The truth

[Jeremiah Ames]

The topic is truth.


But not just any old truth. Since some people think along these lines.

This is about THE truth.

Definition:

Truth: that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality

Pretty easy. That which is true. Therefore, not false.


Ok. Ponder this: (an easy one?)

I find the expression 2+2=4 represents THE truth.

Should someone claim that 2+2=3 is their personal version of truth that’s fine with me. They can believe any truth they want, but THE truth is still 2+2=4. A mathematician can prove that 2+2=4 is true.

Therefore people who hold a truth that differs would actually be holding a falsehood.


Another example: (Easy again, but different)

Long ago, all of humanity held that a flat earth was truth. That’s fine. They can believe that as their truth. But we later discovered THE truth. Regardless what people thought was truth, THE truth never changed. It was THE truth before people recognized it, it was THE truth afterward, and it is still THE truth today, regardless what falsehoods people have in their heads that they choose to call truth.


A final example:

There is a story in the Bible about a couple of people named Adam and Eve. Many people hold as truth that this story portrays real people in a real place and time. Many hold as truth that it has no truth whatsoever. And other variations on their truths.

However, THE truth about this story exists. You cannot deny that THE truth exists. Regardless of our own personal “truths”, THE truth really exists. Some of us will actually have THE truth and some will not. This is not a debate about the story. My truth is that the two specific people named never existed, nor did a special garden. But that is irrelevant. My truth may be THE truth, and it may not be.
In this example, THE truth existed from the beginning and it will exist until no humans are left.

The point being that THE truth cannot change. Our knowledge can and does change, but not THE truth.


This is the essence behind the poll.

Extra credit work:
There is discussion (is that a good word for it?). regarding homosexual marriage.
THE truth exists, whether it should be allowed or not. Has THE truth always existed?
And how would you go about finding THE truth?

 

[Quintessence]

Setting aside the problematic task of defining "reality," I think we can all probably agree that reality changes. If reality changes, then so too does the truth, per the definition outlined in the opening post. What was in accord with reality yesterday may not be in accord with reality today. What is in accord with reality today may not be in accord with reality tomorrow.

It is easy to think of examples of the truth changing. My state used to be home to a great ecosystem called the tallgrass prairie. This, however, is no longer the case. It is no longer truth. There is barely any of this ecosystem left, as humans destroyed almost all of it. Reality changes, and so does truth.

 

[wizanda]

I find the expression 2+2=4 represents THE truth.

Each character is a variable that has been standardized for us; yet who is to say they don't represent something else to someone from another planet, place, etc?

For example if we had $two + $two = $four in PHP programming, that could be anything; as the words become $variables, which means inside them, they could have whole databases laid out in order.

Truth is subjective; fact isn't.

In my opinion.

 

[Father Heathen]

Truth doesn't change, but what people believe to be "truth" does.

 

[Nakosis]

The topic is truth.


But not just any old truth. Since some people think along these lines.

This is about THE truth.

Definition:

Truth: that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality

Pretty easy. That which is true. Therefore, not false.

The truth = reality, reality is always changing.

2+2=4, math is a language. It has rules which must be accepted and followed for it to work. Math is not reality. It is a concept we use to describe reality.

There was a time before the earth existed, there will be a time when earth no longer exists. To say the earth is flat or round when it does not exist would have no meaning.

The story of Adam and Eve exist. Whatever meaning the story has you supply yourself.

You don't have to find truth, it's right here. Reality is truth, what's to find?

Reality tomorrow will be different than the reality of this moment. Our concepts of it may remain the same but reality itself will be different.

If truth is reality, then the truth is always changing.

If truth equals our concepts of reality then the truth changes only when we change or concepts of reality.

 

[Nakosis]

Truth is subjective; fact isn't.

In my opinion.

Someone told me once that fact = popularly accepted opinion.

In some sense this is true for people. Or does fact equal reality. The fact of the matter, is the same as the reality of the matter?

In either case I suppose facts change.

 

[wizanda]

In some sense this is true for people. Or does fact equal reality. The fact of the matter, is the same as the reality of the matter?

Firstly reality is a different word, implying a sense of scope of the environment it is within.

Whereas the fact of the matter, is the issues we can establish to be real between the participating parties.

Someone told me once that fact = popularly accepted opinion.

Unfortunately they appear to be wrong; as when we check the facts, we can see hearsay evidence doesn't provide facts, yet opinion.

