[Book Sip] Election Fraud Controversy... Truth Is a Threat to Conspiracy Theorists

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This book diagnoses the deeply divided and chaotic American society. The author is a geneticist who led the Genome Project that mapped the human body's base sequences in 2023. A scientist and a person of faith. It is said that Tim Keller, a pastor known as the 'C. S. Lewis of the 21st century,' encouraged the author to write while on his deathbed. The author views American society as one where the extreme political views of progressive left and right-wing conservatives distort facts, and the remaining 67% of moderates express extreme fatigue. The problem lies in distrust of science and institutions, and distorted information shaking the social foundation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, distrust in medical authorities and vaccines led to 230,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, more than four times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War. The author introduces four sources of wisdom to avoid being deceived by such distortions.

What is wisdom? While wisdom depends on knowledge, knowledge itself is not wisdom. Wisdom includes the ability to understand moral frameworks and integrate them into life. And it goes beyond that. When functioning properly, wisdom guides careful discernment of truth and tells us what decisions to make when the path is unclear. Wisdom includes experience, common sense, and insight.

There are people who believe their faith requires them to distrust science, or who consider political loyalty a better source of wisdom than truth, faith, or science. If so, we face a serious problem. To be clear, this is not an issue confined to one end of the political spectrum. No party holds a monopoly on good or evil.

If politics becomes the main factor shaping our identity, there is a risk of blurring or deliberately suppressing insights from truth, science, and faith. The current political environment seems focused solely on the desire to win competitions. This narrow perspective leads us to trust political voices that seem to 'win' rather than reliable sources.

A person addicted to conspiracy theories perceives new information as a threat. It is like being forced to quit drugs, which they try to avoid at all costs. Instead, they may seek even more absurd conspiracy theories to gain a false sense of liberation.

Questions such as “Why do I exist?”, “Does God exist?”, “What is the basis of morality?”, and “Why is there something rather than nothing?” are very important. However, from a scientism perspective, these questions are considered worthless and excluded from discussion because they cannot be answered scientifically. Even those who strongly support science should be careful not to deny other ways of seeking truth.

Three out of ten people believe that President Biden’s 2020 victory was due to election fraud. About two-thirds of Republican supporters believe this, while only one in fourteen Democratic supporters share the same view. The existence of such extreme partisan differences on objective facts indicates serious cognitive bias at work in this matter.

A Time for Wisdom | by Francis Collins | translated by Lee Eunjin | Poema | 360 pages | 22,000 KRW