Where is the Truth?

     Hello everyone! I hope you all had an amazing week! This week I have been thinking a lot about truth. Where can we find it? How do we know that it is the truth? How do we know that what we have and what we believe is true. In today's world the truth is slowly slipping away until eventually it will be difficult if not impossible to tell what is the truth and what has been turned into confusion and chaos. You might ask, "well Hanna what made you start thinking about truth?" This week in one of my classes we were examining an article. This article had been used as evidence to pass a law, but upon further study of the article we found that the way the studies had been done did not exactly prove the point that the article made. The experiments which had been done had cut a lot of corners which skewed the evidence allowing for the point to be made. This made me think about how I will know whether an article is being completely truthful or not? How are we able to keep the truth so that we can teach our future families what is right? So that we can help them to become all they can become? Sadly I don't know if I have a complete solution, but I do have some things I have seen help me in my life and I hope they can help you in yours. 

    First and foremost you may not know this about me but I am a religious person. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Something that I believe in as a member of this religion is personal revelation. To those of you who are not familiar with this term, personal revelation is what we believe to be answers that each individual can receive from a loving Heavenly Father. In my religion, we believe that God deeply cares for us and our lives. We also believe that He knows everything. He created this world and us and wants us to succeed in life. We can ask Him questions and He will answer us. It's not always as clear as we would like the answer to be but there is always an answer. In essence I believe that we are able to find truth by asking our Heavenly Father. He will answer us and He will know whether it is true or not. He will testify of it through his Holy Spirit and tell us if it is true or not. He cares about us and He cares about what we care about. So even if it is just can I trust what this article is saying? I believe He will give us an answer.

    Now you're thinking, "Hanna, what if I don't believe in God? How then will I be able to find out what the truth is? Plus even though God does give us answers we should put a little work into it as well shouldn't we?" Well in a scholastic point of view there are many other ways in which we are able to find the truth. One of them can be through trusted studies and articles. Earlier I talked about how an article I read in a class was trusted and shouldn't have been. So how are we supposed to know if it is just saying that it's true or if it really is? One way we are able to do this is by first looking at articles with good sourcing such as peer reviewed articles. These articles are far more likely to be accurate because they have been looked at extensively by other people who are studying or have studied the subject. Another thing we are able to do is to look into the data they used for the article itself. Now I'm not an expert at reading data but there are some fairly simple points we can look at to see if something is more reliable. For example, something we could look at would be the sample size. A larger sample size is often more reliable than a smaller one. Because it is able to represent the whole far better. Another thing we can look at is the comparison group. See if they used groups that give a good comparison to what they are trying to find. For example this article is looking for how children do in a single parent household, they should compare it to traditional families not to divorced and remarried families. 

    Anyways those are some ways I have seen that I am able to find the truth. I wish you the best in finding the truth in your lives and hope that you are able to teach it to your families. Till next time!

- Hanna Minson