What is the Truth?

[Xenocrates]

I read this in the thread that suggested the creation of this section:

Yea I noticed. It makes me wonder though. You seem to be constantly reading on various topics, one such topic is spirituality. Here's the part that makes me fret, you have acquired a lot of knowledge and yet you are still waaaay off on certain religious points much less me who doesn't study at all.

Woe is me for I am undone!! :eusa_doh: :eusa_wall

Once you have hear the truth you know it is truth though. I think I have heard it. Trust me, when you hear it you will shake. You really need to look deeply at the Seventh Day Adventist and their doctrines

- I laughed because I found this to be rather hilarious. :icon_mrgr But I have to ask several questions though:


What is the truth?
How will you know when you've heard it?
Who has the truth?
What makes you think that the Seventh Day Adventists have the truth and others do not? What makes them so special?

I'm going to show you how flawed your thinking is. ;)

[silentburn]

- I laughed because I found this to be rather hilarious. :icon_mrgr But I have to ask several questions though:


What is the truth? Simply put, truth is the combination of all the factors that makes the universe what it is. Anything that exist eternally is truth. Anything that is lasting and unchanging is truth.


How Will you know when you've heard it? When you have experienced and have seen undeniable evidence.


Who has the truth? Only God has knows and has all truth.


What makes you think that the Seventh Day Adventists have the truth and others do not? What makes them so special? Most of their interpretations of the bible follows a logical and natural sequence They also have very a good grasp on the prophetic segments of the bible. They understand the difference between the old and new covenants. They understand the plan of salvation. There doctrines seem to be logically leading to truth.


I'm going to show you how flawed your thinking is. ;)

The post that you quoted, already has the potential to disprove concepts I bring forward. originally posted by me
you have acquired a lot of knowledge and yet you are still waaaay off on certain religious points much less me who doesn't study at all.

So I'm not exactly sure why you would want to prove how flawed my thinking is, since I've already admitted that I've not been particularly constant in refreshing my mind with knowledge.

You know, its just a few weeks ago that I was browsing through threads and I saw that same post, I was contemplating doing a quick edit but complacency got the better of me. ''Now deh man guh an bring up some idiat post that i made some long time ago!!'' Cho! :eusa_wall

[Gillion]

Oh lord I smell a corpse and it not xeno.

[Xenocrates]

Here's my issue, Silentburn:

I approach Spirituality from a pragmatic point of view. I am not one to be quickly enveloped in the emotive disposition that most religious people take, because I've learned the hard way that such an approach makes one fodder for deception. This is why I rarely (if ever) quote scriptures when reasoning about God and spirituality, because scriptures (irrespective of the religion) are already flawed by the very virtue of the fact that they were written by men - men who obviously had very little understanding of their world and by extension, of God.

I only appear to know as much as I know Silentburn, because I meditate on these things daily. Every day, my thought process begins and ends there. This doesn't make me more righteous or more knowledgeable than the next man. However, it does give me a far better appreciation for the concepts, because through long and deep meditation, I'm able to break down a lot of the complex ideas and hard questions which had no answers, and am thus able to solve them - using what I would say is common sense. However, my psyche evaluation would suggest that such is not the work of common sense, otherwise most other people would have come to those same conclusions a long time ago.

I realise SB, that most people who subscribe to religion, do not do so through through logic. In fact, logic and religion are enemies of each other. Religion requires an almost entirely right brain cognitive process, because it's largely based on a proofless emotive subscription, and that's what makes religion DANGEROUS. Allow me to explain in bulleted detail to make this simpler to understand:

[moar...]

[Xenocrates]

As far as truth is concerned, Religion is in and of itself highly unreliable for the following reasons:

Written By Men - Men make mistakes. Men wrote the Bible/Q'ran/. Therefore the Bible/Q'ran has mistakes. There's no getting away from it. It doesn't matter what their source of inspiration is, even if the source is flawless, men are intrinsically flawed, which is why logically, religion is likewise intrinsically flawed, as you will soon see:


Flaw #1: [I]Religious subscription is Culturally Based - If you're a christian, you're only a christian by virtue of the fact that you were born in a country which is christian by majority. If you were born in the East, there's a very high probability that you'd have been Muslim or Buddhist and not Christian. And get this: You'd have the SAME powerful emotive connection to Islam or Buddhism as you do to Christianity today simply because that's what you were taught growing up. Therefore, if you believe that your faith trumps others (irrespective of your proof), it's simply because you were brainwashed into that mentality. Every child is born as a blank slate. Therefore, whatever you believe today, is based on what you were taught as a child. There is no other proof you can use to say your faith holds more truth than another, and I'll prove it:


