Yesterday, McDuff said:
Quote:
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To regard one’s own view as merely an opinion, leaves one with nothing of importance. Everyone has opinions. The trick is to know the difference between what is opinion and what is objective truth.
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The problem I have with this is that any claim to knowing "objective truth" is based on the knower's filters and biases.
No matter how much you think you are simply reading the words, you have a base of experience, environment, learning, prejudice, etc., that colors even simple sentences. This is your "lens." When you read, you understand certain kinds of statements as building up or tearing down based on your lens.
Listen to the kinds of things that are said in the political arena and the responses to them. Someone makes a reference to true equality for everyone and the response is filtered through the listener and their thoughts about the speaker. One side hears "equal opportunity" as meaning "leveling the playing field (positively)" if said by one person but "putting the minority down" if said by the other. Another listener hears "giving unequal preferences (not equality) based on the inequality of long-past times" if said by one person, and "truly equal opportunity in which the discriminator is only merit and ability" if said by the other.
So you read a phrase in the Bible. Jesus said it. He is speaking about the Pharisees. Is he simply describing the state of affairs? Or is he condemning them with colorful metaphors? Sometimes it is obvious. Others not so much. Or He says "don't call your brother a fool." Is that exactly what he said? Do we really understand the passage? Are we prepared to declare that those who do so in any way shape or form are simply going to Hell? And excommunicating those who think it is more of a statement warning of false statements against a brother (one of many variations on how to understand this that I have heard over the years)?
You think that it is simply obvious and we should know how to figure it out?
Well, the way to figure that out is two-fold. First, you don't do it by yourself. You consider it carefully with several (or more like many) others. And second, once you have come to your conclusion, you don't declare it to be the right one and everyone else's to be an opinion, with the tack-on declaration that opinions are something to be despised. (BTW, for someone who doesn't seem to think much of Lee, you really bought into his take on opinions. According to Lee, whatever he said was the truth and everything else was an opinion. Something to avoid like the plague.)