Tracking down the Wikipedia prankster

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Answer to Pilate:

A guy named Pilate once asked a guy named Jesus, "What is truth?" His assumption was that there's no objectively true answer to that question. Well, I'll yield that point to him, but what isn't negotiable is that facts are facts, not matters of opinion. Facts are not determined by majority votes, or even by consensus; something is either a fact or it isn't. For example:

>>>Men evolved from monkeys. True? <<<

That's a non-fact. Nobody ever claimed that men evolved from monkeys. Apes, yes; monkeys, no.

>>>Men were created by God. True? <<<

Too vague. Which god, and by what method? And where's the replicable data to support your claim?

>>>Depends on who you ask.<<<

No, it depends on what actually happened, and you figure that out by examining the data to determine what the replicable evidence supports.
It's not a matter of personal opinion; it's a matter of what actually happened, and no majority gets to impose its opinion on everyone else; only the evidence can do that.

>>>There was a time when it was true that the world was flat.<<<

Yeah, but we took the guys who believed that, and tossed them all over the edge!

>>>Now, it is true that the world is round.<<<

Spheroid, actually. And not because of any majority opinion--we've got the satellite photographs to verify that. Not only that, any geologist can demonstrate that the earth never was flat, even when the vast majority of people believed that it was.

>>>Get the idea? Truth is relative, not absolute.<<<

Claims are either verifiable by physical evidence or else they aren't. If they are, they're facts; if they aren't, they're not.

Posted by: vizenos   Posted on: 12/15/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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