In the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral victory, the liberal press continues to be mystified about what transpired. It seems they never saw it coming and are unable to explain it. It is the fact that Trump garnered 81% of the white evangelical vote that has them stumped.
In an article titled “Essay: Fake news, faith and reason,” Jerry Adler writing for Yahoo News asked “is there something in the mindset of a religious believer — someone who accepts the reality of an unseen deity, based on ancient accounts of events with no parallel in everyday experience –- that encourages the acceptance of unprovable claims in the realm of politics or science?”
The answer to that is yes and no. There is something in the mindset of the believer that embraces events like Noah’s flood and the Exodus of Israel from Egypt though there is no parallel in everyday experience; it is called faith. But that mindset does not predispose believers to accept some of the outrageous claims made by Donald Trump during his campaign. Maybe white evangelicals feared Hillary Clinton’s promise to promote the same-sex agenda and its concomitant threat to religious liberty.
Adler goes on to admit, “It is not an easy question. Christians put Scripture in a separate epistemological category: It is the word of God, not subject to the same empirical testing as a weather forecast or an unemployment report.”
This statement shows how addled Adler is. There is an aspect of faith that is intuitive and possibly defies epistemological categorization (Hebrews 11:1), but when the Bible makes truth claims about creation they are definitely empirically verifiable.
Almost three millennia before the invention of the telescope Job declared that God “hangs the earth on nothing,” Job 26:7, and modern science confirms the earth is floating in space. While the Scriptures clash with some scientific theories, modern science has never disproved a single observable fact recorded in the Bible.
And I would also tell Adler that the infallible and unchanging Word of God cannot be compared, nor should it, to a fallible weather forecast, or a changing demographic like an unemployment report.
There is a gulf between the mindset and subsequent worldview of Christianity that the liberal media cannot bridge. Paul tells us “a natural man [an unbeliever] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised,” 1 Corinthians 2:14.
Unbelievers and nominal believers will never be able to logically comprehend the things that genuine Christians embrace by faith. This is why the liberal media has difficulty reporting on religious matters.
Dean Baquet executive editor of the New York Times said in a recent interview, “I think that the… media powerhouses don’t quite get religion…We don’t get the role of religion in people’s lives.” He is right, because the chasm between belief and disbelief cannot be jumped in a single empirical bound.
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