I've read you say something like this before, and I still wonder why not. It's very easy to determine if something is a lie without knowing what the truth is. If my son comes home from school and tells me they went to China on a field trip that day, I know it's a lie, even if I don't know what they really did do. If someone tells me that 25-foot tree was planted yesterday, I know that's not true even if I have no idea how old it really is.
I'm always surprised when anti-evolutionists come up with arguments that boil down to, "We can't know anything."
I never said we can't know anything.
So how do you determine a lie with no truth to compare it to?
Even science has and uses standards to at least calibrate instruments to. You can't look at a yard stick and say it's a meter just because you know it's not a mile long or it looks about right. You compare it to the absolute standard to determine whether or not it's a meter.
In both the examples you give, you are comparing what you heard to some standard. You know that it's impossible that your son went to China during the school day because you know that it's physically impossible to get there in that few hours, not because you didn't know what else he did.
[[If my son comes home from school and tells me they went to China on a field trip that day, I know it’s a lie, even if I don’t know what they really did do.]]
You seem to be forgetting that you know the truth to begin with- that it was impossible for them to hav3 gone to China because of time restraints- now, had your son told you he went to the grocery market down hte street from you, you would have no way of knowing if he was tellign you the truth or not unless you yourself had some truth revealed to you- perhaps from the grocer whom you could then verify if he had or not