Yes or No to claimed truth?

Today as I was reading something about endocrinology, I found two books giving me the exact opposite explanation for the same thing. I was stuck basically for a long time trying to figure out if I had read and understood wrongly. After reading the same sentences for 5 times, I am quite certain that one of them must be wrong. This is a really difficult situation as the two books are equally popular among medical students (Kumar and clarke and Oxford clinical handbook...if you know what i mean!) Then I spent a few hours searching the internet for some clues and found out that K&C was wrong. Although I should be relieved cos I already know the answer, I am still quite surprised that a well-published book like that can have a mistake.

Yesterday, I saw a movie 'Perfume-The story of a murderer' . It is a really nice movie with good screenplay and effects. However, I find the story a bit disturbing (a lot of gory scenes) and the ending is rather cheesy and illogical. Basically the main character was a perfumer and tried to capture the scent of nicest smell in the world...women's scent! He'd killed many women to capture their scents, and to cut the long story short, he was in the end arrested, just shortly after he had succesfully brewed his ultimate perfume (containing all those smells from the women he killed). On the day of his death penalty, he appeared before the public and sprinkled some of his ultimate perfume on his handkerchief. When the public smelt it, they all bowed down and claimed that he was an angel! The most funny part was when his handkerchief was blown off his hand and the public went bonkers and started getting naked and lusty with one another. Even the Catholic bishop couldn't resist the power of that ultimate scent and was hugging and kissing the girl next to him! The public all hailed 'Angel!' and this merciless murderer was acquitted (What an ending?!).

Well basically what I am trying to link for what happened yesterday and today is: how much do we know about the truth? All evidence can point to a murderer, if the public and particularly the bishop claims that he is an angel (in a religious context), he must be an angel. Two well known medical books, considered as the bibles for medical students can have contradictory details. How much can you trust your sources? If you don't, what else can you do to make sure that you have the right information?

It's just like religions. We haven't seen Gods. How do we know that they really exist? Can bible, kitab or other religious books be totally trusted? In the olden days, these books were written by powerful political figures. They could be making use of their positions or public's trust to spread their power. Did they really hear God's voice (are you sure they they weren't schizophrenic?) Even if they are the exactly the same sentences and being said by saints and etc, can they be interpreted differently? There were wars in the past and somehow these books could justify their actions. Why?? They were some races being discriminated and yet these books claimed that God was punishing them. If God is ever-loving and forgiving why didn't God forgive them and give them a new start? and why are they still discriminated now, considering that the newborns have no sins. Why is there a past and present interpretation for the same book?

There are just so many questions that I can't find the answers to.

Erm, I hope ppl reading my website would not be offended with my remarks on religion. This is totally my own opinion and please leave a comment if you think that you can answer my questions. Sorry that there's no 'yes or no' table today because I have been quite lazy lately ( can see that I haven't been blogging for a long time).