Opinions are but Truths in Desguise

As is the case, almost without exception, the highlight of my vacations is the time I spend reading the local newspaper and drinking coffee each morning. It doesn’t matter where I go. Whether I visit Tabor City, Southport, or Myrtle Beach, I go to a local restaurant, get a paper and map out a direct route to the editorial section. I know what you’re thinking. I need to get a life, right? Well that is my routine, as boring as it may seem to some, and it is there that I find a little rest and relaxation.

The opinion section is important part of any local paper. It is there that locals and others can express themselves about a number of topics or even vent about those same issues from time to time.

I’ve discovered something very revealing about those simple “opinion” sections though. They’re never what people claim they are. The fact of the matter is that the columns and “letters to the editor” of different length, usually prescribed by the editors, are really truth claims masquerading as opinions. That is why you have “Joe” offering some sort of rebuttal to “Harry’s” view on the homosexual issue or some other hot topic of the day. Harry doesn’t offer his idea so that Joe might accept it alongside his idea as if both ideas are equal; but he does so in a competitive fashion and contradictory fashion.

At this point, I really need to break the news to you gently. While many of you claim that there’s no such thing as absolute truth I can’t help but believe that you really don’t believe that at all. In fact, I would contend that you believe, not only that absolute truth exists, but that you know the truth.

Now don’t try denying it; because if it weren’t so, you wouldn’t bother writing at all. Why try convincing anybody that your view of any religious, moral, political or social issue is right; particularly if all ideas are equally valid.

The next time you read this column, or any other for that matter, notice the arguments that accompany each writer’s work. Not only do they offer different “opinions” than a former letter writer or columnist, but they argue the point or points as if their view is somehow superior to the one to which they are responding. That, my friend, is done under the assumption that truth exists and that you know it.

Take our involvement in Iraq for example, the abortion debate, the creation/evolution debate or a host of other issues that spawn our input. Everybody who writes about any of these important issues does so with the assumption that their view on the matter is the “right” view. In fact, many do so as if somebody else’s view on the matter is actually and absolutely wrong.

I don’t know about you, but I just find it odd that in a culture where so many people deny the existence of absolute truth those same people demand their view to be just that, absolutely true. Many people these days think that truth, like morality, is relative and then present an “opinion” as if everybody else should accept it as true.

Well, I’ve always maintained that truth is absolute and the fact that practically every “opinion” writer assumes his/her opinion to be absolutely true helps verify it. Despite many claims to the contrary, most people believe it too.

Now that we agree that absolute truth exists it might be wise to determine just what it is; particularly concerning eternal matters. You might begin with the one who claimed to be “the way, the truth and the life,” “absolutely ” - Jesus Christ.

That is my “opinion” and guess what, it is absolutely true.

Tony can be reached at: Tony@link2eternity.com


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Atheists Should Have No Say About Christmas

Christmas is upon us again and you can tell by “that feeling in the air,” not so much the feeling of peace and good cheer; but rather, the feeling of warring atheists who flex their militant philosophical muscles every year at this time. Such is the case in the “case” of the disappearing sign claiming to celebrate “winter solstice” placed alongside a public nativity scene in Olympia, Washington, on Friday and later found in a ditch. (CNN.com) The sign, in part, reads, "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds," and was placed there by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

While atheists boldly attack Christians and their most holy celebrations, they imagine, somehow, that they can thoughtlessly eliminate God from reality and then walk away as if their own world is unaffected. They have the philosophical gall to dismiss God and then continue life as if the very God they repudiate still exists.

Let’s imagine that we live in a world like the one atheists say we live in - one that really did evolve by purely natural and physical processes. Such a world logically reduces everything, including man, to a complex mix of matter at the expense of those “little” things we usually associate with human nature, like mind, soul and, for the purposes of this column, freedom of choice. Hence, since God doesn’t exist, we live in a determined world, a “fact” that atheist John Searle tell us, “…we have known all along: namely, mental states are biological phenomena. Consciousness, intentionality, subjectivity and mental causation are all a part of our biological life, history, along with growth, reproduction, the secretion of bile, and digestions.” An atheistic world, he continues, “does not allow for the freedom of the will.” (Minds, Brains and Science) Welcome to the real atheistic world.

Even the physicist Stephan Hawking understands that atheism results in a universe without choices. In an atheistic world, the freedom of choice that we all think we have is both a philosophical and psychological farce; because, “even those who think themselves free are merely determined to think so.” How atheists think they, or anybody else for that matter, can “choose” to be atheists or Christians when their godless world eliminates the freedom to do so in the first place is beyond me.

So don’t give me this “religion is myth” stuff, especially at Christmas, when atheists seem strangely and illogically content to think that “choice” actually plays some role in their rejection of Christianity. Don’t tell me that, as the sign reads, “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell…” unless you are man or woman enough to add “no choice” to the sign as well.

So, the idea that atheists “should have no say about Christmas” isn't a legal or political statement but a philosophical one. If their worldview eliminates the possibility of real choice, and it does, why worry that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at all.

Perhaps the “winter solstice” sign should read, "Choice is but myth as we deliriously imagine that we have “hearts” and “minds with which to choose.”

Tony