Say what? There's no such thing as FACT?!?

Question

Where do people GET stuff like this? In a thread earlier this morning about the authorship of the Gospels, someone posted this lil' gem:

"There's no such thing as fact. So are you believing lies as well? You can't prove it and neither can I prove what I believe. We all have faith. Either faith that there is no God or faith that there is. Either or... no such thing as fact."

So . . . that's it, then? We can all just throw science, history, empirical testing, direct observation, and the rest of it out the window, because FACTS DON'T EXIST?

Guess we can chuck logic while we're at it, huh?

Answer 1

Well, it works like this...

Sometimes the people at the kiddie table over hear adults like you and I discuss things like postmodernism...

They think by saying there are no facts they sound like Derrida..

Since they can't EXPLAIN what they mean, we keep them at the kiddie table.

Answer 2

If I could play devil's advocate for just a short while...

First remember that this was posted in reference to the authorship of the Gospels and not the current color of a clear cloudless sky.

There is no direct physical evidence in terms of the people who wrote the Gospels. The oldest known copies were made centuries after the originals had been lost. Is this a fact or is it an item open to debate?

Have you ever read any of the Gospels in their original language or do you read a translation done centuries after they were written? Languages change with time. Is this a fact or do you need to tell me that the Gospels were inspired by Divinity and the translations were as well?

Science once believed that there were only four elements. Is this a fact? History is written by those who survived, not those who were conquered. Is this a fact or just a speculation?

Empirical testing and human observations are often flawed. Is this a fact? Why do eye witnesses often have different stories about the same event?

We tend to see what we want to see. We tend to hear what we want to hear. We tend to believe what fits our current belief system. Is this a fact?

Some people will never agree to the solution of some problems. This is especially true if their realities are very much different. I believe that this is a fact that almost any human can agree with.

Answer 3

Sadly, there's a whole world of people out there who believe that there's no such thing as facts (or true, or right and wrong, etc.).

Worse, believe it or not, there are people who believe that logic itself is simply a cultural concept, and that the rules of logic don't apply in other cultures.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of extreme religious conservatives and extreme academic liberals who are both mistaken on this point. The religious right has abandoned the notion of truth in exchange for Truth, which essentially means "what I already firmly believe on the basis of my religion. At the same time, the academic liberals (the postmodernists LabGrrl mentioned) have abandoned truth for "truth", which essentially means "whatever any identifiable culture holds to be a fact".

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Jeannie (above), respectfully, you're mistaken. We don't have to know something for it to be a fact, nor does it have to be true everywhere. Imagine that I write a series of statements beginning

There are exactly 0 craters on the Moon.
There is exactly 1 crater on the Moon.
There are exactly 2 craters on the Moon.
There are exactly 3 craters on the Moon.
(etc.).

Now, all but one of those statements is false. No-one knows which is the true statement, but exactly one of them is true - exactly one is a fact.

Answer 4

I cringe whenever I hear someone declaring religious and pseudo-scientific issues to be well known facts. Recently a woman argued that "EVERYONE" knows that numerology is a fact.Years ago, I got rid of a friend who declared that something she believed was a "known" fact.For her as for many, the "facts" they cite are used as a means of control. Faith is a feeling; an emotion which does not involve logic.Therefore it can neither be proved or disproved. But you are free to believe what you want, and I'm free not to believe.Have a good day.

Answer 5

~sigh~

Of course there are facts. If you're in the gravitational pull of Earth, and you let go of something, it's not going to float off into space, no matter what, if any, religion, you follow.

There *are* objectively observable things that are consistent.

But there is a whole other area of life that has to do with experiential reality...which can be different for different people..

Religious beliefs fall into that category. The person who wrote what you quoted seems to be of the opinion that there is no difference between the two.

I certainly don't want us to chuck scientific rationalism...

But then, it doesn't threaten my religious beliefs.

Answer 6

Truth is that which has been found from a sound argument to be a logical necessity of a particular system of logic. It was "fact" that the earth was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth according to whom? Science does not proved it only explains.

Answer 7

*bang head on wall* Of course facts exist. We may not always know them, but that doesn't mean they don't exist! God either does or does not exist. The Big Bang either happened or it didn't. Just because we can't currently prove it either way doesn't mean that reality is as confused as we are!

How amazingly self absorbed to think the universe conforms to our outlooks!

Answer 8

In the mind of someone who defines "fact" a something they can change at will, they're making no sense, so yep, some people actually mess around with logic too to fit their agendas. I've run into people with anti-social personality disorders who do this on a regular basis.

_()_

Answer 9

Logic doesn't come into it. The limitations of human knowledge do, and the means by which human beings accumulate something they define as knowledge.

Everything you believe you know was acquired from data passed on to you by another person. Usually you don't even know who that person was, or how the data was acquired, though it's safe to assume it was acquired the same way you acquired it from him/her.

This makes for a fairly shakey basis for anything you call learning, or knowledge.

Just my thought.

Answer 10

If you are seriously interested in the subject you might like to read about Godel's Incompleteness Theorems.

They are statements in mathematics which talk about the limits of logical proof.

Answer 11

Logic? Not acceptable to believers. Reality is what their faith tells them it is, regardless of evidence.