Someone once said, (I think it may have been an American politician, I cannot recall), “You are entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” I think that’s true. I absolutely hold to every citizen’s right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression which includes the basic human right of having a personal opinion about something. Of course, other people can have differing opinions to mine, or yours, and that’s fine. We are allowed to think and interpret the world, events and experiences differently and respectfully air these views in appropriate ways – which is part of the freedom of expression ideal.
But facts are a different story (and I am not talking about the interpretation of a set of facts, that’s a different thing). Facts are what they are – truth and irrefutable evidence. These days, it seems that not only do many people feel entitled to their own opinions they feel entitled to their own facts, too, which can be whatever we want or need them to be. But that is sheer fantasy, of course. Wanting and needing something to be true, doesn’t make it a fact, and even more tellingly, it doesn’t make an untruth true. In a way it’s a bit like mathematics. No matter how hard anyone tries 2 + 2 is never going to equal 17.3, isn’t it? But that is just the kind of mental gymnastics many people attempt today in order to live with a range of so-called facts that are anything but. That’s living a lie. It’s a deception. It is not reality. It’s also manipulation.
There are many examples of politicians, world leaders – even world bodies – that for years have felt entitled to their own facts that have been derived from their own special research. In the last year, in particular, many so-called “facts” about a whole range of issues have been brought into question as biased and even downright dodgy “research” has been exposed. Without extensively cataloguing these here, independent and rigorous research and investigation has been carried out which has shown claimed “facts” to be lies. Remember the start of the call for a proper investigation into the origins of COVID two years ago? Academics from around the world loudly declared that the scientific facts “conclusively prove” that the COVID virus had its origins in a wet market in Wuhan, China, jumping from animals to humans. In fact, one Dr. Anthony Fauci, arguably, the US’s leading expert on infectious diseases, and has served under seven presidents (including Donald Trump), providing guidance on infectious disease outbreaks in the US, loudly and vehemently declared that “the facts are irrefutable” that COVID did not start with a lab leak in Wuhan. Why? He was secretly involved with virus research at the Wuhan Institute, himself. He was not alone. Many academics and universities around the world, including several in Australia, loudly proclaimed the scientific facts that the virus was of animal origin. Two years down the track no one with integrity believes that now, not ASIO, not the CIA, the FBI, MI5 and a host of other authorities around the world – with a whole bunch of leading scientists and institutions now red-faced. COVID started with a laboratory leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology where military “gain of function” research for the weaponisation of viruses was occurring. But anyone questioning the propaganda to the contrary at the outset was labelled a conspiracy theorist.
This is but one big example of experts and others feeling entitled to their own facts (ones they have created). There is so much more. It may surprise you that 108 (yes, 108) different climate change models dating back to 1984, and used at the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to present facts about the dangers of global warming, all predicted a warming rate of 2.6 degrees C per century, versus 1.7 degrees in real world modelling by other reputable and genuinely independent researchers – this is a huge difference in climate change science. Noted geologist, Gregory Wrightstone, an expert reviewer for the IPCC, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition, and author of the bestselling book, “Inconvenient Facts: the science that Al Gore doesn't want you to know”, has recently shown the IPCC that they are “relying on complex computer programs, using an array of complicated equations ‘tweaked’ by scientists who built them to arrive at a forecast temperature some 100 years into the future. We cannot confidently forecast temperature merely 10 days from now, but are asked to base climate policies and risk trillions of dollars on models that have failed and failed again the test of prediction versus observation.” The IPCC has not refuted Professor Wrightstone. Instead they thanked him for “his rigour”. But the propaganda and the “facts” according to the world’s scientists directly involved with the IPCC has not been corrected nor has it abated – it has ramped up. The IPCC actually agrees with Professor Wrightstone. Here is an actual excerpt from an IPCC report in 2001. “In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system [i.e. the world’s climate patterns], and therefore the long term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” (emphasis mine) – this is the IPCC, itself. Yet the scientific “facts” to which elite academics feel entitled have for the last 22 years still been promoted fuelling fear and providing ample fodder for climate catastrophist politicians and their outrageously expensive programs and projects. Wrightstone has demonstrated how IPCC models (all of them) have overstated global warming data at least three times too much.
According to Wrightstone and a growing number of geologists who are losing their fear of being cancelled by their universities, we are now more than 10,000 years into our current interglacial warm period, (which typically last 10-15,000 years). The facts are that for the last 3500 years global temperatures have been in decline. This is a fact.
I could go on and on. Space doesn’t permit, of course, and while we might tsk tsk at the silliness of all this and the sheer manipulation of created “facts” to press an agenda or a cause, we believers are often guilty of being not just entitled to our own opinions, but entitled to our own facts, too. There is a fine line sometimes between our cherished theological opinions and our own facts. We are not entitled to our own facts. No one is. As believers, we are obligated to biblical truth as ones redeemed, and are called to walk in God’s truth and righteousness. Many Christians have developed a set of their own facts concerning discipleship to which they feel so entitled, yet a quick study of scripture demolishes those facts. This still doesn’t stop many from changing their minds – i.e. repenting - but if they value the word of God for correction and reproof, they should ditch their cherished facts for God’s divine truth.
As I observe it, the biggest “fact” to which many believers feel entitled today is the “right” to pursue discipleship and faith on their own terms. Whether this is about contrary ideas to God’s Word concerning sexuality, gender, climate change, sin, the use of money and so on, doesn’t seem to bother these people. They create their own facts to justify preferred behaviour and values. This is the one big overarching “fact” they have created - that Christian discipleship is conducted on my own terms. This makes the believer their own “lord” – not Jesus. The biblical truth is that discipleship, by definition, is conducted on God’s terms – no one else’s regardless of facts. Those redeemed have been restored to righteousness and obedience to God – which is what faith is, by the way, and what baptism signifies. Jesus captured the essence of discipleship when He said,
Matthew 16:24-25 (NIV)
"Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves
and take up their cross and follow Me.
25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it,
but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”
Yes, there are some things in the bible which are difficult to accept, at times. But this is merely the flesh reacting to divine truth and wanting to live by its own facts. By faith we continue in truth and we are transformed and renewed. What is more, we find life as it was intended.
Think on these things, and let God’s truth replace any “facts” to which you have become entitled.
Ps Milton
[Sources: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change website; “What Really Happened in Wuhan”, by Sharri Markson; “Inconvenient Facts: the science that Al Gore doesn't want you to know”, by Gregory Wrightstone (pp.77-78); IPPC official document 2001, # 14, sect.2.2.2.]