In either case I suppose facts change.

Our understanding of the facts can change; yet the facts remain.

In my opinion.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

The topic is truth.


But not just any old truth. Since some people think along these lines.

This is about THE truth.

Definition:

Truth: that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality

Pretty easy. That which is true. Therefore, not false.


Ok. Ponder this: (an easy one?)

I find the expression 2+2=4 represents THE truth.

Should someone claim that 2+2=3 is their personal version of truth that’s fine with me. They can believe any truth they want, but THE truth is still 2+2=4. A mathematician can prove that 2+2=4 is true.

Therefore people who hold a truth that differs would actually be holding a falsehood.


Another example: (Easy again, but different)

Long ago, all of humanity held that a flat earth was truth. That’s fine. They can believe that as their truth. But we later discovered THE truth. Regardless what people thought was truth, THE truth never changed. It was THE truth before people recognized it, it was THE truth afterward, and it is still THE truth today, regardless what falsehoods people have in their heads that they choose to call truth.


A final example:

There is a story in the Bible about a couple of people named Adam and Eve. Many people hold as truth that this story portrays real people in a real place and time. Many hold as truth that it has no truth whatsoever. And other variations on their truths.

However, THE truth about this story exists. You cannot deny that THE truth exists. Regardless of our own personal “truths”, THE truth really exists. Some of us will actually have THE truth and some will not. This is not a debate about the story. My truth is that the two specific people named never existed, nor did a special garden. But that is irrelevant. My truth may be THE truth, and it may not be.
In this example, THE truth existed from the beginning and it will exist until no humans are left.

The point being that THE truth cannot change. Our knowledge can and does change, but not THE truth.


This is the essence behind the poll.

Extra credit work:
There is discussion (is that a good word for it?). regarding homosexual marriage.
THE truth exists, whether it should be allowed or not. Has THE truth always existed?
And how would you go about finding THE truth?

To know The Truths as individual subjects rather than one universal truth, we could not Know that the laws of nature where different (walking on water and parting the read sea) changed from the until now. Our view of reality as we understand it only applies to what we can observe and proove.

However, having The truth that two and two was five at one time we cannot prove. If we relate it to god, god is a pretty out there version of truth: created the world, saved people, sent angels, had a human without divine inflictions but our spirituality has many and growing. We would have to go back in time to know the truth of the matter.

Same as the future. We dont know the Truth of what will happen in the future. We have hope and our version (going to heaven, dead rising) but thats not part of the laws of nature. Unless it changes, it remains our truth not The truth.

The Buddha teaches that everything is Our truth. We are deluded that our truth is The truth. Unless we get out of the ego, our views whether it be god or being democrat, will always influence not only how we live but how we treat and define other people Not just to them but these discriminations infect the person who has them.

There are different Truths like different types of math and truths of different subjects. Math is probably the only thing we can study as true/fact without bias like god etc.

 

[David T]

The topic is truth.


But not just any old truth. Since some people think along these lines.

This is about THE truth.

Definition:

Truth: that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality

Pretty easy. That which is true. Therefore, not false.


Ok. Ponder this: (an easy one?)

I find the expression 2+2=4 represents THE truth.

Should someone claim that 2+2=3 is their personal version of truth that’s fine with me. They can believe any truth they want, but THE truth is still 2+2=4. A mathematician can prove that 2+2=4 is true.

Therefore people who hold a truth that differs would actually be holding a falsehood.


Another example: (Easy again, but different)

Long ago, all of humanity held that a flat earth was truth. That’s fine. They can believe that as their truth. But we later discovered THE truth. Regardless what people thought was truth, THE truth never changed. It was THE truth before people recognized it, it was THE truth afterward, and it is still THE truth today, regardless what falsehoods people have in their heads that they choose to call truth.


A final example:

There is a story in the Bible about a couple of people named Adam and Eve. Many people hold as truth that this story portrays real people in a real place and time. Many hold as truth that it has no truth whatsoever. And other variations on their truths.

However, THE truth about this story exists. You cannot deny that THE truth exists. Regardless of our own personal “truths”, THE truth really exists. Some of us will actually have THE truth and some will not. This is not a debate about the story. My truth is that the two specific people named never existed, nor did a special garden. But that is irrelevant. My truth may be THE truth, and it may not be.
In this example, THE truth existed from the beginning and it will exist until no humans are left.

