Expert: Richard Aberdeen - 9/9/2009

Question
hello, how far do you agree with easy access to the news and infromations has broadened our understanding of the world

Answer
Access to information is usually a good thing because a lot of societies promote anti-human rights agendas by limiting what people can read, see, write and speak.  That said, one needs to be careful where they are getting their information.  Most websites have a specific agenda to promote and as such, most of the articles found on them are biased towards a certain slant.  

One of the major problems on a global level today is that people who label themselves as "liberal", "moderate", "conservative" and similar tend to develop a mindset that agrees with a basic proscribed agenda, even when the agenda such as in the case of "progressive", isn't written down or codified.  For example, many people who call themselves progressives tend to rather naively accept certain positions without really thinking them through very carefully.  Almost all progressives believe in science and education without stopping to consider the significant downsides of global mass pollution and weapons of mass destruction that science and education have left in a rather long trail of historical tears.  

It is important to be skeptical and suspect of anybody that is providing you information, whether they are a professor or other teacher, minister or progressive or some other leader.  The two sources I highly recommend for keeping the best open-minded perspective are the Bible and the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Many people use Wikipedia because it is free, but the Britannica, which can be purchased in software form for about $60, is a far more reliable source.  

It is virtually impossible to understand the American, European and larger global historical  experience without a solid biblical foundation, including both the bible itself and the various historical cultures surrounding it.  This is because the vast majority of key European, American and other philosophers, authors and activists were well versed in the Bible and developed many of their ideas from it.  People who cannot logically be understood without knowledge of the Bible include such diverse individuals as DaVinci, Shakespeare, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Rousseau, Locke, Bacon, Darwin, Marx, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Albert Schweitzer, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass and a great many others.

Thus, if you want a good solid grasp of human knowledge and understanding and a good perspective on human rights from a fair global viewpoint, then I recommend both the Bible and the Britannica as two lifetime study projects.  Reading various biographies found in the Britannica can help you understand why many key players in history thought and acted as they did, as well as the Britannica contains lengthy aritcles written by world-respected scholars on a wide variety of historical, intellectual, scientific and other subjects.