom, a given.

On the theological side, the broken unity of the Christian voice brought about by the Reformation, the historical joining of Church and State under Protestantism in which the ruler in civil law becomes also the ruler in ecclesial law, and the broad, almost unrestricted, mostly Protestant embracing of rationalism containing Modernist error brought about an eventual rejection of much or even most of the original Deposit of Faith. Even within the world-wide Catholic Church, and certainly in America, we see high ranking Catholic clerics granting equal value, at least, to voices of dissent on matters of faith and morals which, deeply rooted in the Deposit of Faith, are clearly defined in Church doctrine and even dogma. Human respect for and faith in theological objective truth appears to be in decline. Just take a look at any of the Cafeteria Catholic buttons to the left.

But, Science fares even worse than theology. In science today, recognition of even the existence of such a thing as objective truth appears to be in decline. Much of modern science is built upon axioms that are not at all provable and have never been proven. If you doubt that, take a look at the so-called hard science described under the Darwinism button, or at the "science of the mind" described at the Freudianism button, or at the Social / Political "science" at the Marxism button.

The scientific rigor and humble submission to peer review of, for instance, the likes of Albert Einstein, is nowhere to be seen today, at least in my limited view. When Einstein came up with a theory, he didn't sit on it; he put it out there at once, openly inviting criticism, challenging it himself and graciously receiving criticism from others, debating it, testing it, experimenting on it and so forth. He sought to prove it, or disprove it, so that his work could continue, in the right direction, and without being built upon straw. He was a seeker of truth, and quite determined about it. I submit that his general and special theories of relativity have got to be among the most thoroughly and independently tested, contested, experimented upon, verified and universally acclaimed by the entire scientific community since Newton. Every time you turn around some scientist or group has come up with a new way to test some part of one of Einstein's theories, and the theory always comes out verified, in some new and unpredicted way.

Compare that to today's scientific advances, and what you will find is something more akin to an official proclamation followed by broad acceptance of a new axiom. If you doubt that, take a look at the HIV=AIDS Myth button for an excellent example. That's how science is predominantly done today. Anyone who openly applies critical thinking to the new proclamations is likely to suffer severe personal consequences. Here's the key point: the enforcers of today's proclamations are - get this - Liberals. (Remember when being Liberal meant being open minded?)

I have elsewhere in this website complained about the stifling of critical thinking in education today. In my view, formal education today is cranking out sheep, not thinking men and women. Sheep make good followers. The problem is that, if we are to maintain individual freedom as well as national freedom, and if we are to gain everlasting life, then we all need very much to see where we are going and we also need some voice, individually and collectively, regarding where we are going, and any alternative directions. Does it seem right to you that both the political and the spiritual paths more and more of us seem to be herding together along are laid out for us by unrepresentative, unelected intellectual elites running what to all outward appearances is a single minded mass media?

I contend that today's MSM, or, Main Stream Media, is philosophically indistinguishable from the Democratic Party, the ACLU (which I elsewhere call the Anti Christian Litigation Union), and, the original developer of their grand social philosophy, Karl Marx. They support what they call the "Labor Movement" in a struggle to eventually allow the workers, or the proletariat, to control all of society for the benefit of the masses. They believe that the struggle for civil liberties actually involves opposition to the "evil" of industrialism and capitalism. They represent the richest people in the country, if not the world, but they present themselves to be the Party of the working man. They seek to create another New World Order, this one involving a new Global Village without borders, an end to all sovereignty and a grand, Socialist world utopia. But they don't want to call it International Communism any more. Global Village sounds nicer, don't you think? (Note that I am not calling this any great, grand, diabolical plot on the part of the Lefties. Most of these people are not smart enough to even know what they are, or what pseudo-philosophy they support.)

All you have to do is take a look at the news, and how it's reported. A good example may be found under the Vietnam War button. It gets worse when you look at their so-called documentaries on this-or-that - I prefer to call them crockumentaries. They are generally designed by experts to piss you off and thus raise their ratings. And when they oppose industry or capitalism or a conservative candidate, platform or agenda, they get extra points, and they put in extra effort. You will seldom if ever see any big TV crockumentary showing any Leftie in a way that will piss you off. The media has had it in for Detroit for a long time. In the eyes of the major media, the only thing more "evil" than the American auto industry is what they love to call Big Oil.

Example 1: ABC, 20/20, and lies about Ford Pintos

ABC, through its 20/20 show, purposely lied about Ford Pintos and full size cars, manufactured completely false evidence supporting the lies, produced and broadcast fraudulent films showing the grossly falsified evidence, and knowingly sensationalized the lies as broadly and loudly as possible, for ratings, market share, money, fame, and to simultaneously outrage the public and the government against Ford.

