Opinions: This one goes out to all the Sarah Baldwin's in the world

The facebook world has long been a launchpad of mediocre, inane, and dramatic discussion and debate. It never fails. I was perusing the never-ending wall of my some six-hundred friends' status updates when I espied a note from a very bright young lady. The note was entitled "25 Seconds in the Mind of Sarah Baldwin." Well! Now there was an attractive title. In my country we pay a penny per thought and we pay it cash money on the spot, so an entire twenty-five seconds in the mind of such a wit as Sarah Baldwin was gold.

*click*

Okay, so I'm in. It is actually a compilation of twenty-five things all of which take more than a second to read. Here I was feeling I was getting a good deal when my eyes sucked in random fact number five. My eyes funneled it straight to my mental harddrive where I turned it into a legible thought. It read:

"It really bothers me that most people seem not to understand the difference between FACT and OPINION, yes there is a difference, a BIG one."

Well, hey that bothers me too. If I say hey, black is a classy colour and they insist it is not, then this person has a poor understanding in the difference between fact and opinion. I didn't think this was exactly what she was talking about but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and left what should have been a warning comment:

"This is interesting. I'll talk to you about fact and opinion one day."

The next day at school, predominantly in the lunchline, my hunch was confirmed. She herself had a skewed conception of the difference between fact and opinion. I put on a bit of a guise as a raving liberal to combat her own stark conservatism. The plan worked. Operating under the impression that I might be a supporter I made the statement that the rightness of abortion (a touchy subject not to be made light of) was not an opinion but a fact. She, as I hoped she would, disagreed and said because "we don't know" whether it is right or wrong that it must be an opinion. This is where the clincher came in:

"Do you believe in absolute truth"

After several defining sessions she finally said she did. Now, when it comes to making moral decisions there is no such thing as opinion, that is because somewhere in the cosmos of conscience and the high law that governs righteousness there exists a truth that is in everlasting practise regardless of what we think that truth is. The debate went on. I showed Sarah Baldwin a thumbtack and asked her if it was indeed a thumbtack. She agreed that it was. I asked her in so many words what she would think if someone told her it was not a thumbtack. She said that would be a lie. That's the point I was trying to make. They couldn't be "of the opinion" that it was a rhinocerous. No matter what they think it IS a thumbtack. And that is getting pretty worldly but the idea stays.

Well now here we are, all a bunch of Pontius Pilates begging the question, "What is truth?" Well I cannot answer that. It is true we don't always know the truth. We can decide whatever we believe to be true. But the FACT is, the truth is the truth no matter our OPINION.

And that's a fact Jack.

(Or Jackie as the gender may be. You know who you are, you ALMOST wrecked my argument...almost).