Can you handle the truth? Or do you prefer the solid ground of facts? Step up to the bar as I explore the intricate dance between these two formidable partners. With each pour, I dissect the essence of absolute truths and the malleability of facts as we journey through their roles in shaping our reality. This spirited discussion traverses the realms of philosophy and science, challenging you my listeners to consider the impact of individual perspectives on our collective quest for understanding.
I am exploring a little more in depth the Sophists, whose art of persuasion echoes through time, reminding us that the truth is often a casualty in the battlefield of rhetoric. We'll look into tales of manipulation and distortion, pondering the difficulty of finding authentic truth in a world awash with information. The conversation draws to a close with a call to forge our own paths towards enlightenment, armed with the tools of critical thinking and open-mindedness. Join me every Sunday night at 7 pm for another enlightening session where we tackle the profound questions at the heart of the human experience.
Can you handle the truth? Or do you prefer the solid ground of facts? Step up to the bar as I explore the intricate dance between these two formidable partners. With each pour, I dissect the essence of absolute truths and the malleability of facts as we journey through their roles in shaping our reality. This spirited discussion traverses the realms of philosophy and science, challenging you my listeners to consider the impact of individual perspectives on our collective quest for understanding.
I am exploring a little more in depth the Sophists, whose art of persuasion echoes through time, reminding us that the truth is often a casualty in the battlefield of rhetoric. We'll look into tales of manipulation and distortion, pondering the difficulty of finding authentic truth in a world awash with information. The conversation draws to a close with a call to forge our own paths towards enlightenment, armed with the tools of critical thinking and open-mindedness. Join me every Sunday night at 7 pm for another enlightening session where we tackle the profound questions at the heart of the human experience.
Hey, welcome to the bartender's perspective. I'm so happy to have you here. Work is done for the day. Pull up a chair, have a seat, I'll pour you a drink. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:
Tonight's podcast is something I've talked about. You know. I've been talking about doing it for a while and I figured it was time. Tonight I want to talk about the age old debate of truth versus fact. I'm going to give some hard definitions of the words truth and the word fact. I'm going to mention some scriptural examples. I'm going to give some examples about facts, what science had to say. You can even talk about a group of Greeks and their version of the truth, if you will. So I've pondered this age old argument for years. I've had many discussions with people about the differences.
Speaker 1:
My perspective is that truth is absolute, while facts will always be able to be changed. Truth has been around since the dawn of time. It has been never ending and always is and it always will be. From the beginning, when man was given knowledge, understanding and wisdom, the facts came to be. Facts come in many forms, whether it be the facts in a case, or the facts in a scientific experiment, or a doctor giving a diagnosis based on the evidence gathered, based on the symptoms or test to the run. In author cases, facts are presented but could change over time depending on the result. Fact is also something you use trial and error in some instances, until you achieve some goal that you set out to do. We'll cover that here in a little bit.
Speaker 1:
So what is truth? The truth is something that squares with reality. It's the quality or state of being true. When you are sworn in to give testimony in a US court of law, you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When you're cutting to the heart of something, you might start a statement with the truth in the matter is, or to tell the truth. When you hear these introductory phrases containing truth, reality is supposed to follow. I had an American comedian, stephen Colbert. He coined the term truthness as a satirical poke at politicians and pundits whose claims often have no basis in reality. Truthness is what you wish were truth, but unconstrained by factor logic.
Speaker 1:
So the Bible. It had quite a bit to say about this word In John, chapter 14, 6,. I am the way, the truth and the life. First, john, chapter 1, verse 8,. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. First Kings 17, verse 24,. Then the woman said to Elijah I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth. And again, john 1, chapter 14,. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We've seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Speaker 1:
In all the scriptural examples, the absolute truth begins with God. There was no debating or discussing or wordplay. There was only the truth and just that. But what did philosophy, what did they have to say about the truth? Philosophy of the truth is more specific.
