Honing Your BS Filter as an Act of Grace

Read an interesting article about Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, a philosopher, professor emeritus at Princeton, and author of the book "On Bull - - - - ."....The New York Times > Books > Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity:

Dick Staub discussed it today in his blog, commenting: “Followers of Jesus are supposed to love the lord our God with our mind. Until we recognize the ‘Bulls—t” in the broader culture and faith community, think about it and take action…we are doomed.”

Here are some excerpts from the NYT article…
"'One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [bull]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize [bull] and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.'

"What is [bull], after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth. 'It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth,' Mr. Frankfurt writes. 'A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.'

"The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is 'getting away with what he says,' Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] 'does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it,' he writes. 'He pays no attention to it at all.'

“And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting 'the possibility of knowing how things truly are.' It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal.

“The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance. 'All that is solid,' as Marx once wrote, 'melts into air.'"