Mark Twain it was who said “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t”. Bacon quoted a jesting Pontius Pilate as asking “What is truth?” and without staying for an answer ordered Christ to be put on the cross. Even truth, it seems, is nothing absolute, though Bacon must have made up the story like the lazy reporter who doesn’t venture out and writes desk stories that cannot be verified.
Leaving that aside, however, how about substituting truth with life in Twain’s statement? Life too, without fiction’s controlled, select treatment and the writer’s deft handling of the plot, is not obliged to stick to possibilities. But perhaps I am wrong. When infused with the literalism of faith, life can begin to lose its myriad possibilities, even its colour, slithering instead through select grooves.
One report tells me that Al Qaeda in Iraq’s Sunni belt may be losing popularity because of “imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life”.
http://newageislam.com/advice-to-al-qaeda--keep-it-real-/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/576
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1:50 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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