When thinking about the perspectives of people around the globe we have already touched on reasons WHY people practice a religion, not a particular religion, but a religion. Today we started the discussion about individual and group perspectives on matters of FACT and TRUTH.
An example of a perception on reality that people held for what was probably all of human history until about 500 years ago was that the Earth was the center of the universe. The main reason people probably thought that is that we have physical evidence of the Sun revolving around the Earth each and every day (not to mention other celestial objects like the Moon!). People thought that it was a known fact that everything revolved around us. It took some clever Mathematical thinking by Copernicus and then the use of some new technology, the telescope, by Galileo to prove the prior notion to be incorrect. With new evidence the world realized that the Earth actually revolves around the sun (Galileo showed that Jupiter had moons that revolved around it).
Today I asked you all to consider other perspectives on the Truth of things. I think we all concluded, through our excellent discussion, that there are many types of "Truths" or "Facts" out there. Examples include:
If two (or more) people agree on a point of fact then for them it is indeed a fact, or the truth.
True Knowledge - irrefutable evidence such as 2 + 2 = 4.
Revealed Truth from sacred scriptures potentially given to people to write down by a god or from a messenger of a god.
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