It is sometimes easy to be confused by the difference between:
What we call things
and
What they "are".
I'll give an example.
If I make the statement:
Only possible things happen....
I've noticed there are those who will immediately argue with me. The argument will go like this.
"There are plenty of things we think are not possible and they happen anyway."
See what I mean? Confusing perception with reality is my point.
There is an IS-ness to things which is impervious to opinion. We, on some fundamental and mentally healthy level, understand this to be true.
But, not everybody does.
If you don't see that footstool in the dark, it can still trip you on your way to the bathroom.
The car that runs the redlight can still T-bone you.
What you don't see (and can't know) will still bite you on the butt.
Perception of reality is not reality itself.
Yet, only possible things happen. It still bothers some people.
Let's go a step farther, shall we?
We can divide states of "knowing" into steps.
1.Hearsay of mere opinion is one step.
Rumor. Gossip. Urban Legend. The "buzz" on the street. "They say..." "I hear..."
That first step is contagious. But, it may not be the communication of actual information.
2.The second step is informed opinion.
Those who take the trouble to investigate, become students, receive training and accreditation and who measure and quantify inform their opinions. They have a basis on which to build opinion which is detailed.
3.Consensus opinion is the third step.
Consensus brings together (optimally) divergent viewpoints to distill, examine and test. While still opinion, consensus is exposed to more skepticism and compromise than mere opinion or the views of one person who may have prejudices.
4. Data or Fact.
What makes Data or Fact different from the above steps 1--3 is that no compromise is necessary. An established Fact can be tested by anybody anywhere without regard to their natural inclinations or interests.
When people confuse Facts with Opinions they do themselves and their intelligence a huge disfavor. Why? Think of Opinion as a new drug on the market.
Opinions can offer all sorts of wonderous and mysterious claims. Testimonials can pour in to support the view. But, hard and fast testing is absent. Citing only successes and filtering out failures can prove to be deadly or harmful.
Let's take claims about God as an example.
The various Holy Books state opinions as though they were Facts or Data.
When people consider the vast amount of public support (consensus) it is easy to sway them toward accepting the claims of these Holy Books.
Mormons are swayed by the Book of Mormon. Muslims are swayed by the Koran. Christians are swayed by the Bible. And so on.
Yet, one on one, it is mere opinion, informed opinion and consensus not Fact which become confused in religion and claims about God.
How so?
Words!
When we confuse words about things with the things themselves our distortion commences!
We can have words describing things which are entirely fictitious, as an example.
UNICORN.
That is a word which describes a mythical animal that looks like a horse and has one horn in the middle of its forehead.
The King James Bible has instances of using the word UNICORN. This was enough to convince naive persons reading said holy book that these creatures were REAL. The myth was given a kind of supra-reality because of the Bible's seeming endorsement.
Yet, we now know it was merely the odd word choice by translators and not the actual beast with one horn. The idea of a UNICORN was certainly real enough in the mind of the well-educated (for their day!) translation committee. They erred and transmitted the error into the general bible reading population.
Take another word: SPIRIT.
Primitive people noticed that a person's breath left their body invisibly upon death. It was logically assumed (yet wrongly) that what left the body never to return was LIFE ITSELF!
This spawned the concept that the SPIRIT (breath) was your essential self. Various religious ideas became attached over time. The doctrine slowly evolved of what man's SPIRIT was.
In Eden, Adam became a living creature only because God had breathed that pesky and elusive breath (spirit) into him.
The breath became a doctrine all because a semi-logical connection was made and a story built up around this opinion caught on.
Today the word SPIRIT has many connotations equally mysterious, ethereal and insubstantial. When we hear the word spoken it can mean whatever we want it to mean. It is like silly putty.
Back to my main point...
Confusing a word or an idea with the thing it represents is man's trickiest flaw. It is so easily misleading!
Why? Because we love to label everything! It makes it easy to keep track.
But--WARNING! WARNING! DANGER!! DANGER!!
Once we label something, we stop actually thinking about it. We stop actively deciding. We stop analyzing. We cease skeptical enquiry.
What conclusion should we draw?
Be very careful about your words. Be very careful about your definitions. Be very careful about your labels. Once you put them in place: you are stuck with them.
Ask yourself these questions:
1.How much of what I think I know is opinion only?
2.How many key words that make up my world view are really bad lables?
3.When is the last time I re-examined my fundamental premises about things?
These are key questions!
Start by defining:
JUSTICE
TRUTH
SPIRIT
LIFE
EVIL
PURPOSE
You may have fictitious definitions! You may have wrong notions and bad labels!
Just as one example.
Take JUSTICE. I define JUSTICE this way: "Justice is getting what you deserve. This means not getting what you don't deserve as well as getting what you do."
This is why the religious idea of "UN-merited favor" or Grace is ridiculous. It violates JUSTICE. The guilty don't pay and the innocent do. It turns fairness and balance and such upside down.
See what I mean?
Redefining a word can change your world view and destroy even the most enormously erected consensus there is.
NEVER CONFUSE A WORD with the thing it describes. It might not even exist in the first place.