Photo © georgejmclittle fotolia.com

Telling The Real From The Fake

THE Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 was “post-truth”. By this is meant that "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’."  Although the phrase has been around for a while, there was an apparent spike in its use that year.

In an increasingly pluralistic society where moral relativism reigns, it seems that simple truth is not so simple.

Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov

In Dostoevsky's novel on faith and morals The Brothers Karamazov, which has been called "the greatest novel of belief and unbelief", Dimitri, a sensualist, quotes a saying of his atheist brother Ivan:

"If God does not exist, everything is permitted."  - The Brothers Karamazov Part 4 Book 11 Chapter 4.

We see the outworking of this in a world today that has turned its back on God in favour of scientific rationalism, atheism and involvement in the occult.