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Oxford Dictionaries: The term post-truth “sky-rocketed” in popularity in 2016

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Maybe that explains the buzz re post-truth in science, blowing through recently. From sociologist Frank Furedi at Spiked:

Consider the recently invented phrase, ‘post-truth’. It has been selected as word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. According to the Oxford University Press, after the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election, the use of ‘post-truth’ sky-rocketed.

How did the term ‘post-truth’ acquire such a large public profile? This is not a phrase that emerged from the conversations of everyday life. Most people do not use it — at least not yet. Unlike ‘awesome’, ‘chilled out’ or ‘cool’, words whose origins are in the linguistic practices of ordinary people, ‘post-truth’ is the invention of individuals who are part of the political and cultural elites. If its use has ‘sky-rocketed’, it certainly wasn’t in pubs or the workplace that this happened.

What is significant about ‘post-truth’ is that it is a means of designating which values are legitimate and which are not. Post-truth is not simply a descriptive or standalone word. Its usage sends a wider message, which is that everything that happened in 2016 was fundamentally flawed because it was based on false assumptions. The rhetoric of post-truth is intended to delegitimise the values and outlook of those people who dared to challenge the worldview of people in power. Having failed to win the battle of ideas directly, they manipulate language to try to undermine certain public views. More.

If academics and scientists believe that words alone will change much, they believe in magic. But then again, many believe in the multiverse, etc., so?

See also: A scientist on the benefits of a post-truth society

I’m a factual relativist. I abandoned the idea of facts and “the truth” some time last year. I wrote a whole science book, The Memory Illusion, almost never mentioning the terms fact and truth.

and

Analyst: Climate change crusade as faith, not science. Most science writers today seek to proclaim truths, with penalties for doubt, and at the same time to assert that the human mind is not structured so as to understand truth. In other words, truth is whatever the elite want, which – with suitable punishments for doubt or dissent – eliminates tiresome issues around correctness.

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Comments
"If academics and scientists believe that words alone will change much, they believe in magic." They may just believe in manipulating public opinion by altering the language. Remember George Orwell's "NewSpeak".DennisM
December 28, 2016
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So to reject the so called liberal values of the academic elite is to be 'post-truth' in the Atheistic liberal mindset? But have Atheistic liberals actually ever taken a seriously look at the sheer depravity of their so called liberal values that they are trying to impose on the rest of us unenlightened 'deplorables'?
Life after God? - The Ethics of Peter Singer - Peter May http://www.bethinking.org/morality/life-after-god-the-ethics-of-peter-singer
Anyone not shocked by such 'intellectual' moral depravity has lost all sense of what is truly morally right and morally wrong. And in reflecting on such 'educated depravity', by the liberal academic elite such as Peter Singer, might I also be so bold as to suggest that the rejection of God by Atheistic liberals in academia is what is in reality 'post-truth' and that, in their rejection of God, atheistic liberals have not only become 'post-truth' but have also, in fact, lost their minds? Quotes and Verse:
It's Really Not Rocket Science - Granville Sewell - November 16, 2015 Excerpt: In a 2005 American Spectator article, Jay Homnick wrote: “It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident... you have essentially "lost your mind."” ,,, Max Planck biologist W.E. Loennig once commented that Darwinism was a sort of "mass psychosis" -- then he asked me, is that the right English word? I knew psychosis was some kind of mental illness, but wasn't sure exactly what it was, so I looked it up in my dictionary when I returned home: "psychosis -- a loss of contact with reality." I wrote him that, yes, that was the right word…. Loennig and Homnick are still right. Once you seriously consider the possibility that all the magnificent species in the living world, and the human body and the human brain, could be entirely the products of unintelligent forces, you have been in academia too long and have lost contact with reality -- you have lost your mind. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/it_really_isnt100911.html "I had lived as an avowed atheist for more than a decade and couldn’t imagine that The Truth even existed, much less it could be found. Especially when I couldn’t even accept that God was real. Fortunately, God literally changed my mind about Him with a thunderbolt. One day, I was reading an article about the human genome project (I was a technical writer), when I was drawn to look at my own hand. What had before been a clever machine of flesh and bone was suddenly revealed to me as a pure miracle of creation. It was truly that instant; one second I was an atheist, and the next I was a believer. I knew with absolute certainty that only an intelligent designer–God–could have created something as incredible as me!" - Misty http://www.catholicsistas.com/2012/05/17/why-i-became-catholic-and-not-buddhist/ Romans 1:25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
Moreover in regards to truth itself, there is something interesting about Jesus that sets Him apart from all other religions in the world. Other than the fact that Jesus Christ alone rose from the dead, while other religious leaders are still in their tombs,,,
Burial places of founders of world religions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_places_of_founders_of_world_religions Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Quantum Hologram https://youtu.be/F-TL4QOCiis
Other than the fact that Jesus Christ alone rose from the dead, while other religious leaders are still in their tombs, Jesus said that He was not merely teaching a truth but was the very embodiment of truth itself, i.e. 'the truth', and, more specifically, Jesus "declared his person to be even more important than his teachings"
John 5:40 You pore over the Scriptures because you presume that by them you possess eternal life. These are the very words that testify about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life. 'Other than Christ, no other religious leader was foretold a thousand years before he arrived, nor was anything said about where he would be born, why he would come, how he would live, and when he would die. No other religious leader claimed to be God, or performed miracles, or rose from the dead. No other religious leader grounded his doctrine in historical facts. No other religious leader declared his person to be even more important than his teachings.' - StephenB - UD Blogger John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Interestingly, 'the truth' is not so much a set of facts that need to be discovered so much as it is a 'Person' that we need to learn to have a relationship with Might I further suggest that, since clearly the Atheistic liberals own 'educated' understanding of morality has failed them so horribly, as was plainly revealed by the depraved 'educated morality' of Peter Singer, that perhaps liberals not lean so much on their own understanding for morality? But just perhaps look to God for guidance in questions of what is morally right and good? Verses and Music:
Isaiah 45:18-19 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.” Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; Lauren Daigle - Light Of The World (Lyric Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cLhaZIBSpo
bornagain77
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