Truth Will Out
A vapid but important piece showed up on the front page of Reddit on Sunday: Why the Internet is slowly strangling religion. It originally appeared on AlterNet, then Salon picked it up.
The article is pretty simple: First, there's the underlying assumption: religion is stupid. And then there's the syllogism: Religion is for people who don't have facts. The Internet provides people with facts. Therefore, fewer and fewer people have religion.
I like it. I disagree with the whole reason the author wrote it, but I like it. I like the framework; I like the details.
And I like it for this one reason: Truth will out.
At some point in time, truth will win. Oh sure, I often despair of that maxim. In light of the revelations that are Johnathan Gruber and the suffocating net that the federal government is draping over our great country, it's hard not to despair of the idea that "truth will out." And to be honest, when I say, "At some point in time, truth will win," I have to admit, "Well, maybe it won't win in time. The remedy might have to unfold outside of time."
But still, I think truth will out . . . in time, in hours and seconds as we know it, though perhaps not in our lifetimes.
And that, at bottom, is probably the number one reason I'm a Catholic. For 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has stood. My father (a far greater man than me who had the natural mojo to become a saint (in the Catholic sense), if only he knew that was his calling) instilled in me a deep appreciation (bordering on awe) of history. When I look at the wreckage that the Catholic Church has survived, both inflicted from outside and self-inflicted, and the sheer amount of time it has survived (2,000 years . . . cogitate on that for just five minutes and I think the most die-hard anti-Catholic would get chills), I have to submit.
I don't see the Internet changing any of that. In fact, I know it won't change any of that. Truth will out, and as people start getting the facts, they, too, will submit.
It just takes time.
And one institiution has 2,000 years of it.
