Fact & Truth

From The Mailbag:

What is the difference between “fact” and “truth”?

A “fact” is a reasonable description of a truth that is of such a nature that it appears obvious to any unbiased (or reasonably unbiased) observer who has the necessary tools and skills to observe it.  “Truth” is the way things really are; reality as god sees it, even if god is merely reality itself. It can be conveyed to us in many ways: ways that affect us in the emotions, as a catalogue of facts, as a narrative, through relationships with all of their complexities and simplicities. Confusion between these two things produces either fruth or tract, one of which grows into a fundamentalist, the other of which eventually demythologizes itself until it implodes.