{"id":33,"date":"2012-08-22T12:52:47","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T16:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skepticblogs.com\/dangeroustalk\/?p=33"},"modified":"2012-08-22T12:52:47","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T16:52:47","slug":"anyone-can-assert-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/2012\/08\/22\/anyone-can-assert-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Anyone Can Assert Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me tell you a true story. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was star wars. First there was a massive clone war and then there was a rebellion against a galactic empire. Just because I have no evidence for this, doesn\u2019t mean that it didn\u2019t happen. In fact, you can\u2019t prove that it didn\u2019t happen. I derived this knowledge from revelation, which is an alternative means of knowledge to science, which requires objective evidence. But it is equally valid, right?<\/p>\n

Let me tell you another one. I won the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge last night in a poker game. The problem is that I live in Pennsylvania and have no desire to move to New York right now and I need some quick cash to put a new roof on my house so I\u2019m selling the deed to the Brooklyn Bridge dirt cheap. I\u2019ll sell it to you for a fraction of what it\u2019s worth. I\u2019ll sell it to you for $5000 right now. It is worth 5 million easy. You\u2019d be a fool to pass this deal up. You don\u2019t believe me? This is the truth, why won\u2019t you buy it? Oh, you want evidence? Just take my truth on faith. That is a different kind of knowledge, equally as valuable as scientific evidence?<\/p>\n

The fact is that revelation and faith aren\u2019t different ways of deriving truth; it is just a way of asserting truth. Anyone can claim something is true, but being able to demonstrate that it actually is true requires evidence. Just because there is no evidence don\u2019t mean that something isn\u2019t true. You can\u2019t prove that Star Wars didn\u2019t happen in a galaxy far, far away. But we can\u2019t call it knowledge. We can only claim knowledge when we have sufficiently valid evidence for a claim and can objectively show that something actually is true with relative certainty.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it interesting that religious believers don\u2019t believe anything on faith alone except for their particular religious claims. Don\u2019t take my word for it; try to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge. Why are religious believers just as skeptical about other people\u2019s religions and about matters involving money and the world we live in, but when it comes to their own religion, faith suddenly becomes an alternative and equally valid way of deriving truth?<\/p>\n

The real truth here is that religion is just as much of a scam as my deed to the Brooklyn Bridge. Until religious believers can back up their faith based assertions, there is no reason why anyone should believe anything they have to say.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me tell you a true story. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was star…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,17,22],"tags":[38,62,65,84,1055,1071,1056],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-religion","category-truth","tag-atheism","tag-evidence","tag-faith-2","tag-knowledge","tag-religion","tag-star-wars","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/dangeroustalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}