Who are the truth seekers here?

[Sunstone]

OP, if you were a truth seeker, you would ask, not tell.

Well said.

 

[YmirGF]

It has come to my attention that there are many in RF who blatantly don't care about truth. They are just here to exercise their ability to play games. Such people waste my time.

Just wanted to add that it is not that I do not care about "the Truth". I think anyone with an IQ over 90 seeks validity in their lives, thus I suspect that is a quite natural process.

Personally speaking, we get a lot of mentally challenged types here on RF and as a long time user (12+ years), one learns to tune out those who start prattling on about "The TRUTH" as it becomes clear, early on, that their connection with reality is more tenuous than that of your average garden gnome. If I have unfairly tarred you with that large brush I do apologize but given the inherent belligerence of your OP, that you don't wish to speak to anyone outside your narrow focus, I'm not so sure it was a error on my part.

Frankly, if you have some inside track on what you consider to be existential truth, I would be greatly interesting in hearing what you say... ... as long as it is FireFox friendly, so that I don't have to sully myself by stooping to the usage of Internet Explorer.

 

[YmirGF]

ooops......

if anything will make you humble....its the truth

no lie

Surprising how that works, eh, Thiefy!

 

[Audie]

Who are the truth seekers in the Theological Concepts section?

It has come to my attention that there are many in RF who blatantly don't care about truth. They are just here to exercise their ability to play games. Such people waste my time.

There are also professed truth seekers who are off the yellow brick road, and sleeping in a dogma field.

I only care about talking to active rational truth seekers, and I want to know who you are. I mean objective truth. i.e. Correspondence to reality. I want to talk to people who not only use logic when it leads to conclusions they like, but also submit to logic when it leads to conclusions they don't like.

This thread will probably also attract responses from the people I have no use for, but that's OK; I want to know who to ignore.

You gave yourself up to the mystery
And sailed the oceans looking for
The secret of the key
To unlock a truth that you may never find
For it was m a cup of kindness all the time

You feel the thirst
But none can make you drink
The answer's waiting for you here but
It's not what you think
It won't steal your soul or leave you blind
It was just a cup of kindness all the time

And when Mother Mary finally comes to cal
She could pass right thru your heart
And leave no trace at all
While you were reaching for
The sacred and divine
She was standing right beside you
All the time

And the emptiness
You can't seem to fill
Beauty fades and pleasures cannot
Take away the chili
And the glamour lures you down into a lie
O but the cup of kindness
Never will run dry

You hear the vandals
Howlin' down your walls
And arm yourself against the ones
Who want to see you fall
Till some Holy Grail reveals
The grand design
Well it was in a cup of kindness
All the time

 

[tayla]

What about the big area in the middle between provably true and provably untrue? Do you have a general policy to cover that area, or judge each case individually?

Believe what you want, can't prove it one way or the other.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

You could call it naive arrogance, but I think a desperation to forcibly maintain comfortable delusions is more accurate. Humility opens the mind. Fear closes it. And like the fundamentalist who hides this fear in saying, "It's not my words, but God's!," the funda-rationalist says, "It's not me just saying this, but logic proves this!". Such overt displays of masking one's own fear of not-knowing and not being OK with that. It ain't a matter of IQ, but EQ.

OP, if you were a truth seeker, you would ask, not tell. You don't know truth.

If someone possessed a truth, it would be surrendering to the fear of saying it if they remain silent. And to accuse someone of not knowing truth, requires that you inherently claim to know said truth yourself, even if it happens to be that said truth is unknowable.

Fear is usually what closes minds rather than humility. Knowing the banshees that will descend on those putting forth unpopular truths, but say it anyway in hopes that a few reasonable minds might be reached, requires conquering that fear.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Based on the OP, my guess is that I would be classed as one of those who is "[exercising his] ability to play games." You should probably just preemptively put me on ignore.

 

[Nakosis]

Incorrect. Humility is irrelevant to truth seeking.

Humility is accepting one's own ignorance. (lack of knowledge)

Why would a person go about seeking something they already know?

 

[Windwalker]

If someone possessed a truth, it would be surrendering to the fear of saying it if they remain silent.

Big I, big F. IF, they possessed a truth, rather than closed-mindedly proclaiming their perception as absolute and saying that those who disagree will be ignored. This is no different whatsover than a fundamalist believer who shuts down discussion, "God said, I believe it, that settles it for me!", and then arrogantly proclaims they will shake the dust off their sandals at the town that does not receive their truth. No difference. You can take a fundi out of a religion, but you can't take the fundi out of a fundi.