Speaker 1:
Truth is a property of certain kinds of things, such as sentences, propositions, beliefs, etc. Truth has to be attached to something. Think of what is the nature of the truth as what it is that makes a proposition true, or what sort of things make a belief true. You know, for a specific example, let's say you posted a question, then receive some answers. You know and even accepted one. On a correspondent surface it seems true. You found an answer for your question, but for someone else that they still see, you think, act and old ways, habits, when cases applicable to the question arise in other situations. It's perhaps true that you didn't find an answer for the said question here. There's no inconsistency, though the truth of the same proposition is dependent on different people. Absolute truth, you know, it's a statement that is true at all times and in all places. It is something that is always true, no matter what the circumstances, and it is something that cannot be changed.
Speaker 1:
What about fact? What can we say about the messy world of facts and reasoning? No fact is something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists or about which there is no information. Excuse me, where there is information, no decision will be made until we know all the facts. You know facts about. I don't know all the facts about the case. The fact that I'm not angry that you took my car, it's just the fact that you didn't ask me first. You know for a fact, he knew for a fact that Natalie was lying. It's sometimes hard to separate fact from fiction. The examples you know I just mentioned are just a few. I mean just a few of millions of where facts can take a multitude of turns without ever having reached a conclusion, sometimes, as they will always be changing.
Speaker 1:
But what does science have to say about facts? You know hypothesis. You know simple one a pencil drops because there's a force pulling it down. Hypothesis it's a tentative explanation about an observation that can be tested. It's just a starting point for further investigation. Anyone observation usually comes with an array of hypotheses. If you observe that a swan is white and your hypothesis could be that it's painted or it was bleached by the Sun or its feathers just like pigment, you can then investigate all those hypotheses and come away with one that's most supported by the evidence, if any.
Speaker 1:
What about a theory? You know mass and energy cause space-time to curve and the force of gravity arises from the curvature of space-time. A theory it's an explanation of some aspects of the natural world as well, substantiated by facts, tested hypotheses and laws you quoted above. It's a simplified version of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Newton said the two objects attract based on how massive they are and the distance between them. Einstein, he said this happens because the mass of each object literally distorts the fabric of the universe and the greater the mass, the greater the distortion.
Speaker 1:
Newton's three laws of motion are still considered valid today and are used as the foundation for classical mechanics. These laws describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on them. You know, it's true, y'all they have not been modified, but it's important to note that they're valid within the realm of classical mechanics but do not fully describe the behavior of objects at very high speeds, very small scales, are in the presence of extremely strong gravitational fields. So in these extreme conditions, you know, the laws of motion are incorporated into more comprehensive theories, you know, such as Einstein's theory of relativity. So, through hypothesis and testing, things are worked out to be a fact. But in those two ways hypothesis and theory why you can achieve a fact as a result that facts could inevitably change over time with the introduction of new facts that require more hypotheses and theories to be tested until such time as the original facts change.
Speaker 1:
There are several examples of facts, and we talked about the science around it. This brings me to the social component of truth versus fact. So how about when the truth is not only left out but it's completely distorted from reality? You know, I want to tell you about an ancient group of Greeks. I heard about them in school. They were known as the Sophists. You know and this is their distorted view on the truth you know the Sophists.
Speaker 1:
They were orators, public speakers. You know mouths for hire. You know, in this very verbal culture, that they were gifted with speech-affected communication communicators, if you will. They would later become known as the first rhetoric. They were respected, feared and hated. They had these gifts but they used it in a manner that aroused excuse me, aroused. You know the annoyance of many. You know they challenged, they questioned and they didn't care to arrive at the very best answers. All they cared about was winning public speaking contests, debates, lawsuits and in charging fees to teach others how to do as they did.
Speaker 1:
To be able to speak well meant a great deal at that time. As you know, if there was no paper available, there was no written contracts, deeds, disputes that would be settled with a set of documents as evidence. Back then they would need to be settled through a contest of words One person's words against another. Whoever presented the best oral case would often prevail. To speak well was important. You know, in the Sophists they were very good speakers. They had reputations for being able to convince a whole crowd that up was down, that day was night, that the wrong answer could be the right answer, that good was bad and bad is good, even in injustice. Injustice and justice would be made to appear as injustice.
