Truth with a capital T

[Zenda71]

Originally Posted by Muhammad-Khalifa

Well, I'm not sure if i entirely understand the questions, but i'll try answering this to the best of my abbilities.
Answers:
1. To accept, love and serve
2. Pesonally my absolute truth is Islam. I don't know how else to describe my choice by other than describing my own experiences. Islam teaches me how to be open and honest with myself and others. Being totally honest with yourself, yet in control would probably, in the most logical terms, be my absolute truth.
3. "Being open and honest, yet in control", would help me grow posively (evolve spiritually and mentally). Now since I, and my peception are positive ,then basicly, everything i see is positive. Which for me, would be helping others.

I hope my efforts helped my brother .

Thank you for your reply Muhammad Khalifa.

With metta,
Zenda

[louis]

Originally Posted by Zenda71

Hi all.

I posted this over at christianforums.com and thought it would be interesting to post here too.

Hubby and I had a great conversation last night about Truth. He wanted to know if I believe in an absolute Truth ... an absolute reality ... regardless of whether we humans can perceive it. (He's a theist; I'm not.)

After mucking around with Schrodinger's cat for a bit, I finally told him I didn't know; that it wasn't a helpful pondering point. And he said he knew God was the absolute Truth and is very comforted by that.

So now I'm curious about what other people have to say:
1. Do you have an absolute Truth?
2. What is your absolute Truth? (please define if you can)
3. What does this absolute Truth do for you (or others)?

With metta,
Zenda

What do you mean by "absolute" truth ?
If you mean "objective" truth, then yes, there certainly IS
such a thing. But nobody knows what it IS !
At first, truth would appear to be easy to define :
Truth is accurate description of reality.
Knowledge is accurate perception of reality.
Reality is ... now THAT'S the tough one !
How do we distinguish between reality and perception ?
Is "belief" the way ? I don't think so -
Because belief consists entirely of perception - some
of which may EVENTUALY turn out to be reality - but
not until supported by confirming evidence .

Louis

[ISFP]

i tend to need to believe that there is something unchanging in the world, so my concept of Truth usually comes back to the idea of inherent meaningfulness. namely, that in every action, circumstance, or moment there is the opportunity to realize meaning. or as Buddhists tend to put it, to be mindful.

[I, Brian]

Hi ISFP, and welcome to CR.

[ISFP]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Hi ISFP, and welcome to CR.

Thank you Brian!

[I, Brian]

No problem.

As for objective truth - heh, we're back to the subjective experience again and Cartesian Logic.

[ISFP]

but is there any way to show what you feel to be true as true, or must we always rely on conviction and personal faith? would all people have to agree or connect with an idea for its universality to be validated?

[louis]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

As a sort of Theist I find the concept of "Absolute Truth" completely meaningless. Truth is a concept by humans for humans, to work different aspects of society and cultural into a larger framework of shared values and goals.

Somehow somebody insisting that there is "Absolute Truth" in the universe would make as much sense, as another person insisting that in English legal system there is the "High Energy Particle Physics Law".

We occupy relative positions from which our subjective experience of the universe unfolds. I personally see no room for absolutes to be observed in such a logically fragile position.

From Louis ....
I happen to think there IS an absolute - or "constant"-
or whatever there was before there were any humans
to have "subjective experiences" about it and it will still
be here after we're gone. Reality is what it IS - not what
we happen to THINK it is.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by louis

Reality is what it IS - not what
we happen to THINK it is.

But as we cannot know what reality is unless we think it...

[louis]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

But as we cannot know what reality is unless we think it...

From Louis...
I did a lot of puzzling about your reply.....
Surely you are not suggesting that reality does not exist
unless we are there to think about it ???
Our "thinking" consists only of our PERCEPTION of
of reality - we never know how close we come to
ACTUAL reality until we find a way to make a TEST -
an experiment that enables us to COMPARE our
perception with reality.
For example : I SEE something that looks material ...
but until I TOUCH it, I can't be certain whether or not
it IS material or something else, such as an hallucination,
optical illusion, vision..or some other projection of our
own mind.

[I, Brian]

What I mean is that our experience of reality is entirely dictated to via our sensory experience.

And that sensory experience can be very flawed.

Also note that our sensory experience is actually based on a very narrow band of sensory expereinces - not least the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can see, and the frequencies of sound that we hear.

However, that is merely the start of my own argument.

Other people would go much farther and indeed agree with your perlexing statement - that reality does not exist until we observe it. This is a core paradox of Quantum Physics - notably illustrated by the thought experiment known as Schrodinger's Cat.

If WHKieth replies he will almost certainly provide a much fuller explanation of that point of view.