And to accuse someone of not knowing truth, requires that you inherently claim to know said truth yourself, even if it happens to be that said truth is unknowable.

The "said truth" here is about someone being closed minded vs open minded. It has nothing to do with whatever thing it is they are proclaiming as truth. That is irrelevant. It is not WHAT someone believes, but rather the mentality with which they hold that belief. Being a "true believer" earmarks someone as a deeply fearful soul afraid of losing a false sense of security they think "having the truth" will give them.

To humbly say, "I don't know" is to know a lot more than those who proclaim to know absolutely. As the old saying goes, 'The more you know, the more you know you don't know". The opposite is true, 'The less you know, the more deluded you are that you think you know something.'

Fear is usually what closes minds rather than humility.

This is exactly what I said. "Humility opens the mind. Fear closes it."

Knowing the banshees that will descend on those putting forth unpopular truths, but say it anyway in hopes that a few reasonable minds might be reached, requires conquering that fear.

Yeah, that's not the case here. There are more than a few reasonable minds here, myself being one of them, and when those of us, and there are many so far in this thread calling this beneath reasonableness, I think there's more than something to that.

 

[Nakosis]

Sounds like art..

Kind of like you know what is good art when you see it?

You know what is good truth when you hear it?

 

[David T]

In a sense yes. What resonates with you says a lot about you. It seems what resonates a lot for most people is what is culture. I was at my office today, and it has a nice window. Granted the traffic noise is loud, but that noise has a voice that is much much older than culture and it resonates at least for me. That seems sane...

 

[Cary Cook]

Believe what you want, can't prove it one way or the other.

OK. Fair enough.

 

[Cary Cook]

I would be greatly interesting in hearing what you say... ... as long as it is FireFox friendly, so that I don't have to sully myself by stooping to the usage of Internet Explorer.

Essential truth:
!. Objective truth exists.
2. Some of it is knowable.
3. Logic is reliable for determining that some propositions are false.

What part of my site is not FireFox friendly?

 

[Cary Cook]

Do you mean truth, as in...
That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

Or do you mean "Truth" (note quotes and capitalisation) as in...
A belief that is accepted as true.

?

That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

 

[Cary Cook]

I might as well come right out and say it, I'm the world's foremost authority on Truth, I'm only half-kidding. But I have a working model for Truth that's stood the test of time. I agree with your OP, especially that it will probably draw contentious individuals. Comes with the territory, I s'pose. For me, Truth is God and vice versa, wherever that may lead.

But I have one correction to make, Truth is more than just objective Truth. I think it can be thought of as being composed of 4 aspects: knowledge, justice, love & beauty--in a spectrum from the universally objective to individually subjective, and combined in the middle two. I originally thought there may be more than four, but all apparent new ones have turned out to be just expressions of one of the four.

Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, but there is no recognized academic discipline for studying the nature of Truth as a whole, no Veritism 101. It's not even in the Dewey Decimal System.

Truth is correspondence to reality, and exists apart from knowledge or any other mental faculty. It may exist apart from all minds, except possibly that of a Supreme Being.

 

[savagewind]

Dear Cary,
This is my first post to you..... ever.
Please add my name to your ignore list, immediately.
So.... this will be my last post to you..... ever.

Of one mind we are. LOL

 

[YmirGF]

Essential truth:
!. Objective truth exists.

Obviously, otherwise science would never have been get off the ground.

2. Some of it is knowable.

Indeed, see previous response.

3. Logic is reliable for determining that some propositions are false.

Hardly a keen insight but I can agree with this.

What part of my site is not FireFox friendly?

If appears that you are using Micro$oft specific font handling routines as a large chunk of virtually every page is seriously messed up. For example, my favorite web design package is Dreamweaver CS and I can check compatibility with Internet Explorer and Firefox within the layout program itself. Likewise if you build a page in MS Word, Dreamweaver can remove the Micro$oft specific code to ensure the page will look the same with any browser. And that my friend is an objective truth.

 

[Cary Cook]

Thank you. I used straight html to create this. Apparently there's something in the heading that ****s everything up.

Anyway, apparently we have no disagreement on essential truth. But if I remember right, we had another disagreement which was for me a show stopper. If it comes up again, I'll point it out. Or you can cross me off now if you like.

 

[Cary Cook]

** post moderated **

I admit arrogance. I can fake humility, but I can't be humble.

Note that it does not prevent me from admitting error, as I did in my thread entitled Omniscience is Impossible.
I have seen only one other such admission in RF.

 

[Sunstone]

I have seen only one other such admission in RF.

You don't read the same posters I do then.