Speaker 1:
To support one's position in any matter, nothing better could be offered than a quotation from one of the works which told of God's and their actions. If an action of God's could be found that was similar, top that being taken by a party to debate them, then that was the evidence of the correctness of that action. So, yeah, the fastest, most accurate at being able to locate quotations, take them and apply to a given situation, that would often win the debate, the contest, the lawsuits or discussions. The Sophists they reversed in epic tales and poems. You know, knowledge is power and they're not the same. They were able to find the most appropriate quotation to support, well, really any position in regular enured contests, you know, and those who won were given prizes, but no prize was greater than being the victor and able to charge the highest rates of tuition to an individual. They taught, like all these courses, you know how to win, no matter how bad your case is, how to win friends and influences people. Dale Carnegie wrote a book titled that, and I think that's a great question how to succeed in business without really trying. There's so many books out there, youtube channels, etc. Today you know that. Use this sentence how to fall into a pigsty, come out smelling like roses yeah, I couldn't be more to today. How to succeed in life, you know. And how to play to win the Sophists.
Speaker 1:
They held no values other than winning and succeeding. They weren't true believers in the midst of the Greeks but would use references and quotations from the tales for their own purposes. They were secular atheists, relativists and cynical about religious beliefs and all traditions. They believed and taught that might makes right. They were pragmatists, trusting in whatever works to bring about the desired ends, at whatever the cost, I mean. They made a business of their own form of education. It profited off of that in developing skills in rhetoric.
Speaker 1:
In this their concerns were not with the truth but with practical knowledge. Their practice rhetoric in order to persuade and not to discover the truth. The art was to persuade the crowd and not to convince the people of the truth. They moved thought from cosmology and comogyny and theogony, stories of the gods, the universe, to a concern for humanity. Their focus was human civilization and human customs. Their theater. It was ethical and political problems of immediate concern for humans. They put the individual, humans being at the center of all thought and value. They did not hold for any universals, not universal truths, no universal values. They sought and took payment for their lessons of speaking and writing, and only that.
Speaker 1:
So, at the end of the day, the surface had no interest in the truth. They were more concerned about what they could convince you the truth was. I mean, they're the earliest form of lawyers or politicians, if you will. And so just one more example of truth versus fact. I mean, let's say you know a woman is walking down the street and she gets hit by a car. You know the truth or the reality of the situation is she got hit by a car. But then you know you have a witness that saw it, but maybe they weren't wearing their glasses. They're like, yeah, I saw it, but therein it could be flawed and they could possibly become a fact. Or another person came around the corner and saw the person walking down the street and saw the person sitting next to the car. They could assume that that person was hit by a car or maybe they're laying down in front of it. So bring all this to a court of law, it could be argued in all instances that that woman was either hit by a car or was not hit by a car, or there was no evidence to support that, because the person without the glasses couldn't completely see and the other individual who came around the corner and saw the accident, they could assume that the person was hit by a car, but therein they didn't see it. So, as we know, the truth is that individual was hit by the car but sadly, from the perception or facts based on what other people had to say, you know, the truth got twisted, twisted in such a way that if maybe a lawyer could get somebody off the hook.
Speaker 1:
So tonight I've given my perspective that the truth will always be and is absolute to the very core Facts presented, however absolute as they may seem, could remain the same until perhaps, at such time, a new fact that is introduced will then change the previous fact.
Speaker 1:
In this world of endless debate, arguments, you know, scientific experiments, people set out to find the truth, which has always been, but inevitably the truth will always be distorted in some way by the facts. You know I don't have all the answers, no one does I mean. This is just my perspective. This is what I think, but I laid that up to you to decide for yourselves your choice. So, in closing, if you like my podcast, please feel free to tell at least three people about my podcast, if you think they'll get something out of it, and this will help me continue to get my message out there to more people. If you want to support the show, you can visit my website and leave me a tip in the digital tip jar, but unless you want another drink, as always, thank you for stopping in. Here's your check. My regular podcast hours are always every Sunday night at 7 pm, so you can come back and see me then. Have a great night.