Not against, but to compliment, this brilliant thread, here’s an intriguing perspective on this issue:
Our culture has long been driven by information; many people are inclined to believe only what can be verified and rationally ascertained.
More recently, we have been surprised by our vulnerability to “fake news” and false information delivered through the “trusted” medium of the internet; we seem to “verify” by relying on the “rationality” of technology, but indeed, we are easily manipulated because we trust in the form, rather than the content.
We have not done a good job of articulating the difficulties and gaps present in communication, or how to incarnate ideas into reality. We have assumed that informational “recipes” are the sole basis for knowing truth.
It is time for us all to taste the actual fruit of the act of making. The act of making [being co-creators with God, instead of consumers] is the antidote to our current malaise, to the collapse of communication that has resulted, in the words of David Brooks, in “a rapid, dirty river of information coursing through us all day,” resulting in the need for “an internet cleanse.”
Source: Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: a Theology of Making, 2020, p24. Emphasis and paragraphing mine.
Makoto’s interesting observation suggests that rationality cannot counter fake news very effectively, because what people trust is the"medium of the internet". The fact that it is ‘up there’ gives it credibility. Something that is compounded by our consumer culture that encourages us to leap before we look.
He suggests throughout the chapter that we need to view ourselves as Holy Spirit-infused co-creators with God in the New Creation project. Such a view opens us to assess sources of ‘truth’ based on more than (but not less than) rationality.