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Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.\n\xa0\nS4E27 TRANSCRIPT:\n\xa0\n----more----\n\xa0\nMark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark,\nYucca: And I'm Yucca.\nMark: and today we're talking about truth and reality.\nYucca: Yes. So, there's a lot to talk about here.\nMark: There is, there is, and that's, that's why we chose this topic, right? Because a lot of the places where we come into friction with other parts of the pagan community, and certainly friction with other religious perspectives other than atheism, is in the question of what is real and what is true, right?\nYucca: hmm. Mm\nMark: And I think what I want to start out with... The problem is that we have terrible language for this stuff.\nYucca: hmm.\nMark: Very imprecise language that uses one word to describe a lot of different things.\nYucca: Right. I want to start also with with a little story from something my father used to say when I was little. And I don't know where he got it from, but when he would tell a story, and I would ask him, I'd say, Dad, is this a true story? He would say, Yes. The events didn't happen. But this is a true story.\nMark: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, like fables,\nYucca: The\nMark: Fables that illustrate moral principles. The moral principles may be something that we want to subscribe to, but that doesn't mean that the story about the chicken that was afraid that guy\nYucca: sky was falling, or that nobody would help her make bread, or... Oh, there's a lot of chicken ones.\nMark: are there?\nYucca: Yeah, right?\nMark: You would know more than me.\xa0\nYucca: But, so, when we say that word true, It can mean so many different things, right? Sometimes we mean it as, is it correct as in, you know, a mathematical problem, right? Is 2 plus 2 equals 5? Is that true or not, right? But we can also mean, is it true in that more, does it have importance, does it have meaning?\nSo,\nMark: or even in very broad philosophical senses, like, is it true that supply side trickle down economics benefits everyone in the society? And some people will say yes, that's true. I think the evidence is that it does not, but ultimately it comes down to what you believe and what your, what the underpinnings of that belief are, what your philosophies are, right? So when I see Truth. I used to just mean the objectively factual, the verifiable, right?\nYucca: right, so sort of like a positivist approach to truth, right? So what is real can be verified empirically, and the best approach to find it is the scientific method. Right? That would be our positivism, yeah.\nMark: that is true of phenomena in the objective universe outside of our skins. The earth is round ish, it's not flat. Doesn't matter what you believe about it, it's still round ish and not flat, right? We have overwhelming evidence that this is the case. And so, it's not 100% sure, because nothing in science is ever 100% sure, but there's so much evidence that it's not considered an open question at this point.\nIt's considered settled science. It's a fact, right? But when you get to truths like... Justice and morality and good. There are truths in there too, but they're much more rooted in the philosophy and belief system of the person that's expressing them in the culture that they grew up in\nYucca: Mhm.\nMark: than it is about something that can be measured and factually checked. against other alternatives, right?\nYucca: Right. And while we're giving things labels that would be more of a constructivist philosophical approach, right? That those beliefs are constructed from the society that you're part of and your experience and your species and that all of those things are building on each other to create reality or to create truth.\nMark: Right, right. Your, your familial ideological context, all of those, all of those things accrete to form something that more or less hangs together as a, as a philosophical belief system, right? So, that I think i