Are Facts Different from Opinions and Does It Matter?

Some astronauts have commented that they couldn’t see political boundaries from space, but saw the earth as on unified globe. Could that be true? Is the earth one unified globe? Naw! I mean the French and Iranians and Chinese, you mean they’re our fellow passengers on planet earth – the same as white, American, protestant, Southern Republican Christians? No way! When we finally destroy the planet’s ability to sustain us, will they die out same as us? Of course the white, American, protestant, Southern Republican Christians will be raptured and so have nothing to worry about.

Not so long ago, people thought the earth was flat – many still do, probably the ones who don’t believe in evolution, simply because it looked that way. But the evidence presented to the senses, which is still the same now, conflicted with the evidence presented by intelligence. Indeed, the whole of human progress and the process of science is the process of taking the evidence of intelligence over the evidence of the senses. It’s the realization that intelligence is more reliable than what might appear true from the limited perspective of habitual human perception.

Unfortunately, the realization that intelligence is more reliable than what might appear true from the limited perspective of habitual human perception, is happening less and less in the USA and even the idea that there is such a thing as facts, science and intelligence that transcends human prejudice and habitual perception is under attack.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” It’s possible to function as a society and preserve the planet and have competing worldviews; it is not possible to function as a society and preserve the planet with a lack of agreement on what is provably, objectively true and what is not.

“Political polarization,” Eugene Robinson says, “is old hat. Empirical polarization – a rejection of this nation’s founding Enlightenment principles – something new. The vast majority of scientists look dispassionately at the data and conclude that atmospheric warming and climate change are real. Deniers don’t produce data of their own, they just say no, no, no – and attack the scientists’ political views, rather than their research.”

Are Americans really deciding there’s no difference between fact and opinions? Seems like we are; and if we are, we are surely doomed as a nation and probably the world along with us.