The Dunmow Flinch, Or, Bringing Home The Bacon

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The Iconoclast

‹‹ Not Both The Same

Richard Dawkins, Or, The Credulous Skeptic ››

Friday, 30 November 2007

The Dunmow Flinch, Or, Bringing Home The Bacon

Hugh, you say: "And we all thought it was just jesting Pilate who said 'there is no such thing as truth.' "

However Pilate's words were "What is truth?" Pilate was responding to Jesus' words "You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice."

There is no indication that Pilate took this issue in a jesting manner. Neither should we. --from a reader

My comment on Pilate relied on a recognition of a line that begins an essay by Francis Bacon: "What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." I took the "jesting," and then played fast and loose with the truth of "what is truth," changing it to "there is no such thing as the truth" to update it to these academic days and daze, when some teach that "there is no such thing as the truth" which is, like (gender, race, your-most-troubling-category here) is "socially constructed" or "constructed" in some other way, but most definitely isn't there to be found, located, arrived at, and then held up for inspection, tested and re-tested for its efficacy in explaining both the data already collected, and data that will be collected in the future.

Just a joke, by a jesting pilot, in my little Cessna that for some reason never gets off the ground. Possibly I'll have to re-attach a wing, or two.

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Posted on 11/30/2007 10:40 AM by Hugh Fitzgerald

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Comments

30 Nov 2007

Mary Jackson
A bit hammy.

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