Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
Perception plays a very important part, to be sure. As does perspective. When viewing something from one particular position you are limited in what you can see. While what you see might be the truth, it's not necessarily the whole truth. What we have to be careful of is allowing our minds to fill in the blanks.

For example, someone sitting at the edge of a pool, in a yard surrounded by a high wall, sees a man come flying over the wall and landing in the pool. What truths can be determined here?

Well, we know he came flying over the wall, and he landed in the pool. But claiming he was shot from a cannon, or thrown from a car, or any number of other guesses would not necessarily be the truth. We can only know what we can see, hear, taste, touch, smell. If you start telling the story about the man who was dropped from a flying saucer into your pool, soon you'll actually believe it's true. Even when shown proof that it was only the neighbors kid jumping from his trampoline, you'll still believe deep inside that you actually saw the flying saucer.
True.
However, we do this all the time, don't we? Eventually, everything that we accept as true, rests upon some blanks that we consciously or unconsciously fill, without actually 'knowing' if they are valid. This happens even with events that occur directly to us. In regular life, I don't think we can ever perceive the 'whole truth', because such a thing would be totally without any blanks to fill. Can we really ever be sure about what lies beyond the wall? It may very well be a flying saucer or a cannon. Truth then, would be a matter of convenience, so as to complete a picture so that we know (not actually know), what happened.