Exevolt Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 I decided to check up how the evenglicals were doing by turning on JHM.orgs Cornerstone Church on channel 9 and after speaking of how America is following a great lie (Ironey) he spoke of is there such things as absolute truths (his being DUH BIBBLE). So I ask you Ex-C, do you believe there are such things as Absolute Truths or is it all relevent or whatever? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thesadclown Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 I think you would have to designate a single perspective as being THE perspective in order to pull off something like absolute or objective truth. Pretty easy for Christians, since they have God, but without something similar I think it would be difficult to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yrth Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 I decided to check up how the evenglicals were doing by turning on JHM.orgs Cornerstone Church on channel 9 and after speaking of how America is following a great lie (Ironey) he spoke of is there such things as absolute truths (his being DUH BIBBLE). So I ask you Ex-C, do you believe there are such things as Absolute Truths or is it all relevent or whatever? What do you mean by "absolute truths" and "it?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 Yes, I certainly believe there are absolute truths. I am careful though to cast that in the plural. I've come to suspect there exists no largest understanding of the cosmos (i.e. omniscience is impossible). Increasingly, I also tend to think of truths in terms of entailment and implication and accordingly tend to cast them in conditional form (i.e. if X then Y; X impies Y; X entails Y). Relativism for many people is a convenient excuse to basically lie. This has been called vulgar relativism. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 I do think there is absolute truths, but we don't necessarily always know what they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcdaddy Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 "Truth? What is truth?" -Pontius Pilate. Of course he never really said that. Math is truth. Outside of that, I'm not sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 Hans, about what you said above... absolutely. Math is truth. Outside of that, I'm not sure. I think mathematics mostly concerns itself with systems of implication (i.e. inferential entailment). Science mostly concerns itself with causal entailment. Science employs math for the purposes of modeling causal entailment within inferential entailment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 Hans, about what you said above... absolutely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Valk0010 Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 The only absolute's I know of, are logical absolutes. The rest is up for discussion besides maybe to not do harm to others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LivingLife Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 I decided to check up how the evenglicals were doing by turning on JHM.orgs Cornerstone Church on channel 9 and after speaking of how America is following a great lie (Ironey) he spoke of is there such things as absolute truths (his being DUH BIBBLE). So I ask you Ex-C, do you believe there are such things as Absolute Truths or is it all relevent or whatever? I guess one could argue that in principle all men are "created" equal. All men have to eat, shit and urinate. All men have to die. Beyond that it becomes subjective and luck of the draw as to the quality of life. Simply put, you are born, you live, you die. That is an absolute truth. Some folk believe in karma, what goes around comes around, it is not an absolute but does tend to appear to play out in life, coincidence or absolute truth? As for the babble. how anyone can claim absolutes from an errant work of fiction beats me. Perhaps another absolute, everyone needs/wants to be loved, but love is subjective. Perhaps being accepted for who you are, I would say most folk desire at least that much. Can a psychopath expect this too? Whoops, curve-ball and now we start with subjectivity and measuring to standards deemed appropriate by society. Societies tend to favour conformists rather than the outliers and/or rebels or different folk (many reasons, gay, introvert, nerdie etc.) So yeah there seem to be only one indefatigable truth when it comes to humans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 The only thing I absolutely know is that I don't know what the truth is most of the time. That, and paradigms, like christianity, other religions and various political and economic ideologies, that claim to corner the truth, are full of shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcdaddy Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 Hans, about what you said above... absolutely. Math is truth. Outside of that, I'm not sure. I think mathematics mostly concerns itself with systems of implication (i.e. inferential entailment). Science mostly concerns itself with causal entailment. Science employs math for the purposes of modeling causal entailment within inferential entailment. Huh huh huhhhh....... U eez sooooooo smartee pantss!! Me did nut no u spoke smartese!! Lolz I betcha u went to dat der yoonaveersity and gotcha sum a dat edyoomacashuz!!. Sometimes I wonder if I accidentally strayed into a quantum theory forum. This is one of those times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcdaddy Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 Oopsie. Double post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suzanne Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 I do think there is absolute truths, but we don't necessarily always know what they are. That exactly. I think we usually don't know what they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
