THE question posed by some writers to the newspapers letters column is how could some people say outright incorrect or just dumb things without feeling a sense of shame?

The answer is two-fold. The first is that Guyanese, as a people, are gifted with an overwhelming sense of pride about themselves. Many exude a self-confidence that borders on arrogance. This disposition makes them feel that they are always right about everything and when they are proven wrong, this false sense of pride will cause them to obfuscate or spin their claims or just become “wrong and strong.”

As can be attested by the current slew of negative headlines Guyanese are making around the world, our people are finding it very difficult to correct their unique “Guyanese way” when they are confronted by the more proper ways of the world. I expect others will now write to condemn me for saying that the ways of the world are more proper and this will prove my point regarding the exaggerated sense of the Guyanese self. (If the Guyanese way was better we wouldn’t be the ones being sent to jail or forcibly deported.) The truth of the matter is that there is common standard of behaviour among our people which is actually sub-standard when compared to a wider norm.

The second reason for the shameless propagation of bad ideas is that some people mistakenly believe they are privy to an absolute or divine truth. This is a particularly bad place to be and everyday we witness why in the letters column. The fact is no one can know the mind of God and therefore no one has access to absolute religious truth.

There is also danger here in that a Muslim can claim that truth tells him to perform a certain act and a Christian can say his truth tells to perform the opposite. In Afghanistan for instance, truth compels Christians to proselytize while Muslim truth says conversion away from Islam is a heresy requiring death. Here, religious “truth” results in a beheading.

Recently in Guyana we had Hindus complaining about a predatory type Christian evangelizing while the fundamentalists perpetrators responded by claiming they had the divine right to carry on in that manner.

The delusion of divine right is the reason shameless things are being written in the press and broadcast on TV. If you feel a God is speaking through you then you will say whatever you think that God wants you to say, no matter how outrageous.

But God is about reconcilable truth so many of the distortions being sprouted by the misguidedly pious, especially about scientific facts and obvious reality, could not be coming from God but rather are from men suffering religious delusions.

In the past such people, under the fantasy of righteous truth burned Giordano Bruno alive at the stake for saying the earth was not the center of the universe. They tied his tongue so he couldn’t speak to the crowd while they set him fire. Thousands were tortured in inquisitions to protect such “truths.” We cannot slide back to such a mentality.

Today, a good education and the examination of all ideas is the only way we have to curb the widening nonsense. In the end, I think God will expose the charlatans who misuse His name. And the objective truth, perhaps expressed best through science, will ultimately prevail despite the efforts of self-righteous idiots.
ARNOLD CHANCE