Untrustworthy Quotes

“We've spent forty years dramatically increasing how much information the average person encounters daily, then we've made no effort to equip ourselves to handle that shift.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“Conspiracism is always epistemic poison. this accusatory, credulous mindset, more than any individual theory, is what contributes to our epistemic crisis. it treats confirmation bias as confirmation, rumor as research, and innuendo as proof. It isolates its victims and builds their community on a foundation of sand. It falsely labels ideas and behaviors unconnected to reality as a heroic search for truth. And all those downsides, ironically, are part of conspiracism's appeal. They're part of why people believe.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“If we profess to follow Jesus, we cannot be content with our sin, nor can we withhold forgiveness and ceaselessly hurl shame. Our inclination must always be toward mercy. This isn't because Christians are apathetic about justice or opposed to accountability or any nonsense like that. It's because we have also been forgiven, and, in Christ, our shame has been removed.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“Responsible and humane use of language in public is a skill that requires cultivation. It is not something we are born knowing, nor is it something we are all taught, though it is certainly something anyone willing to develop epistemic virtue can learn.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“Americans are increasingly bound together politically, not by positive shared goals or convictions so much as by hatred for the other team.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“How we handle knowledge and how we assess truth claims are crucial for the development and outworking of our faith as Christians. It's fundamental to everything in the political arena and so much of our private lives as well. The simplest conversations can feel impossible when we can't agree about what is true--or whether and how truth can even be found. And if we can't talk to one another, how do we worship together? How do we govern together? How do we live together?”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“We don't know what is true, what is knowable, what is trustworthy. Our information environment is chaotic and overwhelming, rife with conspiracy theories, "fake news," and habit-forming digital manipulation. It is breaking our brains, polluting our politics, and corrupting Christian community. It may be the most pressing and unprecedented challenge of discipleship in the American church.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“To respond in love is to build, and there is “much to cast down, much to build, much to restore,” as Eliot wrote. “Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste,”15 for American society has a knowledge crisis, and the American church is no exception. If we are to overcome it, we must build what is good.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“We tend to see acquiring knowledge, becoming virtuous, and living in love as significantly distinct projects; knowledge especially is carved out from the other two. But Peter’s brief missive tangles them all together: “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. . . . [And] now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Pet. 1:14–15, 22).”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, lofty origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your brilliance penetrate into the darkness of my understanding and take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of both sin and ignorance. Give me a sharp sense of understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations, and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in completion; through Christ our Lord, amen. —Thomas Aquinas, “A Prayer for Students”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“That failure invariably leads to friction, to a sense that we share the pew with people who are deeply deluded. How long can churches remain intact when divisions are that profound?”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“But we also live in an age of manufactured distrust. Partisan news sources amplify and exaggerate the failures of the other side—even as they ignore, minimize, and rationalize their own obvious flaws. There is much money to be made and much fame to be gained by telling partisans exactly what they want to hear and inoculating them against external critique.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“We live in an age of earned distrust.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

“When we encounter opposing views in the age and context of social media, it’s not like reading them in a newspaper while sitting alone,” Turkish sociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues in the MIT Technology Review. “It’s like hearing them from the opposing team while sitting with our fellow fans in a football stadium.”26 That combative, tribal environment encourages loyalty to your own team and animosity toward outsiders—and toward whatever the outsiders try to tell you about your team’s beliefs.”
― Bonnie Kristian, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community