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  • Writer's pictureJim Khong

What is truth?

Updated: Dec 26, 2022

We keeping hearing that we are in the post-truth society. It seems a certainty but 'truth' is never defined. I would like to explore how truth differs from facts and what it means in our lives.



Is it possible to learn a truth from something that is not true? Or an event or someone who didn't exist? I would like to think that most of us have exalted learning so much that we would say yes. Yes, we can always learn something from anything if we were to look hard enough. But some will be puzzled.

Do you believe this story?

Do we all think, for instance, that 'slow and steady' sometimes win the race? If we do, do we believe that a tortoise and a hare had a race, which the tortoise won by being slow and steady? The lesson of being 'slow and steady' is separate from the story of the tortoise and the hare, which is actually the vehicle by which the lesson is brought to us. The lesson is the truth of the non-factual variety whereas whether the story actually happened is verifiable by analysis of the facts.


At this point, I would ask that we put aside the philosophical and etymological understanding of truth. I am making the distinction in order to illustrate the difference between two concepts, for which the English language does not seem to have separate words that clearly distinguish them apart without connotations that colour the concepts I would like to put across. Put it under poetic license.

Facts and truth differs, even though we tend to use the two terms interchangeably. Facts can be evidenced through our five senses or reasoned out from such information. They can be proved or disproved in an objective way, or at least, objectively if you understand the separation between facts and truth. Facts may not change but our understanding of the facts may change, because new facts are uncovered or because new reflections or research linked two previously-thought unrelated facts to give rise to a new understanding.

Facts include evidence presented to court for a judgement or factors considered (or should be considered) when evaluating options or tenders or the like. They all require a certain level of certainty before they can be regarded as facts. Scientific facts, as understood in the scientific method, need to be proven to a different level of certainty before it can be accepted by the scientific community - ranging from 95% certainty (meaning that only 1 in 20 possibility it is a fluke event) in social science up to 1 in 2 million possibility of a fluke event in particle physics - a much much much higher level of certainty than is required for a gossip to be a conversation piece. Truth on the other hand is something that informs how we are to relate to the universe around us. It tells us what we should do. It could based on facts or it may not - it could emerge from just our reflections, with no connection with the physical world. Truth may be personal to each person in that it is aimed at an individual's relation to the universe, but almost all truth are same or similar in almost all persons because of the shared values and worldview of people in the same community. In itself, there is no right or wrong in a truth as it is personal but the environment (eg., the society and value systems in which the truth is expected to acted upon) may make an individual's action required by a particular truth to be undesirable.

Father sharing a truth with son

Truth can include personal self improvements (eg., Stephen Covey 7 habits), some insightful lessons from your dad/counsellor/priest moral/ethical advice and religious doctrines. These truths are contextual to the person - depending on the background, the reason & situation where the truth is to be applied, and most fundamentally, the person themselves. They are often derived from stories - factual, legends (sometimes a mix between the two with little distinction), personal sharing or any other source. Whether the source is grounded in fact or not is irrelevant to the validity of the guidance as the intention is not to arrive at a verifiable assessment of the facts but to guide the person in their action (which hopefully will also benefit the wider society).

Greek god Zeus

As an interesting note, the word mythos in Classical Greek originally did not connote factuality or otherwise. It is just a narrative. So, Greek mythology was really Greek stories, which can be true or false. It is a later use of the word that imply a factual falsehood in the narrative and it is with this later meaning the word myth was imported into the English language. Really, we don't think that when Greeks told each other their stories, they were knowingly and actively propagating a falsehood, do we? Facts and truth inhabit different realms. They both have different objectives and have different roles in human societies. Today, people generally use 'truths' and 'facts' interchangeably, which rather confuses the two separate concepts. As a result, we have contentious conflicts like science vs religion and the 'post-truth world'.

