There were only 200 Fallen so who are all the rest, so who are all the rest?

But don't you see, it is exactly because of what you have stated there that there can be no black and white truth, without people there is no truth at all, without people to interpret what they are seeing and fashion it into something that agrees with reality in an understandable way there is no need for truth, and because each person views it from their own perspective each perception is different. Like each individual member of a crowd describing a thief. Each person saw exactly the same thing and exactly the same person, they witnessed the truth of the situation, but because of their individual perception usually each give a different description. That's why the police are so reluctant to rely on eye-witness testimony. It is not black and white, and it is reguarded as unreliable because of this.

I apologise for saying this, but I think your first statement is a little silly.

To assume that the earth is round because we decided it was flat suggests that you believe that the planet is not only a living, breathing, sentient entity, but also that out of a fit of pique it changed it's shape just to prove something to us, or in an effort to be co-operative it changed it's shape to accomodate us.
I am sure that couldn't be what you meant, but I'm afraid that's exactly what it sounds like.

Especially being that you quoted the question mark at the end of that, I wonder if you picked up on it being a question rather than a sentence.

If it was a question with a completely obvious answer, then it could be an exercise in rhetoric to illustrate a point by throwing out an obvious example in a question that no one could possibly get wrong.

To get on with my post. Truth does not require people. And people can be wrong. I believe that to say that truth is determined by people watching is an exercise in arrogance by over-estimating and glorifying the very flawed perception abilities of a person or of people in general.

The truth is absolutely black and white. Either the Earth is a flat plane, or it is not. As I hoped people would understand through the exercise of a rhetorical question, the truth does not change because someone sees it differently. The truth does not change because someone changes a definition or a perception.

To turn your own example against you. That entire crowd saw a thief. The description of the thief changes with each individual, but very truthfully, the thief does not. No person with their testimony or best recollections can actually change who it was that committed the crime.

The truth is what happened, their testimony is only their perception of the truth, and that truth is set in stone, even if they failed to notice it.

To turn something else on you. I wrote a rhetorical question. You perceived something different. By your logic there, that changes the truth because it then becomes something other than a rhetorical question. I'm sorry, but you do not have the power to change what I did, but you clearly exercised your power to interpret.

And clearly here we have seen, that the truth is black and white, it was a rhetorical question... or I was stating "that the planet is not only a living, breathing, sentient entity, but also that out of a fit of pique it changed it's shape just to prove something to us, or in an effort to be co-operative it changed it's shape to accommodate us."

A question in rhetoric placed in such a manner should be made clear to all.
Solitary Moonlight was not only quoting you, but giving her opinion on your question. Was that not what you wanted? She did not say that you were silly, but that your question was silly, and that it would be silly to assume the things your question assumed.
Perhaps she was firing your rhetorical 'joke' back at you? I ask that since you appear to assume that she is not intelligent enough to understand your meaning. Once again it is possible that your black and white truth may be based on faulty logic.

To answer your question, simply because I cannot leave something so fundamentally incorrect uncorrected:
The earth is round because it is and always has been. Scientific study thus far has proved that. The displacement of space and the vectors involved have been charted, plotted and calculated with precision by many excellent scientists, and from the evidence available they leave no doubt that the Earth in it's movements through the Universe has always been a slightly less than perfect spherical object.
That is a scientifically proven fact that as yet has not been disputed by anyone. Perhaps one day it will be, but until then these are the facts as we know them to be at this time.

It is possible, however whereas I made a question that is clearly a question and a use of rhetoric, Solitary Moonlight made statements asking if I actually believed that.

Tone and sarcasm cannot be read, rhetoric can.

I am not implying that anyone is not intelligent, I am implying that several may not be reading sentences as sentences but rather as collections of words.

As far as the Earth being round, yes, you are right, it is (so far as we know). Let's say however that somehow we are wrong, the Earth is a different shape that somehow has escaped our notice or cannot be calculated by our current scientific methods (purely for hypothetical purposes). That still means that our belief is wrong, and that the Earth is whatever it is.

My logic could be faulty... however I've seen no faults as of yet, whether of my own scrutiny or of those who have reviewed it. A flower is not a flower because we see it and decide that it is, a flower simply is what it is and we make our own view of it.

Should someone make a mistake, and even if that someone convinces the entire world that the flower is not a flower, the flower will remain being a flower, it will just be viewed mistakenly.

Since you have said you and others have so much difficulty recognising them, may I present to you your faults.

