What IS Truth? Have you really thought about it?

Let’s explore Truth: What it is and what it isn’t. Why? How about because without Truth you will: (a) not enjoy life, (b) you will most likely die very soon if you don’t acknowledge at least some specific truths, and (c) I believe you will find that without Truth there is no real point in hanging around in this life anyway.

First, we find that we get our particular view of what Truth is from three basic sources. Now I’m not saying that these are the only sources of our individual conception of Truth, so get your hackles down and bear with me a few minutes. We get a partial understanding of Truth by our experiences, including, of course, what we are taught by others and society. These include things like gravity, which can be very annoying both when you are trying to learn to walk and when you are old and are trying to continue being able to walk, but is much appreciated when you realize that it keeps air down here on the planet where we kinda like to make use of it. This is the area of Truth that we can prove through experimentation over and over again – always with the same result. It also includes what we learn from interacting with people and how they react to us and other things that affect them (human nature, which is more generalized because of variances).

Second, we accept as truth certain things we are told by those around us about our origins, our universe, and things spiritual. These are things that we may have little or no experience with ourselves, but which we accept as Truth because either everyone around us accepts these things as rote, or because someone we believe should know some Truth told us what this Truth is. These people are primarily our parents, but also include teachers, ‘experts’, scientists, etc. If we examine this source of truth we will find that, since we have not actually verified all the empirical data ourselves (if there is any) concerning this Truth, we have entered into the realm of a belief system. This is what we call faith. (Now this will offend a great many people – telling them that most of what they accept as Truth is really all built on their faith in the sources that gave them the information, unless maybe that source was some religious authority). Therefore they will believe 100,000 scientists who parrot their faith system in telling you that the dinosaurs died out millions of years before man was around even though there are fossilized footprints of men within the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs here in the state of Texas. These scientists that we trust to find and disseminate Truth would rather believe in what they want to believe in rather than believe their own eyes. There is a mountain of hard evidence that absolutely proves that this earth could not be older than 10,000 years, but they choose not to believe it. (See Dr. Walt Brown;s book “In the Beginning” to have your socks blown off with this data! Real science, not religious mumbo-jumbo!).

This leads us into the third basic area or source of Truth: religious belief that we as adults have chosen to believe. This area includes not only mystical books and studies either handed down over generations or recently created, but also includes belief systems based on Yellow Science. What I call Yellow Science is data that is presented as scientifically harvested, couched in scientific terms, and surrounded by proven fact in order to give it an aura of Truth, but which violates proven Laws of Physics (e.g.- Macro evolution, which violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics). This is where we decide on our own what we will accept as truth and what we will not accept as truth. The difference between this source of Truth and the previous one is a hard to define line. The former we believe because it is what we are taught and we just accept it. The latter is what we have actually thought about (sometimes very little, though) and have decided to believe as Truth, whether there is any real empirical data to prove it or not or, even, whether or not it really makes sense from a logical point of view. (Logic IS a science of its own – you should study it.) Common sense is an application of logic on a level that can be grasped by most adults on the planet. It is from this logical basis, what we call common sense, that we should approach the question “What IS Truth?”

Most people take the combination of the above-named sources and roll them together into some sort of disorganized mish-mash of the three to arrive at what they think Truth is. Thus they arrive at THEIR Truth. This is mostly based on what they DECIDE that they WANT Truth to be. Hence I have my truth and you have yours. But do either of us then have Truth? If Truth is different for different people in the same universe, on the same planet, perhaps in the same country, the same city, even the same family – then we have OPINION, not Truth! Truth, to be truth must be absolute! LET ME SAY THAT AGAIN: Truth, TO BE TRUTH MUST be ABSOLUTE! Why? It is for the same reason that the color red is RED. If it were blue then how can it be red? This is common sense. The people that say that Truth is relative simply want to go with their OPINION, because, really, they don’t like Truth. Truth gets in the way of what they want.

Well, then, if there is Truth out there that we cannot prove to be Truth, such as how the universe began (since we cannot go back there and see, measure, and observe it), or such as what is really right and wrong (since we disagree on that widely), what do we use to base our beliefs on? What can we agree on as a basis for Truth? It cannot be based on opinion, for that would by definition preclude Truth, as there are too many different opinions out there. So we must look to something outside ourselves. With the physical universe we can find some truth and prove it, such as what we call the Laws of Nature. But with moral questions and other un-provable things (scientifically) we must look to something higher, outside ourselves. It is this common sense realization that there might be a higher intelligence or creative force – whether it be aliens or one or more gods – that gets us uncomfortable. This discomfort comes at not being really in control and in a feeling of being, in some sense, less than some other higher being. We don’t like that, so we decide to believe that we can create our own Truth, as ludicrous as that turns out to be when evaluated logically. But many of us ignore that and believe we can create our own reality. A creator is a god. Yes, we want to be god – so don’t bother us with the facts, thank-you. But if we are all gods creating reality, then we will have four billion different realities, and who is within who’s reality? This is, again, absurd. It is denial.

There must be a real, eternal, unchanging source of Truth. If not then who are you to tell me that it is murder to kill someone if they inconvenience me by getting ahead of me in line at the grocery store? In fact, who are you to say that murder is a bad thing at all? In MY reality it might be a good thing, or maybe there is no good or bad anyway. (No, I do not believe murder is OK.) Some say you can’t legislate morality. Oh, come off it! ALL legislation is some form of morality. Murder, taxes, road building, speed limits, pollution control, zoning, theft, insider trading, treason, rape, littering – ALL laws on these things are based on some idea of right and wrong. ALL ideas of what is right or wrong have to be based on some accepted Truth. Truth, to be Truth, must be based on something outside ourselves (our opinions). Truth, ultimately, must be something that has greater knowledge and power than we do for us to regard it as Truth.

And if this is so then we find that this Truth must have been the creative force that made all that we find in this universe. A force that creates IS Truth, in that if it decides to create something, anything, in a certain fashion, and sets up some kind of set of rules (Laws) that it must operate within, then those rules ARE Truth for that something as far as that something is concerned. I hope you are following me on this. If I weld together two pieces of metal then they ARE welded together, whether they believe it or not! I am the creator of the metal object and they are forced to follow my rules because I have that power over them.

Creation and a set of rules imply that there is an intelligence at work here (remember the Second Law of Thermodynamics! Read the above-mentioned study!). So this creator is a person, and what ever this person decides to do in or with the thing he has created is Truth for that created thing. Therefore, to the created thing, the creator IS Truth. Truth is a person. If Truth says “Let there be light!”, then guess what? You got it – since the creator IS Truth, light cannot help but BE.

Rats. I really wanted to be God. Oh, well. Unfortunately I’m one of those people who wants to know the Truth, even if it hurts, inconveniences, or annoys me. Unfortunately for you, if I’m absolutely convinced by the evidence what Truth is, I’m going to let you know. So I study what really makes sense within the confines of the universe I have to deal with, using as much empirical knowledge as I can, applying some rational thinking and analysis, and through much reflection and ‘soul searching’ to prevent my own desires and pre-conceived ideas from keeping me from seeing what really makes sense. Because I really, really want to know the Truth, and I’m not afraid of what I will find.

By the way – after much study I not only have come to what I believe is a well-founded conclusion on what Truth is, but I know who He is, and am getting to know Him.

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