by Karim Jessa

Created on: August 16, 2011

Truth is belief, and belief truth.

I realize how shocking it must be to be told that truth is nothing more or less than belief, and that belief is truth.

But it's very simple really. If you will only agree to look at the matter calmly this can be easily demonstrated. It's important to remain calm, as we said, because if you are already up in arms over the issue no progress can be made.

We'll begin, then, with something very basic; too obvious to deserve mention. And that is, truth is not synonymous with fact. Is that obvious enough or not? When you seek the truth, you do not reach for the nearest encyclopedia to find it.

This leads to the second step in the argument. True and truth are not the same thing. It will probably seem like we're bent on delivering one shock after another. Again, however, we will insist that this is quite obvious if you look at it in a reasonable manner.

We can say, as we all do, that the Earth is round. In other words, it is true that the Earth is round. But that is not the truth. If it was, the matter would have long been closed. But it is still open, which means that the truth still hasn't been decided upon, which means that all true facts put together still do not amount to the truth.

So, unless there is still some contention in the matter, we can safely agree upon this much, that facts may be true, but truth is not facts. And, truth may turn out to be true, but true things are not the truth. True, in this case, would be synonymous with fact. That is to say, facts are true, and true things are facts.

We are intentionally dragging this out and stating the matter in different ways so as to make sure that there is no doubt in your mind. If there are doubts, they will prevent you from seeing something that is quite elementary.

Moving on, we can pick on certain "truths" as examples. Here we put the word truth into quotation marks to indicate that every truth which is held to be the truth by some party, will be contradicted by another party.

For example, a theist holds it to be the truth that god exists. An atheist, needless to say, holds otherwise. A Christian holds it to be the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. A Muslim will hold it to be the truth that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. And the examples proliferate.

Now, before there is a hue and cry raised over this simplistic approach, we shall specify that this is a fallacy of sorts. This is similar to the protest Socrates used to raise whenever someone mentioned specific virtues

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