Tag: Reclaim America

Reclaim America And Bad Research

How should we look at claims about our enemies? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Politically, I am a conservative. I have always been one. Despite that, I have also tried to be as honest as I could. My own father had a problem in the past of sending out an email blast to a bunch of people or sharing something on Facebook about Obama and I would do five minutes of checking and find out that it wasn’t true. My stance was always we should aim to defeat our political opponents, but we must always do so in truth. This thread is not about politics though.

What I am doing I would hope anyone would do. If you are a Trump supporter for instance, do what I do and check claims on people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and also check positive stuff about Trump before sharing it. If you are of the liberal persuasion. Check the reverse. Make sure that negative story about Trump is true.

I find this interesting also in light of going through Abdu Murray’s Saving Truth now where he talks about a post-truth society. In this society, we will share something even if it isn’t true and even if we know it isn’t true because it goes against our opponents. For those of us who are Christians, this should never be the case.

So there is a page called Reclaim America on Facebook. Sadly, I have written about them before with bad research. I wasn’t surprised to see that there was more of the same. The about of the Facebook page says this about them.

“Our mission is to speak truth to the lies of the Progressive Liberal Agenda! This page is kept current with information by the team of administrators that run it. God Bless the USA & those that seek to defend her!”

Fair enough. If you think liberals are spreading lies, then you should want to combat them. However, if you think lying is a problem, shouldn’t you make sure what you share is true?

So yesterday, I am surfing Facebook and I see this picture. I want to say upfront that I do not like profanity and the only reason I share this is because I want to be as accurate as I can. Anyway, this is what was shared.

Now immediately, several people are posting about what an awful woman Hillary is. As a conservative, I am no fan of Hillary and I do understand some things. First off, Hillary does have a reputation of being foul-mouthed, including around the Secret Service from when she was in the White House. Second, we do know that there were leaked emails. On the face of it, this could be plausible then.

But darn it, I have this tendency. I want to check up on things. There’s a date to this email and there’s a specific quote. It should be easy to find.

Except it isn’t. In fact, I find an incident from September 7 that matches it. This is one where Hillary said the exact same thing out loud at a Matt Lauer interview.

There is also another source out there that is doing the same thing. I found this video doing my search. For them, they had an email from someone with a Comcast email address. The original page I linked to about the incident had an NBC associate producer as the source. None of this is backed by anyone else. No specific names are given. Nothing.

So we have a claim with different dates and different sources and different forums. It leads me to think that this whole thing is bogus. Now keep in mind, a lack of evidence does not mean that it is necessarily false. Perhaps something like this did happen and no one reported it except a few isolated individuals, but I’m skeptical.

Even if it’s not necessarily false, there’s still no positive evidence that it is true. Now someone did point out emails went through Bleach Bit. Okay, but if that’s true, then how did we get those emails so we can know what is in them? Furthermore, if you point a specific date and no one can find an email on this date that has this, what are we to think?

Now if Reclaim America or anyone else can find this email, I will gladly retract this and issue an apology. Until then, I am skeptical of this whole thing. For those of us wanting to be people of truth, it doesn’t help our cause if we spread things so easily that anyone can see is not necessarily true.

As a conservative, this bothers me, but as a Christian, it does so even more. If you have no reason to believe something I share based on five minutes of checking, why should you believe it when I tell you that the Son of God came and rose from the dead which will take much more time to research and study? I have already damaged my witness by that.

It’s my hope that not only Reclaim America but anyone involved in debate will learn even more to check claims. Whatever side we want to serve in a debate, let’s try to serve it truthfully. If we don’t want false claims shared about our side or unprovable claims to be shared, let’s make sure we do the same.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Another Complaint About Falsehood On The Internet.

What’s the best way to take down opposition? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday I’m looking on my Facebook feed and I find a news story that gets me suspicious. The post comes from Reclaim America. I will include a picture of what I saw.

IslamicscienceonreclaimAmerica

This seems awfully problematic when you see it. A Muslim leader still believes in a flat Earth and even thought that a movie like Gravity should be banned? How on Earth can these people be so backwards?

Now to be sure, I am no fan of Islam. I do not care for Islam at all. I have in my debates with many Muslims seen that they are incredibly uninformed, often so bad that the new atheists seem to be more informed than they are. Since I place the new atheists quite low on the intellectual pole, that is saying a lot. Still, I saw this post and decided to do some brief checking. What do I find out? I find out the whole thing is phony.

Let’s start with that twitter account. Is it real? No. It was a fake set up for entertainment purposes. If you really want to know what Naik believes, instead you need to go and ask him yourself, such as was done right here.

So this is the great irony in something like this. Unfortunately too many people are posting on the original thread in just disbelief on what Muslims will apparently believe and how stupid they are. The sad irony there is that these same people are doing the exact same thing. By their posting on a thread like this and in fact ignoring anyone saying otherwise, such as myself who had already posted a brief version of this, then they are the ones who are falling for a lie.

Okay. Why do I care so much about this? Why do things like this tick me off? Let’s go with some possible reasons.

Is it because I’m not conservative? No. I consistently vote Republican and oppose abortion, redefining marriage, and want a limited government. I am also highly in favor of us practicing capitalism and prefer the economics that came out of the Austrian school of thought.

Am I fan of Islam? Not at all. I am not at all shocked when I see about a murder that has taken place because of Muslim terrorists. I consider Islam to be a wicked belief system and I in no way support it.

Am I a pluralist? Hardly. I’m a conservative Christian apologist who holds to the bodily resurrection of Jesus and that there is no salvation apart from the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. I am an ardent defender of Biblical reliability.

So why do I care?

Because I am a person who cares about truth and on the internet, falsehood can spread quickly. I want to take Islam down, but I don’t need to invent a fake story to take them down. I can do it using truth itself. If you want to show errors in Islam, try doing this instead. Try reading the Koran and the Hadiths and Muslim scholars and really studying the work of Islam and then sharing that information. If Islam is false, and I’m convinced it is, you will find more than enough and you will be better educated for it. Also, try studying your own Christian worldview and seeing what you can learn from it.

Furthermore, if you’re a Christian spreading this nonsense, think of the harm that you’re doing. You want people to believe that God Himself came down in the person of Jesus Christ and died and rose again and is the reigning King of this world right now. Now I do hold to that, but that is a pretty tough belief to have. You don’t just hear something like that and say “Sure! I believe that!” You would actually need some evidence. Now this person you’re sharing this information with sees that you’ve shared some false information about another that can be found to be false with just a few minutes of a Google search. Why should they take what you have to say seriously on this bigger claim? Answer. They shouldn’t.

Please do your checking people. When you spread falsehood like this you embarrass yourself, you empower your opponents and give them further justification to see you in a negative light, and you give others less reason to embrace your own worldview.

In Christ,
Nick Peters