What is the Truth?

Just the "Framing" Ma'am

Why is truth important?  Well, in everything but a Christian society it's likely not. Telling lies, gilding the lilly, burnishing a narrative, propaganda for the cause are all perfectly acceptable in the worldview of secular materialism.  It's the narrative.  It's the framing.  It's the vibe of the thing.  That's what's important.  At least Muslim ideology is candid about it.  Its doctrine of taqiyya justifies lying in a number of "circumstances".  In Hindu belief, since good and evil are part of the panoply of deities, both truth and lies are equally ultimate.

It is becoming more and more acceptable in the West to "lie for the cause".  The most recent example is a completely false story of an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia perpetrated for ideological reasons.  The gullible were gulled--as expected.  Rolling Stone published the sensational story whilst the Chattering Classes ululated into their Chardonnay.  Dramatic stuff.  But . . .

A months-long investigation into a flawed Rolling Stone magazine article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia has concluded that the story reflected failures at virtually every level, from reporting to editing to fact-checking.  In a 12,000-word report that reads like a reportorial autopsy, a three-person team at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism called the November article “a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. . . . The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting” that would likely have exposed the story as dubious. [Washington Post]

Nevertheless, the whole episode is being defended.  The point is that the story sounded believable.  Moreover, the fact that it appeared credible is the real point.  Never let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.  No, seriously.  This is being advocated by Unbelief as a justification for the false rape story and its importance.

Doubtless rapes occur on campuses as well as in town squares.  But the "redeeming" value of this false story is that it sounded credible.  And the fact that it sounded credible means it was worthwhile.  The framing narrative is more important than the deceit.  This, from an editor of the University of Virginia student newspaper:

Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake. . . .Yes, the story was sensational. But even the most sensational story, it seems, can contain frightening elements of truth.

And the element of truth that justifies the deceit?  It sounded credible.  The fact that it sounded credible is proof and evidence that rapes occur.  Never let the facts get in the way of a narrative that is condign to one's world-view.  It was precisely that kind of attitude and value-set which appears to have led Rolling Stone down the unprofessional and sloppy treatment of the story in the first place. 

In the secularist mindset, the truth is nothing more than a wax nose to buttress and augment a chosen narrative.  In other times and places we had a derisory name for this kind of lie: we called it propaganda.  But in the perverted world of Unbelief, the existence and use of propaganda becomes an evidential proof for the narrative.  Because it seems credible, it thereby is proves the narrative. 

Every which way you cut this, one thing stands out.  In the secularist worldview, "truth" is something very different from what Christians know it to be.