Etymologically, ‘trust’ – a covenant with ‘the true’ – is in the same category as faith – loyalty to ‘the true’ – and both are aligned with ‘belief’: etymologically, ‘belief’ means fervently wishing to be true.

•  credulity: belief, faith, trust; readiness to believe. (Oxford Dictionary).

•  intuition: spiritual insight or perception; instantaneous spiritual communication without the intervention of reasoning. (Oxford Dictionary).

•  certitude: subjective certainty; a feeling of certainty (now rare); assurance, confidence. (Oxford Dictionary).

Whilst the word ‘certainty’ and ‘certitude’ are very close in meaning, in common usage ‘certainty’ stresses the existence of objective proof; (e.g.: ‘that which can be confirmed with scientific certainty’), while ‘certitude’ emphasises a faith in something not capable of proof (for example: to believe with certitude in an afterlife). (Merriam-Webster).

credulity: belief, faith, trust; readiness to believe. (Oxford Dictionary).

factoid: an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as a fact; a simulated or imagined fact. (Oxford Dictionary).

factoid (n.): an item of unreliable information which is reported and repeated so often it becomes accepted as fact;

[e.g.]: “He addresses the facts and factoids which have buttressed the film’s legend”;

“And on and on he goes like that for two pages of second hand factoids and observations which never rise above the pseudo-intellectual”;

“How factoids and information overload are used to blur the line between crises and light news, so that every event becomes a panic situation”;

“Several days, here and at other companies, I hear this factoid repeated like a campaign talking point”;

“I’m informed from a usually reliable source that a factoid is an empirical claim which is often repeated but is in fact false”;

“I don’t know whether this item is a factoid, or a fact”;

“When does a piece of data go from being a factoid to being a fact?” [italics added]. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary).

• factoid (n.): a simulated or imagined fact; an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as a fact. ~ (Oxford English Dictionary).

• factoid (n.): a piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition; [e.g]: “What one misses finally is what might have emerged beyond both facts and factoids – a profound definition of the Marilyn Monroe phenomenon”. (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt); (adj.): factoidal. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary).

• factoid (n.): a piece of unreliable information believed to be true because of the way it is presented or repeated in print. [C20, coined by Norman Mailer from fact + -oid]. ~ (Collins English Dictionary).

faith: confidence, belief, reliance, especially without evidence or proof; spiritual apprehension of divine truth or intangible realities. (Oxford Dictionary).

trust: the faith or conviction in the loyalty, strength, veracity, etc., of a person or thing; reliance on the truth of a statement etc., without examination. (Oxford Dictionary).

The hoary word ‘bull’, in this context, has nothing to do with either the Taurean variety or the male of the bovine kine (nor, even, its steaming piles of ordure as per popular usage since 1910-15). Viz.:

As a matter of related interest: in the autumn of 1985 Prof. Harry Gordon Frankfurt, BA, PhD (born 1929) wrote, in a twenty-page essay on the topic of bull (albeit its ordurous variant), how it is impossible for a liar to lie unless they think they know the truth (meaning a person who lies is thereby reacting to the authority of truth) whereas the bull-artist cares nothing for either truth or falsity, insofar as the only thing which concerns them is getting away with what they say (meaning they do not reject the authority of truth, as a liar does by opposing themselves to it, but pay no attention to it at all), and how this makes them potentially more treacherous than any liar because a society where bull is rife⁽*⁾ is thus in danger of rejecting the possibility of ever knowing how things truly are (as it follows that any form of argument and/or analysis is only as legitimate, via being held to be true, as it is persuasive).

⁽*⁾Due to a higher public tolerance for bull than lies – liars are universally held in contempt – bull is rifer in the post-truth ‘Information Age’ societies of the twenty-first century, an era concomitantly saturated with marketing madness frenetically fuelled by propagandising advertising agencies spinning narratives galore, than any other period of recorded history.

Bull:

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The Third Alternative

(Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body)

Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.

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