Truth...again
In a recent debate on morality my opponent took the position that without God we have no basis for morality. My view was that even with God and the Bible, since that book of bronze age mythology is our only reference or connection to the mind of God, each individual cherry picks and invents their own morality.
How does that relate to truth? It is because people continue to assert objective things as foundational to how they function in reality/life and I will forever disagree. Truth, morality and knowledge are abstract concepts. I've addressed perfection and infinity before so let's have a go at the abstracts of truth and knowledge.
Sye Ten Bruggencate, in a debate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL8LREmbDi0) went after Matt Dillahunty with the whole brain in a vat argument. Basically, he tried to break it down that Matt couldn't know objective reality because he might be a brain in a vat. Never once did Sye acknowledge that by the same token he might also be a brain in a vat being fed a God bothering point of view. Sye appealed to special knowledge by divine revelation and then denied it as such because he is actually pretty thick but let's delve in a bit.
As a refresher, objective reality is an abstract concept. There is no single being who could possibly know what that is except the person who created it. Enter God. God knows objective reality because He created all of it in the most exquisite detail. Now the tricky part, which Sye claims but cannot back, that God then reveals this special knowledge of the true nature of objective reality in some perfect way to a human mind that could not otherwise know it. People who claim this never say exactly how this happens just that it does. The rest of us are stuck with our subjective experience of reality and left to extrapolate what we can from that but God chooses certain people and times and places to reveal to them the true nature of reality above and beyond what they merely experience of it and we just better take their word for it.
Sye and his ilk are not wrong in suggesting that only God could discuss objective reality. I have made this assertion myself. I call it the God's Eye View or GEV. Matt asserts that a rock is a rock regardless of anyone perceiving it. This is a GEV because someone is still declaring that there is a rock. The observer is a disembodied entity observing that the rock is still there, just not one of us. Another example given to me a long time ago was a dark room that one enters. There is either furniture in it or not. Regardless of whether you can see it there is objectively a chair there in the room with you. Here's the thing. Unless I've banged my shin on it, in which case I do know it exists, I have no way of knowing if there is a chair or not. My reality is in no way informed about what is or is not, potentially, in that room. The person setting up the scenario informs me that, objectively, the chair exists whether I see it or not. How do they know that? They haven't investigated the room to discover this. They created it. They have God's POV of knowing objective reality where I do not. Put them in that dark room with me and they have no idea if there is a chair or not either. Perhaps we might argue over the existence of it. This, then, is the human condition. We are all in that dark room and need to feel around to discover what is in there. That has a name. We call it science.
The apologist asserts that truth is what God says it is. That would be correct because, objectively, only He could know it. Let's pretend for a second that God then pulls one human aside to give him the absolute truth. He explains it all in exquisite detail and that man writes it all down. Does that man understand all of it? Of course not, he doesn't have the capacity. Does that man get any of it wrong? Of course he does because he is a flawed human and language is limited. So we don't have God's truth. We can't possibly have it unless we are equal to God. What we do have are what amounts to one thing but for the sake of argument I will declare them two things, man's truth and what man says is God's truth. In either case truth is merely an individual assertion, a statement of what that individual perceives to be true. The difference is in perceived source of that truth but the bottom line is that it is self generated.
Let's start with what man says is God's truth. This goes back to the GEV. This is a human assuming that they can know reality as God knows reality and articulate it to others. They claim that it is a divine revelation. They claim it can be found in the Bible because that is the word of God. Even though it was written down by many different men with varying agendas and skills and ideas of their own the whole thing magically becomes a distillation of God giving man absolute truth. Where it contradicts itself or says things that we now know are absolutely untrue that is just us being silly or misunderstanding it. Fortunately there are experts in robes to sort it out for us. If they do it well they become millionaires with hit TV shows.
