Friday, August 05, 2011

Telling the Truth II: Truth and Fact

From my son Pete Hanson's Facebook wall:

Paul Berczyk responded (8/4/11) to my comment about the Bible's contradictions: "Hmm, I dont think you can get any truer than facts. I mean, facts are facts. The bible used to be looked at as an encyclopedia or a textbook. As people became more educated with modern science they started questioning it. Answers like the one you just gave explained nothing except that you don't have an answer for the questions. The Christian religion wasn't taught the way you are talking until people started questioning. In fact it still isn't. No matter what our beliefs are the more educated society gets Christianity needs to come up with some better answers than that to exist."

I wrote: "You can get truer than fact. To think otherwise, means you have let the fundamentalists set the agenda. The "facts" of the Bible, however they are presented, are the "stage" on which humanity's relationship with God happens, not the relationship itself. As in human relationships, the God/Human relationship cannot be quantified and squeezed into "facts" --whatever they are. Faith is more like poetry or a symphony. Both are often truer than the reality they describe. So, the "more educated society gets" the better it should be able to see truth in that relationship, and not be bound to the single level of the so-called "modern" interpretation of what is fact and what is truth." (115 words)

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