Josh wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 8:58 pm
But I think there's a deep skepticism that facts exist at all.
I think absolute truth exists and is embodied in Jesus, the Logos. I also think “facts” exist as a subset of this.
I agree with you about truth from a biblical perspective. But I think the Bible also talks about false witness and gossip where it is talking about a much more mundane kind of truth. If you search for "fact" in the Bible, you find things like this:
They told him, “Joseph is still alive! In fact, he is ruler of all Egypt.” Jacob was stunned; he did not believe them.
When that year was over, they came to him the following year and said, “We cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except our bodies and our land.
Now if it pleases the king, let a search be made in the royal archives of Babylon to see if King Cyrus did in fact issue a decree to rebuild this house of God in Jerusalem. Then let the king send us his decision in this matter.
That kind of fact matters too. And if there is any question, we need evidence - for instance, by searching the royal archives of Babylon.
For much of what we discuss here, "facts" are things like this: What did a report say? What evidence did they give? Was someone found guilty or not? What did the Supreme Court decide? How many deaths were reported? How were these deaths tallied and corroborated? How do experts in various fields reach their conclusions?
Jesus didn't tell us the answer to these things.
Josh wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 8:58 pmI am sceptical of fact gatekeepers - people like Paul Graham, who inform me that a man can turn into a woman and two men can be married, but also claim God doesn’t exist. I don’t trust someone like that to figure out any “facts” since they have rejected truth itself. (This isn’t meant to pick on pg, but his stances on these things are public knowledge.)
His basic point is that name calling and ad hominem attacks crowd out the kind of conversation that lets us actually start to understand facts together. Whatever he says about other things in other places, that basic point rings true to me.
And what on earth is a "fact gatekeeper"? Can't we each search for facts? Nobody is stopping anyone from doing that. Of course, in most political discourse, facts are scarce. Not because some gatekeeper prevents us from looking for them, but because repeating talking points and accusing the other side is so much easier than thinking for ourselves. If we choose not to do that, it isn't Paul Graham's fault.
I guess I think that people who spend a lot of time on name calling and ad hominem attacks are rejecting truth in a different way. And making it hard to do truth in our conversations. By doing things I think the Bible teaches us not to do. By flooding out discussion of facts with emotional heckling.
Is it biblical? Is it Christlike? Is it loving? Is it true? How can I find out?