ThirstyFish

Visiting 'wishers' throw coins into this Pergamon well-like structure. Its Roman use is not known.

I had posted this contemptible Arthur Bullard quote a few days ago: "Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms ... There is nothing in experience to tell us one is always preferable to the other ... The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if is true or false". So, does truth matter? Is the value of an idea simply in its ability to inspire?

In the 19th century, British Reformed preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote: "Everywhere there is apathy. Nobody cares whether that which is preached is true or false. A sermon is a sermon whatever the subject; only, the shorter it is the better". In his essay, Does Truth Matter? Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization, Carl Sagan wrote: "Pseudoscience is easier to contrive than science because distracting confrontations with reality - where we cannot control the outcome of the comparison - are more readily avoided". Can you imagine, both Religion and Science are complaining about the same thing, i.e. the deviation from truth, from reality; Although, their definitions of "truth" differ slightly, are they outright wrong?

"There is nothing in experience to tell us one is always preferable to the other". Yes there is! If you are given a bad map, and because of it, you end up falling in a ditch and dying, a "true" map would have been "more preferable". When it comes to "real things", truth matters a lot. The more difficult question to ponder is, "Does the force of an 'idea' lie in its inspirational value"? Take for example, apartheid South Africa. Granted, I'm simplifying it, but the idea there was, "white race is superior". I'm sure that some white folks there might have found that idea to be "inspirational", but it just turned out to be yet another ugly chapter in human history. And, many continue to insist that "freedom" is just an idea. It is not! Inherently universal "ideas", embedded deep in the human soul, are not ideas at all, but fundamental "truths". So, despite the efforts of propagandists like Arthur Bullard, who try to turn us away from The Truth using clever words, there is plenty to tell us that truth is "always" preferable to to falsehood.