The point being that THE truth cannot change. Our knowledge can and does change, but not THE truth.


This is the essence behind the poll.

Extra credit work:
There is discussion (is that a good word for it?). regarding homosexual marriage.
THE truth exists, whether it should be allowed or not. Has THE truth always existed?
And how would you go about finding THE truth?

Reality. A tree has no problem with it so are we talking about grades of dysfunction here? . Is one dysfunction more or less true than another dysfunction?

 

[wizanda]

Math is probably the only thing we can study as true/fact without bias like god etc.

There will be different mathematical theories for everything that exist; like we can look at the evolving understanding of gravity for instance.

The Buddha teaches that everything is Our truth.

The Buddha also taught that nothing is our truth; everything is understandable to be without being as well.

In my opinion.

 

[David T]

To know The Truths as individual subjects rather than one universal truth, we could not Know that the laws of nature where different (walking on water and parting the read sea) changed from the until now. Our view of reality as we understand it only applies to what we can observe and proove.

However, having The truth that two and two was five at one time we cannot prove. If we relate it to god, god is a pretty out there version of truth: created the world, saved people, sent angels, had a human without divine inflictions but our spirituality has many and growing. We would have to go back in time to know the truth of the matter.

Same as the future. We dont know the Truth of what will happen in the future. We have hope and our version (going to heaven, dead rising) but thats not part of the laws of nature. Unless it changes, it remains our truth not The truth.

The Buddha teaches that everything is Our truth. We are deluded that our truth is The truth. Unless we get out of the ego, our views whether it be god or being democrat, will always influence not only how we live but how we treat and define other people Not just to them but these discriminations infect the person who has them.

There are different Truths like different types of math and truths of different subjects. Math is probably the only thing we can study as true/fact without bias like god etc.

Hildegard von debingen, said exactly the same thing in the 13th century, "we cannot live in an interpreted world, for an interpreted world is not home."

I have virtually zero sense that that nature is remotely experienced and thus perceived today as home, its intellectualized into house, with maybe warm fuzzy feelings. when home becomes house, then reality becomes that, and that is dysfunctional.

John Muir clearly understood this, in how dysfunctional culture was in his day. It has continued unabated, and all emperical evidence in nature points to it. Even science is aware of that, that's how bad its gotten. That's pitiful. Buddha called it thousands of years ago. All these teachers gurus at the core if valid are really just teaching "spit the apple out"."just"it appears is Rocket science apparently.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

2+2=4 is a representation of something that IS immutable. If you take 2 objects of a type and add another group of 2 of those objects, then you have 4 of those objects. 2 could be "blarb" on some other planet and 4 could be "snib". And on that planet, "blarb + blarb = snib" is just as true as "2 + 2 = 4" for us here on Earth. This simply cannot change.

Another good example is the set of properties of a triangle. In no universe could you draw what is considered a triangle and have the angles of that triangle add to anything other than (in our measurement system) 180 degrees. Whatever representation "180 degrees" takes in any part of the universe, that is the total of all 3 angles of a triangle. Guaranteed, no ifs, ands or buts.

There are immutable truths. Something like the name of something changing and no longer matching the subject of the name, or even the laws of nature changing are really poor examples of "mutable truths". Names are subjective, entirely. And the laws of nature are what they are now, and would be what they would be later. The truth about what they are now is the truth in this moment, no matter what. It may change, and then the truth about what the laws are in that new time would be the truth then. So what if the past truth no longer applies to now? That's like saying that, as a child, the truth is I am young and when I get older, I have somehow broken the truth, and it changed. No... my conditions changed... not "the truth". It may no longer be true that I am young... but the truth in any given time didn't "change" - I changed, and therefore what was true about me became a different set of truths. But "2+2=4" doesn't grow up to become "2+2=5".

 

[wizanda]

If you take 2 objects of a type and add another group of 2 of those objects, then you have 4 of those objects. 2 could be "blarb" on some other planet and 4 could be "snib". And on that planet, "blarb + blarb = snib" is just as true as "2 + 2 = 4" for us here on Earth.

Yet if those blarbs breed with each other, and we end up with more blarbs; so then they eat a few snibs, then how many do we have?

In my opinion.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Yet if those blarbs breed with each other, and we end up with more blarbs; so then they eat a few snibs, then how many do we have?

