How Do You Evaluate What You See On The Internet?

A good example of the dangers of the internet is Ted Gunderson. On first examination he seems an important source in the various conspiracies that seem to plague our great nation. Gunderson has impressive credentials. He is a former FBI agent. But more than that, he was bureau chief at Los Angeles. He was also special agent in charge of the Memphis and Dallas divisions of the FBI. I will let him speak with his own words at the end of this blog post, but basically he thinks that most terrorist acts are done by the US government. Gunderson periodically makes the rounds on various websites and public access TV shows.

Gustavo Arellano comments on Gunderson:

A couple of years later, Gunderson announced to the world he had found the much-mythologized tunnels that played a key role in the McMartin preschool trial scandal. Unsurprisingly, no one believed him. Over the years, he has also stated that the United States government intentionally bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City federal building in April 1995, in order to remove our rights through anti-terrorism bills, that tens of thousands of children are kidnapped yearly for purposes ranging from organ harvesting to prostitution to literal sacrificial lambs for Satanists, and that the Illuminati rules the United States government.

While Arellano has an agenda, the Wiki article on Gunderson has much of the same information. 

Gunderson reminds me of a man who used to attend church with me. The first time I met him he wore long robes. He interrupted an evangelism meeting, but he was ignored. He too had great credentials, in his case scientific ones. He had some great stories. I bet you do not know the details of the secret air base, famous in UFO folklore, “Area 51.” He did. He talked about the time he met Mikael Gorbachev and had a long private conversation with him. Or how he had just returned from a trip to the moon—we have a secret moon base there. He was convinced that the Book of Mormon had some truth in it. Eventually he quit attending as he felt that the members were making fun of him. I regard him as a friend, but, do I have to say it, he “has issues.”

Ted Gunderson has issues.

I think we need to evaluate our templates, the assumptions we have about the world. We need to step aside from these assumptions and evaluate the information we have without these filters.

This is quite different than the post I originally had in mind. Why don't people do their research?????