Local opinion: The best defense against misinformation

Until relatively recently, our values and world views were influenced and shaped by authority figures such as parents, clergy, teachers, authors, and other personal and public mentors.

In the mid-1990s, another “authority figure” entered our lives: the internet. It was a monumental game-changer. It transformed how we received and processed information. Its power rested on two remarkable yet contradictory capacities: the ability to instantly access information; and the inability to verify its accuracy. Unfortunately, it has harmed as many as it has helped. Indeed, the consequences of the bad information it spews can range from misleading and deceiving the public to inciting malicious and violent behaviors.

For example:

Those who insist Donald Trump is being maliciously prosecuted by weaponized Democrats must be unaware that grand juries, not politicians, indict him and that regular juries return verdicts based on legal, not “political” evidence.

How many lives could have been saved if people had received proper information and treatments for COVID-19?

Consider those who denied the massive unimpeachable evidence that proved the 2020 election was not corrupted. It was their willful ignorance to ignore those blatant facts that motivated them to assault the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Think about the ridiculous online conspiracy theories that go unchallenged because so many are uneducated in how to separate fact from fiction.

Is there a neutral, non-religious and non-political way to objectively filter and evaluate internet information?

Yes! It’s called freethought.

Freethinkers only accept factual information from trustworthy sources. How are both vetted?

Our first consideration is whether their statements and positions correspond to reality. Do they make sense? Are they reasonable?

Reason, a tool of critical thinking, imposes strict tests on any assertion: It must be testable: What evidence confirms it? It must be falsifiable: What evidence rejects it? And, in that regard, have all attempts to disprove it failed? It must be logical: Is it free from contradictions, incoherencies, biases, and irrelevancies?

Consider the merits of freethought:

Freethinkers form beliefs independent of authority, tradition, accepted opinions, and especially religious belief. Truth, to freethinkers, cannot be derived from revelation and faith-based thinking.

It grounds thought in the provable naturalistic domain and not in the unproven supernatural one.

Because it allows for the objective examination of information and ideas according to scientifically accepted standards for validity and reliability, one can adopt or discard them with good, rather than imposed, reasons.

It provides better guidance to answer existential questions such as: Why is there something rather than nothing? And, because we know there is something, what is that something all about? While we may ultimately never know these answers, freethinkers enjoy searching for them using 21st-century investigative tools rather than accepting pronouncements from ancient “sages” or current “anointed ones” who based their opinions on “revelations” from improbable deities.

It provides better guidance to answer practical questions such as: Is there meaning and purpose in life? How can we lead our best lives? Freethinkers realize the cosmos is mindless and cannot help us. Finding the meaning and purpose of our lives is an individual journey. Once determined, we can then choose which path to follow.

Freethought provides a basis and justification for our morality. The yardstick is simple: Actions must promote well-being. We are not motivated because of the promise of heaven or the terror of hell. Most freethinkers are atheists, agnostics, rationalists, and humanists who base their morality on human needs. We are always mindful of the consequences of our actions.

We disassociate ourselves from religions which, on balance, have not benefited the societies in which they have exerted control, power, and in the extreme, subjugation. Religious belief has resisted progress, promoted hate, and caused tribal divisions in our world. To wit: It certainly was not freethinkers who defended slavery, justified the massacre of Native Americans, denied women’s right to vote and manage their pregnancies, retarded science education and medical research, contested the reality of man-made climate change, refused to endorse LGBTQ+ rights, and fought against church-state separations.

Freethinkers are secularists who know that big government has an important role to play in the general welfare. Isn’t it responsible for national defense, Social Security, Medicare, free K-12 education, food/environmental protections, health services etc.? Doesn’t it also protect everyone’s religious freedom?

As we all have access to science-based knowledge, freethinkers don’t feel arrogant or self-righteous criticizing extremist positions. Indeed, we wonder where these groups’ curiosity is for knowledge outside their comfort zones and where their desire is to legitimately question, verify, and challenge dubious information and hardened positions.

Perhaps print and TV outlets could offer formats whereby opposing camps could, in discussions and debates, determine how all sources of information should be vetted for truthfulness.

Let’s engage each other thoughtfully and respectfully as partners on a common mission to better understand ourselves and our world. Isn’t it worth a try?