Special to The Randolph Guide
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Perhaps it is because highly intelligent people are often overwhelmed by their own mental abilities that they can be rather easily deceived by hoaxes. Atheism is probably the biggest hoax in the world, and most of its adherents possess very high IQ’s. On the other hand an extremely high percentage of mentally challenged people know God very well.
Jesus explained it this way (Matthew 11:25): “I thank You, Father … that the important things in life are hidden from those who would depend on their own cleverness and human wisdom but are revealed to the childlike, those who are not prideful of their own intelligence.” This is a very free paraphrase that you will find to be consistent with most versions of the Bible.
In The Message Eugene Peterson has Jesus saying this, “Thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed Your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. Yes, Father that’s the way You like to work.”
That verse shows far better than any psychologist could explain why the intelligentsia is so vulnerable to be blind to things of eternal importance but easily caught up in colossal hoaxes. Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary (2002) defines the verb to hoax as “to trick into believing as genuine something false and often preposterous.” Funk and Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary (1980) defines hoax as “a trick or deception, usually on the public.” Atheism is the hoax that will cause 100% of those suckered into it to miss Heaven. Many Christians also are caught up in hoaxes of various kinds. Hoaxes less dangerous to things of eternal importance are all around us. Some examples are:
More government income is generated by raising taxes. This is false; exactly the opposite is true.
Raising the minimum wage helps poor people. Wrong. It increases joblessness.
Removing a grading system at school and not allowing winning or losing in children’s sports will raise self-esteem. Wrong. It destroys industry and incentive, and thus self-esteem.
Two hoaxes that are believed by huge numbers of people are Global Warming and Evolution. Global Warming (or climate change as many of its supporters prefer to call it) has recently lost most of its appeal, because people are coming to the realization that it is all hype without any significant science to back its claims. From the beginning of this debate there were more skeptics than proponents, because average people use common sense when confronted with new ideas. Common sense says that solar activity is more important by millions of times than changes in CO2. A million dollars worth of new trees will consume more CO2 than a trillion dollars spent in alternative energy sources. Finally the advocacy of the radical environmental crowd has a negative effect on the Global Warming side, because they disregard the before-mentioned facts and demonstrate no concerns for the needs of mankind, as shown by such costly items as the Cap and Trade bill.
With evolution things are more complex. However, the central question in the evolution-creation debate is simple, asking how life – especially human life – came into existence. Both sides must stand on faith of a sort, because we have no ability to repeat creation or to show evolution. The science that we do have favors the creation side, as we have not yet found a single intermediary form of life nor do us have the vaguest idea of how anything came from nothing. If evolution is true, the fossil “record” should have zillions of intermediary forms. The attempt to present intermediary forms has been fraught with many lesser hoaxes but nothing that has held up to careful scrutiny. Joyce Kilmer pointed out in 1913 that “Only God can make a tree.”
The proof for the creationist involves “the inner man,” but not something tangible that can be seen. The real person inside a body leaves that body behind when the body dies. Unless someone with the faith to do so (also given by God) calls that spirit back into that body and causes the body to live again, decomposition of that body will begin.
Hoaxes are commonly embraced by segments of the intelligentsia, as pointed out earlier. Many of these segments are involved in the education of our children. Thankfully not all teachers have been sucked into the hoaxes, but many have. They carry them into their classrooms where they brainwash their students with things like evolution, climate change, and even Obama worship. I am opposed to hoaxes everywhere but especially in schools. What do you think?
Marion Griffin lives in Asheboro. His columns appear regularly in The Randolph Guide.