Yes it could be, but since we are all here to answer questions and comment on other people's posts perhaps if it was a rhetorical question for which you did not require a response you should have said so?
That could also be a rhetorical question by your definition could it not?

Unfortunately here you are absolutely and completely wrong.
Facts do not need people but the truth does.
The definition of Truth:
A fact that has been verified.
The fact will never change but until it is verified it is not the truth it is simply a fact. The truth needs people to verify it's existence, without them it does not exist. Only facts exist without the need for corroboration.


To turn your own example against you:

Here you are using the wrong word I'm afraid. That is not the truth of the matter, that is the fact of the matter. The fact is that no-one's perception can change who actually comitted the crime. Another fact is that what a person perceives as the truth of that fact can and does send an innocent party to prison or to their death.

Once again you are using the wrong word. The fact is what happened. Facts are set in stone and cannot be changed, ever. The truth is merely a persons perception of the facts, whether they are correct, or like you in this case, flawed in that perception, makes no difference to either the facts they perceive or the truth they believe.
Facts are black and white, the truth unfortunately rarely is.

This was unnecessary as it simply re-iterated what I had put here:

I might also add that the designated names for objects are changing all the time, a flower is only a flower because a human said so, if in future some human decides to change the designated names for that object it will cease to be a flower and become whatever the new name for it might be. Truth is always replaceable by another truth. Facts are always facts.

I thought sentences were collections of words, have I been doing it wrong all these years?? :lol:

I've always thought that facts are what happened and that the truth is what is known about what happened. Since facts always remain facts and what is known changes.
I think that agrees with what you said Whisper, but you put it better.

I've noticed, especially in the names of animals, that the scientific names and designations have been altered quite a lot recently. Animals moved from one area to another, parts of names and in some cases whole names changed. I supposed it was because they were finding out more about them and that what they found out meant that they didn't belong in the groups they'd been put in any more.
I know it doesn't change what the animal is, what it looks like, how it lives etc, but new generations won't even remember the old names, so I suppose names aren't really a good example to use.

Indeed, this is exactly what happens. More research is done and when that reveals something new about the object, it's genus, or even in some cases it's Phylum, can change. Sometimes making it, whilst the same creature, a completely different branch of the animal Kingdom.
Even new discoveries and claims are being disputed, often in a very short space of time.
For example take the case of Ida. For those who do not know about her, she was a set of fossils presented by an emminent Norwegian scientist only last May.
The scientific world went crazy, literally. They hailed her as the most important fossil discovery of all time, an evolutionary Rosetta Stone, and the eighth wonder of the world. Some even suggested that the missing link between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom had now been found. Television documentaries and scientific books followed the flurry of publicity these claims caused, all investigating humanity's long lost ancestor. It was claimed that Ida illustrated the point at which the tree of evolution split into two branches one of humans, apes and monkeys and the other of lemurs and members of the loris family.
Unfortunately recent research seems to point to the conclusions drawn from the study of this discovery being a colossal mistake.
Experts from four US universities, doing independant studies and later working together as a team, have concluded that the fossil is not related to humans in any way, and in fact has no living relatives at all. They claim that Ida is an evolutionary dead end with no living descendants.
This claim will no doubt lead to years of further studies and counter-studies with the reputations of some of the worlds most eminent scientists and the truth at stake.
Dr Hurum (the original scientist) and Philip Gingerich, (a palaeontologist from Princeton University who worked on the fossil with him), describe the claims as puzzling, adding that they stand by their findings that the fossil was almost certainly a part of the lineage that led to monkeys, apes and humans.
Though I note with interest their use of the words 'almost certainly' I await developments to find out both the facts and the truth of this.
Whilst her existence remains a fact, the truth of her is now open to what may turn out to be one of the longest debates in recorded history.

Thanks for sticking up for me Whisper, but I wasn't throwing his rhetoric back at him. I was just responding to his post.

I made no statements asking you a question Terro.

There is no question mark in that statement. It's just my thoughts on what you said. I thought it was a silly thing to say and even now knowing it was a rhetorical question I still think it is still a silly thing to say. It makes no sense and has no relevance to the rest of the topic, but you made it, inviting opinions on an open forum and my opinion is exactly what you got. :D

I heard all the hoohah about this fossil way back when but I didn't know they'd decided it was all a mistake. Now how do they decide who's right? Either way there's no real way to be sure, even if one of them backs down there will always be doubts in the minds of the people who care about things like this.

Without wanting to offend Whisper I think only scientists really care about things like this. Most of the rest of us are too busy just living to worry too much about how we got here and what our ancestors might have looked like millions of years ago.