Allegories and fables used to teach us some truths (like those in tortoise and the hare) often have no basis in facts, but we do not hesitate to accept the veracity of the lesson taught. Likewise, moral teachings in religious scriptures are often similarly accepted even if the stories that convey them may sound fanciful - though sometimes accepted very grudgingly by some quarter. Somehow, some quarters seem to require a higher level factual origin from doctrines which gives direction to a person's need for guidance in their personal lives from the same scriptural source. In some cases, the focus on truth in religion (as opposed to facts) led to the reinterpretation by religionists of the factual basis for the stories used as a vehicle of the truths, in a way to better illustrate the truth it seek to convey. With the de-emphasising or retelling of the factual part of the story, the mythical part of the story emerged. While people of old would not be too bothered with the mythical nature of the stories, the modern scientific world seems to be concerned about the insufficiency of factual content in the myths used to convey religious truths. It does not help that some of these truths relate to the metaphysical nature of the divinity which most religionists agree is necessary to authenticate the moral truths, which doesn't sit well with some quarters unable or unwilling to recognise the separate realms of religion (religious truths) and science (facts).

The infamous Right Reverend David Jenkins, Bishop of Durham

In Christianity there was an approach in mid 20th century called demythologisation pioneered by Lutheran theologian Bultman, to strip the Bible of its mythologies so as focus on the truths. This was probably a reaction against the confusion among Christians with a science-based education seeking to understand non-factual myths. I think demythologisation found its most infamous proponent in David Jenkins, the Anglican Bishop of Durham 1984-94 who preached as bishop that the resurrection of Jesus may not have been a physical event or that Mary may not have been a virgin when she bore the baby Jesus (apparently at his Easter and Christmas sermons respectively). My personal view as a Christian accepts the idea of accretion of myths as early Jews & Christians seek to better illustrate (and later adorn) their religious values with myths, which if stripped away, reduces the Judea-Christian tradition to a set of moral teachings necessary to guide a society and individuals on how to organise their lives. When it comes to that, Christianity has become independent of the factual person of Christ. Would a Christian still be a Christian without Christ? I think it would be entirely possible for a person to continue to identify as a Christian even if it is conclusively proven that the historical Jesus never existed. However, I do think the current scholarship renders such a hypothesis that Jesus very weak and very difficult to prove. To the chagrin of some of the more militant scientific atheists.

The Flat Earth Society does exist

This confusion of course works both ways. Mistaking truths as facts can lead to superstitions. People has always felt a need linked superstitions to an observation of nature, which are often tenuous or grounded in intentionality bias. In a modern society which exalts scientific logic, such justifications became more convoluted to the point they can be considered pseudo-science. If you think scientific evidence is cast iron, take a look at arguments from the Flat Earth Society against every evidence for round earth that we get in our school textbooks.

Religionists who regard scriptural myths as facts often have a literalist reading of religious scriptures, imbuing their scriptures with supernatural origins which many of such scriptures do not seem to claim for themselves, especially when read within the context of the historical human authors. Sometimes, these imputed notions are dressed up with its own myths, but the resulting origin stories for these scriptures often cannot be verified by historical evidence. Sometimes, there even seem to be a retrospective application of myths to justify the origin story. Ultimately, if you do not read a mathematics book to learn about geography, neither do you read a book on religion to learn about science.

The QAnon shaman

The idea of a 'post-truth' world is probably more aptly called 'post-fact' world if the intention is to describe a world where people do have a disdain for using facts as a basis for their conclusions. This disdain is more a result of disempowerment rather than a lack of education. There was a time when every person understand how everything around them works, including the tools for work or daily living. If their plough breaks down, they know why it is broken and how to fix it (notwithstanding that they may not have the skills or the appropriate tools to do so). In today's complex modern world, most of us use daily tools without a thought for how they work. How many of us understand even the basic concept of the internal combustion engine when we drive our cars, much less each of component that makes the car go? We just trust our safety with it. If the car breaks down, there is no way we would personally know how to make it work again, sometimes requiring several teams of people to repair it.

Not everyone is that comfortable, though. Some people are uncomfortable with their lack of understanding of and control over how things works. They sometimes construct hypotheses to explain to themselves the workings of nature and the world around them and often view with suspicions the institutions that attempt to explain the technology in scientific terms. Justifications are often riddled with confirmation bias(the selective application of only those evidence that supports one's position) and when their views are coupled with intentionality bias (seeing an intention by design behind random events), conspiracy theories arise.

Did God create science? Did God use science to create the universe? Did Science create God? or only science exist and no God

We have to get used to the idea that truth is not necessarily only of the factual variety. Not appreciating the distinction of the varieties in minds of people, whether they themselves are aware of it or not, does not serve us well in dealing with problems in modern societies today. And religion and science will never complement each other, as I think they need to be.

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