RE: Truth and Facts are not the same thing. This is something many of us may be unaware of. Thank you education system... /s
Hang on a minute. Truth is not relative. By saying that truth is relative then you are giving everyone's right to do whatever they want due to their different perceptions of truth. If truth for me is to kill 10.000 people to bring progress to the world throughout a revolution then that should be allowed cuz it's my own truth.
At the first moment, one says truth is relative you are contradicting yourself by saying that the truth (an absolute truth) IS relative.
Facts are the way we corroborate that truth exists. Perceptions have nothing related to truth, it is more related to reality and how people see it.
TRUTH just goes beyond human understanding, there are things that are already established in the universe that we humans cannot understand why those things are the way they are and that's called truth.
I would have argued the same thing, but @dwinblood makes a good point about perception. The facts are reality. Someone with perfect perception and integrity would know the absolute truth - but no one has perfect perception and integrity.
Necessarily, because we are imperfect perceivers, and less than perfectly honest about what we perceive to ourselves, we must have a subjective truth, each and all.
This does not mean we are lying. Merely that we each and all are incapable of knowing the absolute factual reality, and thus each of us knows an actual different truth that we perceive to be reality.
We cannot claim to know the absolute truth, and thus must, if we are honest, acknowledge that other's truths are necessarily different than ours. Facts remain obectively real, yet we must perforce disagree - at least in part - honestly about what the facts are.
Factual reality, this absolute truth you speak of that none of us mere humans can attain, is objectively real. We mere humans can only approach that reality more or less closely, dependent on our subjective experience.
While your truth may be that you should kill 10k people, that does not mean we need to agree with you, nor allow you to do so. People can reason and discuss from their disparate viewpoints, and come to accommodations mutually acceptable. Preferably that do not involve killing people.
That ability to reason and accommodate is what separates us from psychopaths. How many times have you acknowledged that someone whose viewpoint differed from your own had a point, because you understood a point they made that changed what you thought of as truth?
There you have it, Truth and reality are different sides of a coin. Man can't see the truth. We can only have a perception of what we might think it is.
Just by claiming that truth is relative we could cause harm to our society if everyone has a truth, automatically everyone is right, therefore concepts such as good or evil would be extremely relative.
There are universal concepts that goes beyond human understanding.
2 + 2 = 4, that's truth.
Gravity is truth.
Yes, you are right, but we could try to reach it we must follow towards the absolute truth because it is there and we know because of the Facts that absolute truth is real. If facts wouldn't exist, the absolute truth wouldn't exist too. Facts are the tools we use to ascertain that truth exists and we can reach it somehow.
This is incorrect.
Someone says to you "Tell the truth".
You tell the facts plus your perception of those facts. It has everything to do with perception, experiential knowledge, and opinion.
It is wrong to treat facts and truth as synonyms. That is incorrect. It is how people are taught these days but it is wrong.
You and I standing next to each other looking at the same thing will have different TRUTHS about that thing. The details in our truth will be based upon our knowledge, our experiences, our imagination/speculation/opinion, but it will also be different due to the slightly different viewing angle.
Truth and Facts are different.
There is indeed likely an absolute TRUTH and at that point TRUTH and FACTS would intersect but it would require an omnipresent ability to view every detail and from every angle. It is not humanly possible.
This is not a bad thing.
It is an opportunity.
People who believe their truth is the absolute truth are just arrogant, but woefully incorrect.
No. It is saying that your perception of truth may seem accurate to you. That doesn't mean it is.
In fact, it likely is wrong somewhere. :) Lots of details. We are not omniscient Gods.