Let's get down to the real deal. Man invents his own truth. I'll equate truth with knowledge for the ease of illustration. We cannot have absolute knowledge. That means that everything we consider true is merely a belief we have. If we take all of our beliefs and put them on a graph with X being compelling evidence and Y being our degree of belief it would trend upward at pretty much a 45 degree angle. We will discount sacred cows and evidence that compels us when it shouldn't for this argument. Picturing that graph? Let's say that belief in the existence of Santa is far left, no compelling reason se we don't believe, and belief that you exist is far right. Somewhere on that line is belief that global warming is true, that your car will start this morning, that aliens have landed, that your toe is broken from kicking the sofa, etc. Somewhere on that graph you are going to draw a vertical line. Everything to the left will be stuff for which there is no solid evidence going from slightly improbable down to absolutely ridiculous (Santa is real). To the right is going to be what you know. It is still a belief graph but this is stuff you have reason to forgo doubting up to stuff you feel you cannot ever reasonably doubt. Walls are solid and boiling water is hot and the sky is blue and you know this because you've tested it a million times. The thing about that vertical line is that it will move. The older you get the more it moves right, the more things you confirm to be true. The more you learn the more things go to the right of that line. As evidence becomes less compelling some things move left and downward. You don't believe them as strongly or not at all any more. No two people have the same graph. No two people place the vertical line in the same place. No two people hold the same things to be true. Truth is never THE truth. It is never God's truth. It is always and forever your truth. Reality, knowledge and truth are never anything you can discuss objectively. If anyone asserts what the Bible says or what God says or what objective reality tells us they are all full of shit. If a person is not aware that they are speaking of their truth, what they believe, where they have set their vertical line and decided what they know then any discussion will be pointless. They are starting from the false premise that they know something that they could not possibly know.
Philosophers rage on debating the nature of knowledge and truth but it is this, if nothing else, a purely individual invention or distinction. We receive input about reality and our brains deal with it, some better than others, filter it, organize it, categorize it and decide whether it goes left or right of our arbitrary and ever changing vertical line. We believe it strongly enough to declare that we know it or we say that we just believe it, maybe for now until we have better evidence, maybe because we are emotionally invested, maybe because we are afraid not to, whatever. If we know it, that might be temporary too. We might get new info that means it was wrong and we no longer believe it at all. That is learning and growing. I hope we are all doing that. The more you evaluate and adjust your truth the closer you come to the abstract concept of absolute truth. It is a goal that cannot be reasonably believed to be acheivable but, somehow, religious people believe that they not only can reach it but have...because their god got them there.
How does that relate to truth? It is because people continue to assert objective things as foundational to how they function in reality/life and I will forever disagree. Truth, morality and knowledge are abstract concepts. I've addressed perfection and infinity before so let's have a go at the abstracts of truth and knowledge.
Sye Ten Bruggencate, in a debate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL8LREmbDi0) went after Matt Dillahunty with the whole brain in a vat argument. Basically, he tried to break it down that Matt couldn't know objective reality because he might be a brain in a vat. Never once did Sye acknowledge that by the same token he might also be a brain in a vat being fed a God bothering point of view. Sye appealed to special knowledge by divine revelation and then denied it as such because he is actually pretty thick but let's delve in a bit.
As a refresher, objective reality is an abstract concept. There is no single being who could possibly know what that is except the person who created it. Enter God. God knows objective reality because He created all of it in the most exquisite detail. Now the tricky part, which Sye claims but cannot back, that God then reveals this special knowledge of the true nature of objective reality in some perfect way to a human mind that could not otherwise know it. People who claim this never say exactly how this happens just that it does. The rest of us are stuck with our subjective experience of reality and left to extrapolate what we can from that but God chooses certain people and times and places to reveal to them the true nature of reality above and beyond what they merely experience of it and we just better take their word for it.
Sye and his ilk are not wrong in suggesting that only God could discuss objective reality. I have made this assertion myself. I call it the God's Eye View or GEV. Matt asserts that a rock is a rock regardless of anyone perceiving it. This is a GEV because someone is still declaring that there is a rock. The observer is a disembodied entity observing that the rock is still there, just not one of us. Another example given to me a long time ago was a dark room that one enters. There is either furniture in it or not. Regardless of whether you can see it there is objectively a chair there in the room with you. Here's the thing. Unless I've banged my shin on it, in which case I do know it exists, I have no way of knowing if there is a chair or not. My reality is in no way informed about what is or is not, potentially, in that room. The person setting up the scenario informs me that, objectively, the chair exists whether I see it or not. How do they know that? They haven't investigated the room to discover this. They created it. They have God's POV of knowing objective reality where I do not. Put them in that dark room with me and they have no idea if there is a chair or not either. Perhaps we might argue over the existence of it. This, then, is the human condition. We are all in that dark room and need to feel around to discover what is in there. That has a name. We call it science.
