I'm sure by now you are catching onto the "alternative facts" gaffe that Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway brought up during her interview with NBC's Chuck Todd.
In case you don't know what went down, here's the link to the video.
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Even though I do not like the media, I have to reluctantly agree with Chuck Todd when he said that alternative facts do not exist.
Here are the main reasons why:
1. Law Of The Excluded Middle
According to Dictionary.com, the law of the excluded middle is defined as the principle that any proposition must be either true or false.
In other words, it doesn't make sense to propose that there are alternatives to truth. The truth is the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be to people. When anything is brought up, it is either true or false. Even when any fact checker says something may be "mostly true" or "mostly false," there's missing pieces of the puzzle when the whole truth is not presented. When I hear Mrs. Conway say there are "alternative facts," I'm going to think that there are things being falsified. The law of the excluded middle pretty much debunks her statement.
2. Truth Cannot Be Relative
The second reason why I believe alternative facts don't exist is because it could become a leeway for some to consider that truth is indeed relative.
The problem with this is that truth actually can't be relative.
Rather, truth is always absolute.
Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, co-authors of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Athiest, state, "If something is true, it's true for all people, at all times, in all places. All truth claims are absolute, narrow, and exclusive... all truths exclude their opposites. Even religious truths."
What Geisler and Turek also debunk is that facts go one way- absolute. Another way to look at this is what my dad told me growing up, "Feelings are not facts." I understand that Mrs. Conway's words had nothing to do with feelings, but I'm afraid that if we go along with "alternative facts," both sides of the political aisle will eventually embrace the absurdity known as "relative truth."
I don't know much about Kellyanne Conway and I wish I did, but this is in no way trying to put her down. She and I happen to have a few things in common with politics, as she and I are both conservatives. I just hope she rethinks what she said to Chuck Todd during that interview.
