March Musings

After reading a few personal blogs and other random writings that talk about their life and how it has not gone at all they way they hoped and they are not sure if they can ever fix it I started considering the nature of truth.

I am not sure why I focused on that subject, but I did. I did a lot of thinking about it. I often do. Here is what I remember I came up with.

There are two kinds of truths. There is the Truth, which is objective and unyielding. Then there is truth, which is subjective and can change.

Truth is what actually happened. It is unwavering fact. It is immutable. I don’t think I could make it much clearer.

truth is how we perceive Truth. Since we are inperfect beings, subject to all sorts of deceptions, hallucinations, illusions and dreams, we do not see Truth. In fact, as things stand right now there is no way we can see Truth. Or at least if we do we cannot know for sure that we have seen Truth. We cannot trust any of our senses to be absolutely perfect even for a short period of time, so 100% of are knowledge is subjective.

I am not implying that all of our knowledge is useless. Our Scientific data and methodology we have the capability to getting very close to Truth. So close, that with science we can get so close to effectively be Truth, even if it isn’t exactly Truth. Or, if it is Truth, we cannot be 100% sure so we have to assume it is truth.

——End of March Writing—–

So why does it matter that there are two truthes, Truth and truth?

Scientifically, it means that there is always a reason to continue scientific studies. We should always be searching as there is so much we do not know, and the Scientific Process is currently the best way to determine truth and approach Truth.

Many in Religion say that they know Truth. Most of what they say can be disputed with the Scientific Process and shown to be false. There is the core ‘knowledge’ of ‘There is a god or gods’ that generally cannot be disputed with the Scientific Process. It cannot be tested in a laboratory at all. It must be believed. The issue with that belief is that, while it cannot be scientifically disputed logically it just doesn’t make sense. We cannot know if we are actually stating Truth when we talk about religion. There is no valid mechanism to show that we are finding at least truth, and therefore approaching Truth. So basically Religion is a crapshoot with odds that would make Las Vegas drool. Since we cannot observe Truth, everyone in Religion is just guessing. Also, since we have no way to verify or even test it, we cannot even say how close to Truth we are. We just ‘have to believe’.

Another problem with Religion is that is fosters anti-scientific or anti-intellectual thought processes. One gets lazy and thinks that one can get by with ‘believing’ in just about anything. All in the name of Religion. People lose their critical thinking skills and do not look to progress in any manner.

Scientific Processes foster the exact opposite. People exercise and strengthen their critical thinking skills, and have a measured method of knowing truth and getting closer to Truth.

This is why I have embraced science and scientific methodology, and eschewed religion and belief.