Lack of Light

I believe it was St. John or St. Augustine that said that God is light, and darkness is a lack of God. This is true for many things. Not really in the sense that God is something else, but that light is the presence of something (in this case light waves that produce an image), and darkness is the lack of something. For example, colness is a lack of heat; boredness is the lack of something to do; hunger is due to a lack of food.

In one of my classes today, we were discussing opinions, knowledge, and ignorance. We agreed that ignorance is a lack of knowledge, and that knowledge is truth. Opinions are somewhere in between and are based on faith instead of truth. This was very interesting to think about because it can be applied to so many parts of life. We grow up by learning, but what are we learning? Are we learning truths, which is knowledge, or are we gaining opinions, which cannot be proven true? And if we are learning opinions, which I believe we are, who are we to believe them? Why must we learn the opinions of others? Why can't we learn the truths and form our own opinions?

What is math but a truthful set of solutions to numbers we created? We know that math is true because we created the system ourselves, so math is knowledge. However, science is math but it is based on opinion instead of fact. Everything you do in science and in most other subjects then, are opinions. In fact, isn't math an opinion as well because we have faith that the system we created is truth? How can we be sure that ANYTHING we hold to be knowledge now will not prove to be wrong, and therefore an opinion, later on?