In my opinion.

Easy - snickty whesk.

 

[wizanda]

Easy - snickty whesk.

The point being, that we can't really quantify anything as being fact, without all the data; which basically means only God knows.

There are always additional variables in any real life equations; so sometimes 2+2=4 is not that simple.

In my opinion.

 

[taykair]

Recently, at another site, a poster posed a question. He stated that he was holding a box, and asked if any of us could either prove or disprove his statement. The following was my response:


I don't know if you have a box or not. I'm agnostic as far as your box is concerned. I'm a-box-tic.

I do know (or, at least, I think I do) that all things exist within the tiny, yet infinite, space which lies between zero and one - between impossibility and absolute certainty. And I believe that what we call the impossible is simply that which has a very low probability of being sensed by us, and what we call a certainty is only that which has a very high probability of being sensed by us.

When I say "sensed by us", I don't necessarily mean first-hand observation of an object or event. I'm nowhere near a real elephant right now, but I can sense one by watching a nature documentary on television. I can sense an elephant that's more than two millenia old by reading a book about Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. I can even sense pink, polka-dotted elephants, given just the right amount of Irish whiskey.

Many of us (perhaps most of us) see reality as either objective or subjective. We say that objective reality is "what's really out there", and that subjective reality is merely our imprecise and incomplete sensing of objective reality. Imprecise because our senses may, in some way, fail us. Incomplete because my subjective reality is not yours. (I see, on TV, the elephant charging a group of tourists. You are one of the tourists. Our realities may differ somewhat.)

What is "out there", then? What is objective reality? It's everything between zero and one. In other words: It's everything. There is nothing so outlandish, so utterly rediculous, so (yes, I'll say it) impossible that it does not exist somewhere in this great big universe of universes. Some of us have been lucky enough (or insane enough, take your choice) to have sensed something that no one else can perceive. Do we say, because seven billion people have not sensed what you have sensed, that they are right and you are wrong, and that objective reality does not have room for your silly notions? Is that what objective reality is? Is it merely what the majority (even an overwhelming majority) says it is? No, that can't be right.

Okay. That's enough. My head hurts.

About your box, though: In one reality, you are in possession of a box. In another reality, you do not have a box. In another reality, boxes don't exist, so you don't have one. In another reality, only boxes exist, but you don't, so you can't have one. In another reality, you are a box.

And in yet another reality, you are clutching your box tight as you ride your pink, polka-dotted elephant to work.

 

[osgart]

Those are facts, not THE truth. Some facts are absolute, and many change.

Truth is a long lost meaning in today's society. Virtues of good character and heart are The Truth; all such qualities.
That will never change. But people feel this is outdated perception. But where there is no Truth the people do perish for lack of it.

Truth is the literal foundation of civil peace, anything less or different is tentative.

Can you imagine a world with none empathy, none compassion, and no understanding of what is true this way. A world without love, is the bitterest pill.

So I voted no way man in defense of the olde meaning of Truth.

 

[wizanda]

And in yet another reality, you are clutching your box tight as you ride your pink, polka-dotted elephant to work.

Which you suddenly realize is always inside a box, and seems to be heading to being planted in a box; so you step out of it all, and realize that the silhouettes that were on the wall in the box, weren't real to begin with.

In my opinion.

 

[Brickjectivity]

There is discussion (is that a good word for it?). regarding homosexual marriage.

Way off topic

This is about THE truth.

Definition:

Truth: that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality

Pretty easy. That which is true. Therefore, not false.

You know how the sun has to shine every day, day after day? Truth is like that. Its also like how you have to eat every day and breath every moment or you die. You never really get to keep 'The Truth'. It just passes through you and makes you alive.

If we take the words of Jesus on this subject he says that out of the heart proceeds lies. Jeremiah the prophet points out that the heart is deceitful above all things and cannot be understood. James referring to wisdom says that we walk in the light and are children of the light that we are not perfect. 1 John says if we claim to be perfect then we have shown there is no truth in us. Therefore if we are taking Jesus, Jeremiah, James and John on the subject, The Truth, is not anything that we are capable of handling, something that is corrupted as it passes through us. Each person must receive it directly. Like breathe, it stinks the moment it has passed into one's own lungs and must be renewed.

 

[Nakosis]

Our understanding of the facts can change; yet the facts remain.

In my opinion.

Ok, what would be an example of this.