- Facts - observable, provable, true statements
- Opinions - what a person thinks or believes
So children are given exercises where they read various statements and decide if each one is a "fact" or an "opinion." But there's a problem: what about statements like, "Murder is wrong." Is that a fact? Is it something that can be seen/touched/observed, and is it provable? Or is it an opinion - something which some people think, along the lines of "Johann Sebastian Bach was a better composer than Johann Pachelbel"? If we use the simple dichotomy of "facts vs. opinions," that is all we're left with.
Besides, there are problems with the definition of "facts." If we include the concept of something being "provable," what if something is not yet proven? Could it still be a fact? For example, it might be a fact that there is life on Mars, although that has not been proven. Another example: it is a fact that E=mc^2; but you couldn't prove that to me, given my limited knowledge of science. So is that a fact for me? Or is it just Einstein's opinion?
It seems that a third category is needed: moral judgments. These are standards of behavior and morals which don't fall into the facts/opinions matrix. They might also be deductions from those standards. For example, we can use the syllogism
- Murder is wrong.
- Abortion is murder.
- Therefore, abortion is wrong.
As Christians, we need to see that these moral judgments are in a separate category. They cannot be proven in the same way we can prove the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. And they are certainly not statements of opinion in the same way one person likes key lime pie and another one likes apple pie. No, there are absolute standards, set forth by God, from which we make moral deductions.
But here we see the problem in our culture. As a whole, we have abandoned the idea that there is a God who has established right and wrong. Without a set of absolute standards, there is no foundation for moral reasoning or moral judgments. Instead of the syllogism above, all we're left with is "abortion is wrong." And we end up with "It's fine if you believe it's wrong, but that's not what I believe, and you can't impose your beliefs on me."
I suggest that teachers, when they deal with the topic of facts vs. opinions (which is still an important idea for children to learn), they also need to include some instruction about moral judgments. "When we talk about right and wrong, we need to decide that from the Word of God, where we learn about what pleases God and what offends Him."