A Factless World

A factless world. 

I was following a thread the other day on Face Book that ended up being a back and forth discussion about a particular controversial subject. 

One person kept stating that her thoughts were her opinion, and that they seemed to hold weight over any factual evidence. I found it interesting at how many times I see this in our culture, and wondered when this became the norm?

According to Merriam-Webster the definition of fact is, "a piece of information presented as having objective reality." When I think about facts I think about something having proof, or having been researched over a period of time concluding in actual evidence.  

On the other hand, the same dictionary defines opinion as, "a belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge." I couldn't help but think that the comments made about the writer's opinion were not necessarily based on definitive proof. 

They had more to do with her feelings than anything else. Now I'm not passing judgement on her feelings. I'm sure she was sincere in her thinking, except she appeared to be discounting actual evidence as not valid because it did not line up with her thinking. 

As a teacher we used to teach our students the difference between fact and opinion. To do this you had to agree that there were actually some universal truths based on evidence. Today it would be more difficult to do so because opinion seems to reign supreme. It doesn't seem to matter what the evidence shows, it's more about how you feel about the evidence. 

Interestingly enough, one of the counter-comments was made from a very qualified individual who not only had expert status, but also had personal experience in the matter. It used to be that opinion had more to do with flavors of ice cream, not so much the color of the sky. Today everything is fair game when it comes to an opinion. 

Of course, I guess this is just my opinion.