creative Posted May 29, 2012 Share Posted May 29, 2012 Change is the only constant in the universe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 I believe there is what we feebly call an Absolute but it is paradoxical. It therefore cannot be penetrated by reason and logic which exists in a dualistic system, so anyone claiming they can codify it in a set of rules and laws, or formulas, as absolutes is full of shit, just as Vigle says. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaiser01 Posted May 30, 2012 Share Posted May 30, 2012 I dropped the universal existentialism of no absolute definition for anything a long time ago as it almost drove me back to Christianity. Living in a world of no absolutes is a miserable and scary place and it is completely unnecessary and you only fall into it when you let go of logic or forget it. It was actually a theologian by the name of R.C. Sproul who helped me realize the problems of no absolute truth and why there is even with no God in existence. All people who believe there is no absolute definition for anything will only live that way when it suits them, as you can not drive on the road and see a bus and just say “there is a 50/50 chance that bus is not there I might just pass through it.” When you have a world of no absolutes all you have is a world of irrationality and just to think that the irrationality has some sort of definment over logic is irrational. I could hold up this piece of chalk and say in a hushed voice as if im saying something profound and say “this chalk is not a piece of chalk” and suddenly everyone will think you’ve said something amazing but you might as well of stood up there and babbled your lips together with your finger. I am speaking nonsense when I say this but everyone accepts it as law, I think it is the same with irrationality and no absolute definition, just because you can define the existence of something does not make it true or does not make it exist. You must come from a logical predisposition to define what the irrational is and to logically say there are no absolutes which of course is a contradiction in itself to absolutely state there are no absolutes. I think it is a safer position to be in a world of absolute truth and I don’t think any God is necessary, Logic is the only God we need. We may not have absolutes of morality as they are human subjective we do have absolutes of physics and chemistry and it is irrational nonsense to say we don’t. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnieNaked Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Wait, aren't the statements 'there are absolute truths' and 'there are no absolute truths' both statements of absolute truth? Head asplode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Wait, aren't the statements 'there are absolute truths' and 'there are no absolute truths' both statements of absolute truth? Head asplode. Implied in the statement is "I believe there are", which makes that non-absolute. Anytime you say something regarding things like this, it is in fact a statement of opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babylonian Dream Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Wait, aren't the statements 'there are absolute truths' and 'there are no absolute truths' both statements of absolute truth? Head asplode. My analytical mind saw the same thing. The way I see it, whether there are or aren't absolute truths, I can't know. Perhaps we'll find absolute truths in the future, but my brain thinking logically tends to have trouble saying both statements, for different reasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 There is an absolute reality. Truths are usually relative to the many competing factors within reality though, making it impossible to nail down for all situations. Generally, 2+2=4, but I've even seen this challenged in ways I don't understand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 There is an absolute reality. Truths are usually relative to the many competing factors within reality though, making it impossible to nail down for all situations. This is well put. I see truths as like the blind men touching and describing an elephant. Each are partially right in their descriptions, though none see the whole picture. They are true, and not true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Generally, 2+2=4, but I've even seen this challenged in ways I don't understand. I would think that 2+2=4 is a proposition within an unspecified formal system of inference. But we can alter the system of inference. For instance, if we represent numbers in a base 2 system (binary) rather than a base 10 system (decimal) then we only have {0, 1} as our set of permissible symbols rather than {0, 1, 2... .... 8, 9}. So 2+2=4 in decimal would be 10+10=100 in binary. That may be what you've seen before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 There is an absolute reality. Truths are usually relative to the many competing factors within reality though, making it impossible to nail down for all situations. I would be more inclined to say that a complex objective reality exists, but we understand it through its relations with the subjective mind. And being that nature is complex it is multifaceted and its understanding cannot be exhausted. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 There is an absolute reality. Truths are usually relative to the many competing factors within reality though, making it impossible to nail down for all situations. I would be more inclined to say that a complex objective reality exists, but we understand it through its relations with the subjective mind. And being that nature is complex it is multifaceted and its understanding cannot be exhausted. Certainly more precise than the way I stated it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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