Facts consist of observations and statements which conform to reality; truths are the accumulation of facts; and knowledge is the encyclopedic assemblage of truths and supporting facts. And yet, as Karl Popper so famously observed, "All knowledge is provisional, temporary, capable of refutation at any moment."

This is a critical distinction between science, or the scientific method, and religion, or so-called divine authority / revealed wisdom. Science is continuously rethinking assumptions, revising its findings, and adding new facts in the perpetual spiral of acquiring knowledge. As soon as a science text book goes to print, it is out of date! Religion, on the other hand, is a closed book.

The Abrahamic faiths have all that they need in terms of written formulas, so-called observations and lessons learned. No further experimentation, no new discoveries, no as-of-yet unknowns to learn. It’s all there in those scriptures, scrolls, canons, chapters, verses and suras.

A Nobel Prize for Literature surely awaits the one who succeeds in re-writing the 'holy texts' from any of these religions and succeeds in bringing them into conformity with our present understanding of astronomy, geology, biology, cosmology, sociology, psychology, genealogy, paleontology and physics, to name just a few disciplines, in a way that is accepted and understood by the majority of the adherents to the faith that claims these texts.

I don't divorce truth and fact like some people do. If something is true, I still think it's factual — not the "true for me" perspective. Where I think they differ is that truth doesn't need to be literal; a fictional story may contain truth about the human condition, for instance, but contain no literal facts. But the "personal truth" concept — e.g., it's true for DJT that he had the most watched, most attended inauguration of all time — doesn't work for me. I don't accept that truth is nothing more than a strongly held opinion or feeling.

The truth is an individual’s honest depiction of an event; being from their perspective, it may differ from that of another.

A fact is verifiable - period

One that amazed me ..once I experienced it is a law. A law means nothing but what it’s last interpretation says it means. And if that interpretation came from the US Supreme Court, it could mean one thing to five people and the total opposite to four…

Unfortunately, many people, me included, probably, not seperate truth and fact. As Colbert said, we like Truthiness. Something that feels as if it is true.
Example: I saw a facebook discussion about some school that no longer used detention, but sent kids to to afterschool yoga.
Almost everyone in the discussion knew the truth: they were coddling the kids, not teaching them "consequences." I pointed the facts: Does it improve behavior? If it does, then it is a very appropriate alternative.

I no longer use the word "truth", because it is only meaningful in Platonism. I prefer using "sincere" or "honest" when contrasting with "lie"; "facts" when describing history; and "knowledge" for demonstrable models of reality. When nobody knows what a word means, the best way forward is to just eliminate it -- as with "faith".

I wrote the last post after deliberately NOT reading earlier comments. I didn't want to be distracted. But now, a couple of comments:

In this context words like 'subjective', 'believe' and 'reality' should IMHO be defined by those who choose to use them. No empirical truth can ever be verified - only disproven. A scientific fact is something which is accepted because it has not been disproven by physical means despite considerable effort to do so.

Doesn't truth imply perception & likelihood to change due to relativity?
Doesn't fact imply something proven scientifically through experimentation that repeatedly generated the same result and can be replicated?

For me, truth is reality. A fact is our best understanding of reality. Facts can change while truth does not.

Newtonian laws were once fact, but relativity was discovered and the facts changed. Not the best analogy, but I think it illustrates what I’m saying.

Much like the animal that created it, language evolves.

To Trumpty Dumpty - he doesn''t know what a fact is if it bit him on his fat ass. Truth is something he doesn't understand. All he knows is alternative facts per that ridiculous woman Kelly Conway and Faux News.

Even though I'm an atheist, I've enjoyed Jesus Christ Superstar since I was little Catholic boy in junior high.
This is one of my favorite exchanges.

[PILATE]
Then you're a king? --

[JESUS]
-- It's you that say I am
I look for truth, and find that I get damned

[PILATE]
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths - are mine the same as yours?

Disagree , they are one and the same

I think humans overthink this to the point of uselessness.

There is no capital-T objective, irrefutable Truth. But there are assertions / claims that are "true" (small t) or untrue in their alignment with known facts from a particular and well-defined persepctive.

We don't need things to be objectively or ultimately true, or externally bestowed, in order to find them useful. All we actually need is a mental model of reality that is increasingly accurate and constantly refined to approach the place where that model explains and predicts experience accurately such that there is an absolute minimum of surprises. The test of the accuracy of our mental model of reality is how often we are surprised or disappointed by the unexpected, and the degree to which we can successfully infer explanations for the unknown from what is known.

There are three kinds of truth:

1. Mathematical/logical truth: Something is true if it is derived using the rules of mathematics or logic

2. Religious truth: Something is true according to a holy book if appears in that book or can be derived from it using logic or mathematics

3. Empirical truth: Something is true if it can be disproven by an obervation or if it can be derived, using mathematics or logic, from something which can be disproven.The observation may be by way of tools but must, ultimately, be made by the senses.

A fact is something which is true.

Examples:

1. All the numbers from 1 to 100 added together come to 5050.

2. There must have been water available in Galilee because the bible says the Jesus turned water into wine.

3. The moon will rise over Tucsan, Arizona at 10:30 tonight. (Undoubtedly NOT a fact, this one, just an example)

I prescribe to the correspondence theory of truth as found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy...

1.1.2 The neo-classical correspondence theory
The correspondence theory of truth is at its core an ontological thesis: a belief is true if there exists an appropriate entity – a fact – to which it corresponds. If there is no such entity, the belief is false.

Facts, for the neo-classical correspondence theory, are entities in their own right. Facts are generally taken to be composed of particulars and properties and relations or universals, at least. The neo-classical correspondence theory thus only makes sense within the setting of a metaphysics that includes such facts. Hence, it is no accident that as Moore and Russell turn away from the identity theory of truth, the metaphysics of facts takes on a much more significant role in their views. This perhaps becomes most vivid in the later Russell (1956, p. 182), where the existence of facts is the “first truism.” (The influence of Wittgenstein's ideas to appear in the Tractatus (1922) on Russell in this period was strong, and indeed, the Tractatus remains one of the important sources for the neo-classical correspondence theory. For more recent extensive discussions of facts, see Armstrong (1997) and Neale (2001).)

Facts are truth-makers. Truths are not relative, and they cannot contradict each other. If something is true, it is based on indisputable fact.

IMHO.

Truth is a statement that corresponds to reality.
Fact is something indisputibly true or demonstrated, tested, and repeated to be true.

what resserts said

Truth and fact are, in fact different things. Where things get messy is with truth and honesty. It is possible to state out-of-context "truths" in order to manipulate a situation, but fully integrated honesty is truth presented in its full context without deception or "spin."

Some people might call fact a contingent (or synthetic) truth. It is a fact that Trump is president. An analytic truth is true by definition - a bachelor is an unmarried man. Not all philosophers agree with this distinction.

I think of facts as quantifiable and truth as abstract, it's the information that falls in between that muddles the distinction.

I would have to agree. Truth and facts can be twisted by clever people to confuse us! I can only trust journalist that I have followed for some time for facts and truth. The rest... I must find many different versions of the same story, before I get half the truth and some of the facts. It sure takes more work and creates more doubt in 'human kind' than is necessary...to my way of thinking! I see that you are new...welcome!