Truthfulness and Debunking a few Myths

Sunday’s scripture readings are all about honesty, truthfulness, and trust.  The prophet Amos warns that God knows when we cheat others and take advantage of them.  In the gospel Jesus notes that:

“The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones;
and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours?
No servant can serve two masters.  He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

All of us have on occasion been less than completely honest, either overtly, or by omission.  We rationalize such behavior as trivial and of little or no consequence, or perhaps in service of some greater good.  I used to think nothing of bringing home small office supplies, rationalizing that on occasion I worked from home, but in reality, the pens, pencils and paper were used mostly for non-work related activity.  The more I took home, the more I felt entitled to things that caught my fancy, until at some point I realized that these small indiscretions were softening my moral thinking and leading to more egregious sins.

Today’s second reading from Paul encourages us to pray, “…for kings and all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life.”  Those in authority have a duty to seek the common good and I’m sure than in most cases, their intentions are good, even if misguided.  But there are times when all of us attempt to shape opinion by ignoring or omitting information, in an effort to make the case for our personal worldview.  This has all too often been the case when people try to shape history to fit their worldview.  Take the case of Charles Darwin.  The common understanding of Darwin is that he discovered evolution and demonstrated once and for all that human life evolved quite by chance from a long series of random events.  However, the reality is that the concept of evolution dates back to the Greek philosopher Epicurus (340 – 270 BC) and his later Roman disciple Lucretius, who posited that all matter was composed of very small particles (atoms) that had been inexistence forever.  They believed that all living things were the result of the random association of material atomic particles.  The implication of this belief was that there are no gods and human life is entirely materialistic, even to the point that there is no such thing as a human soul or spiritual reality.  Epicureans believed in atheism and hedonism, and they persisted for centuries. 

Later European philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Hobbes built on this materialistic worldview and it led to the secularization of society, just as Epicurus had hoped. Going back to Darwin, his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin had published three books on “transmutationism,” as evolution was called, back then, and he was a well-known member of the European radical Enlightenment.  Charles’ father Robert was an atheist and evolutionist, well acquainted with the Epicurean atomistic theory.  Charles Darwin didn’t discover evolution, he merely documented fossil records supporting the view that humanity evolved simply by chance.  In his second major work The Descent of Man, Darwin argued that for humanity to continue to evolve intellectually and morally, we had to eliminate those who are “less fit.”  This led to his moniker as the Father of Modern Eugenics, a theory fully embraced by Margaret Sanger, Adolf Hitler and others.

While I’m debunking myths, let me mention a couple of other long-held misconceptions.  The idea that the Church tortured and imprisoned Galileo is widely misunderstood.  It was not his discovery that the earth rotated about the sun that got Galileo in trouble with the church, but his earlier work, published under the title, The Assayer, in which he openly advocated the ancient materialistic doctrine of Epicurus, for which he was found guilty of heresy.  His punishment was to live quite comfortably under house arrest in the luxurious palace of the Medici in Rome, where he continued his research until his natural death.  He was never tortured or imprisoned.   The myth that people in the 15^th century believed the world to be flat, is also false.  When Columbus departed for “the East” by traveling West, everyone knew the world to be round.  In fact, in the year 999 AD, Pope Sylvester II, who was also a mathematician, calculated the circumference of the earth to be approximately 29,000 miles.   While he was off a bit, the pope and his contemporaries also knew the universe to be immense, having estimated it to be in excess of 116 million miles across.  The reason why Galileo’s contemporaries persisted in believing the earth was the center of the universe, was the clearly observable fact that if the earth was spinning at 1000 miles an hour, common sense dictated that everyone would be able to feel the motion.  When Galileo proposed that the earth was moving and spinning so rapidly, it wasn’t just the Catholic Church who thought him wrong, but all his scientific peers, as well as Martin Luther and John Calvin who denounced Galileo as being out of his mind.

Finally, there’s the long-standing belief that Europe suffered through the so-called Dark Ages because scientific and academic progress were stilted by Christendom.  In reality, the Catholic Church built more than 60 great universities throughout Europe between 1000 AD and 1400 AD.  Millions of people were taught to read, write, use advanced math, and publish scientific discoveries.  This era produced dozens of scientific luminaries such as: Albert the Great, 1193-1280 AD, (astronomy, botany, physiology, mathematics); Roger Bacon, 1219-1294 AD, (the scientific method, light, optics, magnifying glass); Richard Wallingford, 1292-1336 AD, (precise mechanical clocks, exact measurement of time and motion); John Buridan, 1300-1361, (astronomy and the motion of planets); and hundreds of others, many being clerics, even bishops and educators in the universities.   The notion of the “Dark Ages” actually stems from the disastrous black plague which killed half the population of Europe in the middle of the 14^th century.  The Renaissance which began in the late 14^th century did not erupt suddenly, but was the result of centuries of progress, much of which resulted from Catholic Church’s effort to promote literacy and overcome the abuses of feudalism.

Turning to current events, we must all do as Paul suggests, and pray for our leadership in America.  We pray that they be honest and forthright in their presentation of factual information.  The recent debate over defunding Obamacare has included a barrage of false and misleading information.  I believe that an honest assessment of what has already begun to happen, reveals that the Affordable Care Act is indeed making healthcare less affordable, and driving employers to drop coverage and/or reduce full-time employment.  This is most likely the reason why two-thirds of all new jobs created this year have been part-time.  The idealistic notion that Obamacare will expand coverage for the uninsured is turning out to be wrong, and very possibly having the opposite effect.  Unfortunately, all the heated rhetoric around these issues clouds the facts and misleads the public.  I for one, am glad that the Republicans finally mustered the courage to attempt to defund the most egregious aspects of the new healthcare law.  If you want to show your support for this effort, consider signing the petition at www.dontfundobamacare.com/‎.