Social Philosophy: Malleable truth.

After looking at the following article about how Dr. Hansen has modified scientific evidence to fit his preconceived ideals, I got to thinking about how this is really what so many people in the world do. The fallenness of mankind (see Original Sin) has made our reason subject to our heart or emotions. Here is what D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has to say:

...Man, in other words, instead of looking at life with his mind, looks at it with with his desires and affections. He prefers darkness; he is controlled by his heart instead of by his head. We must be quite clear about this. This is not to say that man as God made him should not have a heart, and should not feel things. The important thing is that no man should be governed by his emotions and desires. That is the effect of sin. A man should be governed by his mind, his understanding.
This surely is the final answer to all those people who are not Christian, and who say they are not Christian because they think and because they reason. The simple truth about them is that they are governed, not by their minds, but by their hearts and by their prejudices. Their elaborate attempts to justify themselves intellectually is nothing but an attempt to camouflage the godlessness of their hearts. They are trying to justify the kind of life they are living by putting up an intellectual position; but the real trouble is that they are governed by desires and lusts. They do not approach the truth with the mind, they approach it with all these prejudices which come from the heart. As the Psalmist puts it so perfectly: 'The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.' That is what the unbeliever always says, and that is why he says it; and then he tries to find an intellectual reason to justify what his heart wants to say.

Is this not what the scientist today does? When the facts don't fit my preconceived theory, I'll just change them.

Lloyd-Jones goes on to make just that point:

Our Lord here reminds us of this plainly. It is the heart that covets these worldly things, and the heart in sinful man is so powerful that it governs his mind, his understanding and his intellect. Man likes to think of himself as a gigantic intellect. Scientists are often fond of claiming this; but I can assure you that scientists are some times the most prejudiced men you can meet. Some of them are prepared to manipulate facts in order to buttress their theory. They often start their books by saying that a certain idea is but a theory, but a few pages later you find them referring to it as a fact. That is the heart in operation and not the mind. This is one of the greatest tragedies about sin and its effects. In the first instance it upsets the order and the balance; and the greatest and supreme gift becomes subservient to the lesser. 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'

And you see this effect also in journalism as reporters only see aspects of events that fit their view instead of just reporting what happened, or like the guy on CNN who stated publicly that he would do everything he could to make the presidency work (not withstanding that is not his job as a journalist).

One could go on but you get the point.