2007-08-18 23:14:27 · 19 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Starting at the beginning.
First Truth: You are a conscious being that can think and perceive things outside of yourself. Once you have grasped the truth of self and Other we can go on. This is something you just have to "get". I can't make you understand this.
Second Truth: There are other beings just like you with their own selves out there in that Other. Most people get this and you can expect to be able to interact with about 96% of them. Note that current estimates are that about 4% of the population are sociopaths or psychopaths that have no understanding of the fact that other people are just like themselves and have no empathy for anyone else. Not everyone "gets" this truth so be careful.
The Third Truth: This consciousness that you feel and the way that you can interact with the Other has great meaning and that the world and the people in it are an expression of a Greater Consciousness that created the world for the express purpose of fostering this interaction between these created consciousnesses and with Himself. Again this is something you just have to "get".
The Fourth Truth: This Creator set up the world so that individual consciousnesses could interact with each other in a reliable and predictable way and thus come to know each other and their Creator. Key here is the understanding of the need of an objective reality in which all of the individual consciousnesses can interact. From this we have the fundamental faith basis for modern science and human knowledge. Objective reality--Magic is not allowed. A reality in which everyone has at least in principle an equal opportunity to control and influence reality in exactly the same way. All of the selves are in this sense equal. This truth can be derived from observation. The vast shared experience of humanity shows it to be true.
Note that the difference between atheists and deists is that atheists skip truth 3 and postulate that the world is set up in a reliable and predictable way for no particular reason. I find this unsatisfactory. And flies in the face of the FACT that a huge number of people claim to have interacted with the Greater Consciousness of the Third Truth. (BTW in the spirit of full disclosure, I am one of those people who claim to have interacted with God mediated through Jesus Christ.)
I also note that it would seem that some of the posters in this area occasionally need to be reminded of truth number two.
From these truths or postulates, I can generate rational arguments for the following:
1. A loving creator God
2. Modern Science
3. A just and free society based on law and freedom of thought
4. A responsible stewardship of the environment
5. And a justification to survive and reproduce
2007-08-19 01:02:56 · answer #1 · answered by skip 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Tricky. The universe is full of objective truths, but in order to conceptualise them subjectively, we have to make a model of that truth. The model is seldom a perfect representation.
Objective truth is a point. Subjective truth is a cloud.
'The Taj Mahal is white' is 'true', but is a very limited model of the actual objective truth. It refers only to the overall reflectivity of the outermost layer of the temple, under special conditions of external lighting:
o In orange dawn light, is the Taj white?
o Scrape off some of the external plaster. Is the Taj white?
o Ask someone blind. Is it white?
None of these actually mean that it ISN'T white, however. And they certainly suggest that the Taj is *some* colour - rather than that the Taj is a type of fish, non-existent, or a Shakespeare play.
The best model we can make is the the Taj is, in certain given circumstances, predominantly a white-appearing structure. To understand and model the objective truth, we must position that circumstance within a cloud of possible true statements about the Taj that include the brown stuff beneath the surface, the usual illuminating to which it's subjected, the characteristics of the viewer, and even the configuration and orientation of Taj, viewer and context.
Mostly, it comes down to the capability of language (as an interface to thought) to make a model or map of the objective truth. It's seldom precise.
CD
2007-08-19 06:49:29 · answer #2 · answered by Super Atheist 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
True is but a derivative of truth. And Truth is relative to the knowledge possessed by the subject at any given time.
Truth is what comes when one knows all things, so in short a few of us have only glanced at truth while the rest haven't a clue.
2007-08-19 06:54:13 · answer #3 · answered by msuetonius 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is true that everyone wants to be happy. No one wants to be miserable. Everything a person does is to be happier. There is a way to be extremely happy. See short article on site below to learn all about yourself.
2007-08-19 06:40:56 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Religion is an example of how a small group of highly motivated individuals use powerful psychological technics to bring together large disparate groups of people into a single cohesive unit for the purpose of mass control.
2007-08-19 06:27:51 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Is there corroborating evidence? Can it be proven by mathematics? Or science, which is coming to a conclusion by observation, experimentation, with documentation? have two or more people witnessed the same event? If not, then it's false.
2007-08-19 06:51:08 · answer #6 · answered by michael m 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
2007-08-19 06:33:18 · answer #7 · answered by Martin S 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Seeing the reality of the nature of material and non material substances.
www.meditationthai.org
2007-08-19 06:30:31 · answer #8 · answered by Bright 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The truth is like a diamond, it's many-faceted
2007-08-19 06:23:58 · answer #9 · answered by Benjamin Peret 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Gods Love for us
2007-08-19 07:15:08 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