The myth of the so-called exploding Pintos is even disproved by final numbers: 27 known fatalities in Pinto fires; less than or equal to those in other cars during the period. ABC couldn't get their test Pintos to explode, so they made them explode, on camera, with igniters. Even the "smoking gun" memo turned out to be a fraud. If you remember, the internal memo "proved" that it would cost the company more money for a small part to reduce/remove the danger than they might lose in estimated lawsuits from fires and explosions. The actual memo wasn't even talking about Pintos or any other Ford products, but about American cars in general. It dealt with rollovers, not with rear-end collisions. It did not consider tort liability at all, and it did not accept any legal liability as being cheaper than a design change. It assigned a value to human life that it got from the federal regulators whom it was addressed to; the regulators, not Ford, established the price of a human life. Silvia Chase and Hugh Downs were either just making stuff up on the fly, or mindlessly parroting the copy put before them.

Example 2: CBS, 60 Minutes, and lies about Jeep CJs

CBS, through its 60 minutes show, purposely lied about Jeep CJ models, manufactured completely false evidence supporting the lies, produced and broadcast fraudulent films showing the grossly falsified evidence, and knowingly sensationalized the lies as broadly and loudly as possible, for ratings, market share, money, fame, and to simultaneously outrage the public and the government against Chrysler. Then they did it again, to the Audi 5000. (The Audi was flat-out rigged to suddenly experience "sudden acceleration" on camera.)

CJ rollover footage shown was rigged, rigged, rigged. They even added hidden weights to unfavorably change the CJ's center of gravity, moved the vehicle fast, but played it back slow, had the wheel jerked rather than turned, so that motions were more violent, etc., etc., etc.

Example 3: NBC, Dateline, and lies about GM pickup trucks

NBC, through its Dateline show, purposely lied about GM pickup trucks, manufactured completely false evidence supporting the lies, produced and broadcast fraudulent films showing the grossly falsified evidence, and knowingly sensationalized the lies as broadly and loudly as possible, for ratings, market share, money, fame, and to simultaneously outrage the public and the government against GM. NBC was the only American network to ever publicly apologize and eat crow over such misdeeds, to settle a GM suite that shouldn’t have been settled so cheaply.

Again, igniters had to be used, along with a host of other fraudulent tricks to get some trucks to ignite predictably, because they just couldn't get them to blow up any other way for the cameras.

But this is just one topic. We could go into rash of expose' crockumentaries on serial child-abuse at day-care centers across the nation, in which children were taught, through Freudian psycho-therapy, to remember things that never even occurred. We could go into the media over-treatment of Catholic priests involved in serial child sex abuse cases while apparently religiously censoring stories involving greater numbers of serial child sex abuse cases in public schools.

In more current news, look at how they continually and consistently evaluate the terrorist threat as minimal and unworthy of even the effort being put forth to confront it, and how they keep insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. Every single day brings news of some Moslem killing some innocent person; some Moslems kidnapping and terrorizing someone innocent of anything, and making them weep and beg and look pitiful on TV before they are killed; Moslem mobs rampaging and rioting to get at innocent people to kill; Moslems even violating sovereign embassy ground to try to get at someone innocent to kill; Moslem bombers killing innocent people; Moslems paying money to families of "martyrs" who died in order to kill innocents, and on, and on. What the hell does it take for the media to recognize that there is nothing peaceful about Islam, and it is far and away the most intolerant, bloody and murderous way of life extant in the world today?

Take a look at the Islam and the Jews button to see what I'm talking about. As I said there, the fact that an obvious majority of Moslems are good and decent people is not because of Islam, but in spite of it; it is because of the inherent, natural goodness of man. People have to be made to be that evil, and Islam has within it the evil seeds that are ready to produce new terrorists and murderers from among its adherents.

You can see the danger when lots and lots of people do not do good critical thinking. On the theological side of the street, things are not so dire, but not well either. Note the American bishops who take such exception to EWTN in general and Mother Angelica in particular. What do they take issue with? Her opinions? If that were true they would be on thin ice, because on doctrinal matters she and her network do not defend her opinion, but that of Rome, which is to say, the defined doctrine of the Church, and the Deposit of Faith. She has never put forth any personal view on any matter of faith or morals, so, why should any bishop anywhere have any problem with anything she or her network ever said on any matter of faith or morals? In my opinion, EWTN produces the most trustworthy news available today.

Fox news comes close, and much of it is more pertinent to living in this world. But Fox has its problems. They employ at least one "reporter" of low repute, Geraldo Rivera, who has openly boasted of "thousands" of adulterous and/or fornicating affairs and "thousands" of lies about them, which brings the whole network down several notches in my estimation. There is Bill O'Reilly's hushed-up sex-abuse / phone-sex scandal just kind of hanging out there. Of course, nothing has been proved.

QUESTION: If you were accused in such a scandal, would you ever settle very quietly for millions, or for any amount of money and just hush it up, and not talk about it any more?

ANSWER: That's funny, neither would I.

As I've said elsewhere, the only real problem I have with Fox is the off-color and immoral advertising on it. I can bypass or tune-out Geraldo and Bill. Overall, it's pretty balanced reporting, which is in short supply.

Anyway, those are the things that were on my mind today.

God bless,

Vic

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