skynet loves you

In terms of journalism and the challenge of accurately representing science, the thing I struggle with is capturing the process. Too often there is this tendency to say, what makes this science story interesting? What's the payoff? Is there a new drug in the pipeline? Have they published a big new paper in Nature that's going to solve where human language comes from? We’re so focus on the result, on the conclusion, on the abstract of the paper and the last paragraph in the paper, but really what a science paper is is the methods section, it’s the process. And that is incredibly hard to actually translate to the public, partly because it can be pretty tedious but to get inside how a scientist thinks, to show that what makes science such a valuable, essential and crucial modern institution, is that there is this process. Someone had to struggle for years, someone had to sift through, parse through ambiguous data and come up with a good tentative answer, and that's incredibly difficult to translate to the public.

It's not simply that we need more science coverage. Really what we need absolutely more of, starting now, is to give people a better sense of the scientific process. A lot of the scientific illiteracy I see out there and the scientific misunderstanding of the American public, and the reason many people find it so easy to brush aside science or to simply believe that science is unweaving the rainbow, is because they don't understand the scientific process and the struggle and what a beautiful romantic process it often is. What we need more of, and this is a challenge to the writer, is to convey to people the excitement and the drama of a man or woman trying to take these big, big questions and come up with a new answer. It’s a noble pursuit.

When I first started ministering in Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, I was disconcerted by the level of skepticism. Then I was told by the Lord that it was good skepticism and not bad. When I asked for understanding, I was shown that good skepticism wants to believe, but you had better have the goods because they will thoroughly check you out. This is the "faith of the Bereans" who resolved to listen with openness to the teachings of Paul, but checked out everything by the Scriptures. On the other hand, bad skepticism wants to doubt and will gladly accept a mole hill of evidence that confirms their doubts, while rejecting a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Those with good skepticism are worth working with. I noticed after many visits that those who seemed to be doubting my teaching were actually deeply pondering it, and years later they could not only tell me in great detail what I had taught, but after checking it out and confirming it, they were now living it. Contrary to this, I have had many people who seemed to be the most excited about my message in a meeting but were unable to tell me one thing that I said right after the meeting. Years later these people would be just as excited in meetings, but in their lives you could hardly tell any true spiritual maturity. What audience would you rather have? It may be more fun to preach to the excitable, but for lasting fruit I will always take the deeper ones. Of course, there are some who can be very demonstrative and still be deep and have great faith...

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks he has found.
Miguel de Unamuno

Because of what I have learned about the good skeptics and the bad ones, we are not going too far out of our way to verify miracles. Some miracles we have experienced have been undeniable because they happened right in front of our eyes. However, some have doubted these, even when they saw them! Go figure. They are so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out of their darkness. To be overly concerned about convincing such people can be as deadly a trap as falling into their black hole with them. When it is convenient, we may take the verification of medical records and such, but we have resolved to keep our focus on pursuing the Lord and His work, letting the good skeptics check it out and prove them and the bad skeptics believe what they will.

Sometimes he knocks them over with his coat, sometimes by blowing on them, sometimes by pushing their forehead with his hand – but when he touches them, they fall over. As he does this, he calls out the healings – a brain tumor, a cancer, a crippled left leg – as though he's watching something occurring that the rest of us can't see. And then, one by one, various people are brought up onto the stage, and an announcer describes their affliction so that Hinn can lay hands on them and pronounce the disease vanquished. On an average night he'll heal about 80 people, in addition to the ones he shouts out in a sort of "wherever you are, you're healed" way.

No wonder Hinn needs bodyguards. Very few, if any, of these people are actually healed. And when they die, or their disease becomes worse, their relatives tend to become angry. For the past ten years this has been demonstrated over and over again by various investigative reports conducted with the resources of the Trinity Foundation, beginning with an Inside Edition show in 1993 hosted by Bill O'Reilly and reported by Steve Wilson.

He healed a case of brain cancer on stage, even though Inside Edition followed up with tests that showed the tumor was still present.

He pronounced a woman cured of heart disease, and she was so convinced that she threw away her heart medicine. Questioned about it, Hinn said, "It's not my job to call their doctor."

The "cure" of a deaf woman turned out to be a woman who, according to her doctor, was not deaf in the first place.

The cure of three deaf boys turned out to be bogus. A Houston woman who thought she was cured of lung cancer ("It will never come back!" Hinn told her) rejected her doctors' advice and care – and died two months later.

The heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield, banned from boxing because of a heart condition, went to a Benny Hinn crusade in Philadelphia, had Hinn lay hands on him, and gave Hinn a check for $265,000 after he was told he was healed. In fact, he passed his next examination by the boxing commission, but later his doctors said he never had a heart condition in the first place – he had been misdiagnosed.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Even sadder than the people who think they're healed are the ones so sick that Hinn's employees never allow them to be seen on stage. People suffering from paralysis, brain damage, dementia and the like – people who couldn't possibly make any "demonstration" on stage – are rejected at a screening session held backstage.

In two cases journalists have tried to verify all the healings at a particular crusade. For an HBO documentary called A Question of Miracles, researchers attended a Portland, Oregon, crusade at which 76 miracles were claimed. Even though Hinn had agreed to provide medical verification of each one, he stonewalled requests for the data, then eventually responded 13 weeks later – with only five names. HBO followed up the five cases and determined that a woman "cured" of lung cancer had died nine months later, an old woman's broken vertebra wasn't healed after all, a man with a logging injury deteriorated as he refused medication and a needed operation, a woman claiming to be healed of deafness had never been deaf (according to her husband), and a woman complaining of "breathlessness" had stopped going to the doctor on instructions of her mother.

Ten years later, Hinn has become something of a media master. Whenever he's investigated now, he simply ADMITS his "mistakes." He's especially fond of going on The Larry King Show at any time of crisis. He's also refined his view of what he does. He doesn't heal anyone, he always reminds the interviewer. He just creates an atmosphere so that God can heal people. By the time people get to the stage, they've already been healed by God, he says. If the healing turns out to be bogus, then the person was self-deluded. Besides, hope is a great thing.

He also says he has a doctor backstage now to counsel the miracle cases and encourage them to continue with their medication until the healing has been verified. This seems to satisfy the media, even though it amounts to an admission of his own inability to know whether someone is healed.

The image he presents to the faithful is the opposite, of course. To them he's a man possessed of special wisdom. He sees things no one else can see. He has conversations with Jesus that no one else has had. He witnesses the presence of God when no one else would be aware of it.

Through countless years he has groped and crawled and struggled and climbed and stumbled toward the light. He has been hindered and delayed and deceived by augurs and prophets -- by popes and priests. He has been betrayed by saints, misled by apostles and Christs, frightened by devils and ghosts -- enslaved by chiefs and kings -- robbed by altars and thrones. In the name of education his mind has been filled with mistakes, with miracles, and lies, with the impossible, the absurd and infamous. In the name of religion he has been taught humility and arrogance, love and hatred, forgiveness and revenge.

But the world is changing.

Nothing is greater, nothing is of more importance, than to find amid the errors and darkness of this life, a shining truth.

Truth is the intellectual wealth of the world.

The noblest of occupations is to search for truth.

Truth is the foundation, the superstructure, and the glittering dome of progress.

Truth is the mother of joy. Truth civilizes, ennobles, and purifies. The grandest ambition that can enter the soul is to know the truth.

Truth gives man the greatest power for good. Truth is sword and shield. It is the sacred light of the soul.

The man who finds a truth lights a torch.

How is Truth to be Known?

By investigation, experiment and reason.

To love the truth, thus perceived, is mental virtue -- intellectual purity. This is true manhood. This is freedom.

To throw away your reason at the command of churches, popes, parties, kings or gods, is to be a serf, a slave.

It is not simply the right, but it is the duty of every man to think -- to investigate for himself -- and every man who tries to prevent this by force or fear, is doing all he can to degrade and enslave his fellowmen.

The real searcher after truth will not receive the old because it is old, or reject the new because it is new. He will not believe men because they are dead, or contradict them because they are alive. With him an utterance is worth the truth, the reason it contains, without the slightest regard to the author. He may have been a king or serf -- a philosopher or servant, -- but the utterance neither gains nor loses in truth or reason. Its value is absolutely independent of the fame or station of the man who gave it to the world.

Nothing but falsehood needs the assistance of fame and place, of robes and maitres, of tiaras and crowns. The wise, the really honest and intelligent, are not swayed or governed by numbers -- by majorities.

They accept what they really believe to be true. They care nothing for the opinions of ancestors, nothing for creeds, assertions and theories, unless they satisfy the reason.

In all directions they seek for truth, and when found, accept it with joy -- accept it in spite of preconceived opinions -- in spite of prejudice and hatred.

This is the course pursued by wise and honest men, and no other course is possible for them.

Gwynn did not hold the orthodox view of his profession that they were instruments of divine justice. For a moment he allowed himself to imagine that he had been an instrument of humour, sans the appellation of divinity. He mused, not for the first time, that if the putative divine claimed all territories of sense and significance for itself, it fell to comedy, with its bifurcations, reversals and annulments of sense, to destroy that claim. The existence of the comic viewpoint, even if it was only an interpretation placed upon the tragedy of a world where death was king of kings, might prove the absence of an absolute divine authority.