Flaw #2: Proof By Induction - Every proof we use for religion is based on proof by induction, which means that we have to assume that the tenets of the faith are true and thus work backwards to derive the proof. This is flawed because if the tenets are wrong, then the proof is likewise wrong. It's the same as saying that we assume that we cannot travel to the moon, and thus, work backwards logically to prove that it cannot be done. Chances are, we will be able to categorically prove inductively that we cannot travel to the moon - until someone makes a craft that moots the proof. Therefore, if aliens came to earth and proved that they seeded the planet, then everything in religion would be shot to hell. There goes our truth.


Flaw #3: The Caveman Phenomenon - What we read in the Holy Text appears to be either super-fantastic or super-cryptic, because it was written by men who had very little understanding of their universe. Most of these men were not very well educated about their world (as you and I are today) and thus used the best point of reference to explain what they experienced - hence the super fantastic nature of many Bible stories. It is not implausible to believe that great degrees of hyperbolism (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hyperbole) were used in the scriptures, because we see similar patterns in the writings of other ancient cultures when they described the world they saw. Today, we have such an acute understanding of our universe, that if people today lived 3 - 5,000 years ago with the knowledge they had about their world today, then the Bible would appear to be nothing more than an ordinary historical account and we would derive nothing spiritual from it, because the element of mysticism would have been completely eliminated. That's a fact - and that makes any religious definition of truth, questionable at best.


Flaw #4: Religion is Culturally Derived - The reason why Seventh Day Adventists and other Christians are at odds is because of the cultural bias presented by the origin of Judaeo-Christianity. There is no scriptural proof (aside from that which was derived through induction - see above) to suggest that Saturday is the right day to worship. The SDAs assume that this is the case because of a cultural idiosyncracy of the Jewish people which was inextricably tied to scripture. They have nothing else to go on really. Similarly, Islam is awash in the cultural norms of the Arabic people. Therefore, adopting either religion often comes with adopting some element of the source culture, irrespective of whether or not it is pertinent to 'salvation'. Both groups of people will use proof by induction to suggest that this cultural adoption is required for salvation - which pretty much makes 80% of the tenets in any religion equivalent to cultural indoctrination. This is how religion creates war, because it assumes that all other cultures are in and of themselves, fundamentally flawed because of something somebody said 3,500 years ago in another country.


Flaw #5: Dogmatic Contradiction - Religious scripture is so unspecific at key points that two people can read the same passage and come away with two completely different interpretations. This is another reason why SDA's and other Christians are again at odds. It's the same with Muslims and the Q'ran, because some believe it purports violence while others do not. What makes it worse is that these two opposing views will use proof by induction to suggest that their interpretation is correct (see this thread (http://www.caribyard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2322) for evidence of what I'm talking about). They will spend hours trying to convince each other that their interpretation is wrong, when neither of them have any hard proof of whatever it is they're trying to proove. If religious "truth" is based on induction, then it is not truth at all. That would make each religion nothing more than each culture's best guess as to what the truth is, which leads to my penultimate point:


There is no RIGHT Religion - And I know you're saying to yourself: "Xeno has officially gone off the deep end". But hear me out: If you ask yourself what the purpose of religion (http://www.caribyard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3536) is, you will realise that every religion on earth accomplishes the SAME goal: WORSHIP (and to a greater extent, control). Cultural inductive interpretations aside, all religions seek to accomplish the same thing. Therefore, to ask "which is the right religion?", is the same as asking "which is the correct car?". Many countries make cars, and while each car looks and behaves slightly differently (based on where they were manufactured), they all achieve the same purpose: Transportation. We can't use proof by induction to prove any religion being more valid than another, and as such, it behooves us to assert that truth can be defined by religion. Any pastor who says their faith is the one true faith is profoundly deluded.


[moar...]

[Xenocrates]

Now even though I subscribe to Christianity, I would never try to indoctrinate a Muslim because I'm only going on a gut feeling (as is that Muslim). I have no undeniable, categorical proof that the ideas I subscribe to are truth. I can only exercise faith - and chances are, I could be wasting my time doing so. This is the reason why I have so many SDA friends. We both understand that our positions are based on faith and we can't prove either position without resorting to induction, which really leads us nowhere at all. In fact, to accept any religion, one has to be slightly gullible, because they're accepting the ideas based on faith.