The apologist asserts that truth is what God says it is. That would be correct because, objectively, only He could know it. Let's pretend for a second that God then pulls one human aside to give him the absolute truth. He explains it all in exquisite detail and that man writes it all down. Does that man understand all of it? Of course not, he doesn't have the capacity. Does that man get any of it wrong? Of course he does because he is a flawed human and language is limited. So we don't have God's truth. We can't possibly have it unless we are equal to God. What we do have are what amounts to one thing but for the sake of argument I will declare them two things, man's truth and what man says is God's truth. In either case truth is merely an individual assertion, a statement of what that individual perceives to be true. The difference is in perceived source of that truth but the bottom line is that it is self generated.
Let's start with what man says is God's truth. This goes back to the GEV. This is a human assuming that they can know reality as God knows reality and articulate it to others. They claim that it is a divine revelation. They claim it can be found in the Bible because that is the word of God. Even though it was written down by many different men with varying agendas and skills and ideas of their own the whole thing magically becomes a distillation of God giving man absolute truth. Where it contradicts itself or says things that we now know are absolutely untrue that is just us being silly or misunderstanding it. Fortunately there are experts in robes to sort it out for us. If they do it well they become millionaires with hit TV shows.
Let's get down to the real deal. Man invents his own truth. I'll equate truth with knowledge for the ease of illustration. We cannot have absolute knowledge. That means that everything we consider true is merely a belief we have. If we take all of our beliefs and put them on a graph with X being compelling evidence and Y being our degree of belief it would trend upward at pretty much a 45 degree angle. We will discount sacred cows and evidence that compels us when it shouldn't for this argument. Picturing that graph? Let's say that belief in the existence of Santa is far left, no compelling reason se we don't believe, and belief that you exist is far right. Somewhere on that line is belief that global warming is true, that your car will start this morning, that aliens have landed, that your toe is broken from kicking the sofa, etc. Somewhere on that graph you are going to draw a vertical line. Everything to the left will be stuff for which there is no solid evidence going from slightly improbable down to absolutely ridiculous (Santa is real). To the right is going to be what you know. It is still a belief graph but this is stuff you have reason to forgo doubting up to stuff you feel you cannot ever reasonably doubt. Walls are solid and boiling water is hot and the sky is blue and you know this because you've tested it a million times. The thing about that vertical line is that it will move. The older you get the more it moves right, the more things you confirm to be true. The more you learn the more things go to the right of that line. As evidence becomes less compelling some things move left and downward. You don't believe them as strongly or not at all any more. No two people have the same graph. No two people place the vertical line in the same place. No two people hold the same things to be true. Truth is never THE truth. It is never God's truth. It is always and forever your truth. Reality, knowledge and truth are never anything you can discuss objectively. If anyone asserts what the Bible says or what God says or what objective reality tells us they are all full of shit. If a person is not aware that they are speaking of their truth, what they believe, where they have set their vertical line and decided what they know then any discussion will be pointless. They are starting from the false premise that they know something that they could not possibly know.
Philosophers rage on debating the nature of knowledge and truth but it is this, if nothing else, a purely individual invention or distinction. We receive input about reality and our brains deal with it, some better than others, filter it, organize it, categorize it and decide whether it goes left or right of our arbitrary and ever changing vertical line. We believe it strongly enough to declare that we know it or we say that we just believe it, maybe for now until we have better evidence, maybe because we are emotionally invested, maybe because we are afraid not to, whatever. If we know it, that might be temporary too. We might get new info that means it was wrong and we no longer believe it at all. That is learning and growing. I hope we are all doing that. The more you evaluate and adjust your truth the closer you come to the abstract concept of absolute truth. It is a goal that cannot be reasonably believed to be acheivable but, somehow, religious people believe that they not only can reach it but have...because their god got them there.
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