What do you do with an old set of encyclopedias? They were valuable when the kids were still growing up before the internet and Google. Now, if you want to know a factoid, you can ask “Siri”, and get an immediate answer, but what if you want more than a short answer? Maybe there is a podcast with more information or a video on PBS. However, even these are only 30 minutes to an hour and the answers are hardly encyclopedic. At some point, it seems likely that you would need to check magazines, journals, and books, even in the digital age. An additional problem is, can you trust what is on the internet to be factual, let alone unbiased. With something like World Book or Encyclopedia Brittanica, one knew that the writers had actual expertise in the areas about which they wrote. Now, even your Weird Uncle Harry who is convinced that the earth is flat and that the pictures of the moon landing were done on a Hollywood soundstage can post their “facts” on the internet. Uncle Harry may be passionate about his views but that doesn’t make him correct. In the end, we still have to sort out the wheat from the chaff. We need to apply the good brains God gave us.
“’Come let us reason together,’ says the Lord,” is still valid in this age.