I will credit SDAs with one thing though: They do tend to have a more logically driven system of belief (however flawed) than other denominations. That is why I make the point that to subscribe to any religious system, one has to make up their mind to take the good with the bad, and just filter out the latter. What is filtered however, is highly subjective - which leads us right back to square 1.

Now with that said, I will say one thing: Nobody has the truth. At best, we each have guesses. But a guess isn't truth if it can't be proven. Therefore, religion isn't truth. It's just a guess masquerading as the truth - which is a form of deception that unfortunately, most people still don't realise. That's why so many people are atheists today and that's why SB, I honestly can't blame them.

So to answer my original questions:

What is the truth? - Truth is anything that can be verified by God Himself (assuming that God exists). Since no man has seen God (and lived to tell about it), no living man has the truth. Therefore, as far as we know, truth does not exist.


How will you know when you've heard it? - When we see God and He says it himself (again, assuming that God exists). Proof through logical induction is based on assumptions which can be wrong. Therefore there's no way to determine that what we hear otherwise to be truth.


Who has the truth? - You were right: Only God has the truth. What you fail to realise is that your answer to this question automatically moots your other answers. I did this deliberately to expose the flaw in your thinking.


What makes you think that the Seventh Day Adventists have the truth and others do not? What makes them so special? - No answer was needed here. This question was a bait to further expose the flaw in your thinking. Unfortunately, you took the bait, hook, line and sinker. Can you see where you went wrong?


I've learned SB, that religion is so subjective, that there's no point knocking a man for what he believes. He's going on a gut feeling just like everyone else. Even people who are agnostics or atheists - they're going on gut feelings too. The only difference is that their gut feeling is more driven by logic than emotion and I believe that takes the very heart out of humanity. Does this make them right? Emotionally, I'll say no. Logically, some of their points are undeniably accurate. At the end of the day, there's only one way to find out: See you on the other side. ;)

In the mean time, place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. Pascal made a wager (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager), and I will bet, based on faith, that our journey doesn't end here, simply because the potential benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Either way, I loose absolutely nothing if I choose to believe without proof. So long as I believe, I retain my humanity - and that is something worth holding on to. :)

[fin]

[silentburn]

So to answer my original questions:

What is the truth? - Truth is anything that can be verified by God Himself (assuming that God exists). Since no man has seen God (and lived to tell about it), no living man has the truth. Therefore, as far as we know, truth does not exist.

We are saying similar things. :icon_neut I said truth is anything that is eternal, anything that makes reality what it is. Men are not eternal, so obviously we only have parts of truth.

How will you know when you've heard it? - When we see God and He says it himself (again, assuming that God exists). Proof through logical induction is based on assumptions which can be wrong. Therefore there's no way to determine that what we hear otherwise to be truth.

Basically said the same thing again. :confused: I said, ''When we have experienced it(truth) and have seen undeniable evidence.'' Obviously God will have to be part of that undeniable evidence and revelation.

Who has the truth? - You were right: Only God has the truth. What you fail to realise is that your answer to this question automatically moots your other answers. I did this deliberately to expose the flaw in your thinking.
No it doesn't moot the answers, the answers are open and can fit perfectly into the concepts which you conjure up. :icon_mrgr


What makes you think that the Seventh Day Adventists have the truth and others do not? What makes them so special? - No answer was needed here. This question was a bait to further expose the flaw in your thinking. Unfortunately, you took the bait, hook, line and sinker. Can you see where you went wrong?
[/list]

I don't see any big flaw in relation to my answers. If I am to believe that the Bible has some inspiration behind it, then there may be a group which has better interpretations and explanations of the concepts in the Bible. Plus as I said earlier, they have a good understanding of the prophecies, some of which have already been fulfilled and hence can be forwarded as evidence of truth.

[Gillion]

Whoever believes shall be saved.

[ramesh]

Perception is not truth, especially that expounded by experts.

[Xenocrates]

Whoever believes shall be saved. - Concordantly, belief kills and cures. That's the real meaning behind that expression.

Perception is not truth, especially that expounded by experts. - Silentburn, this is exactly my point more elegantly expressed by Ramesh. I could not have said it better myself. ;)

[jamerican]

Interesting thread.....