I'm glad we started discussing truth.
First off, what is truth? Lets start with the Socratic method of definitions- I ask myself what truth is, I give my definition, and then myself finds a piece of that statement that does not fit with an example. Like, if I say "truth" is honesty and accuracy, as you yourself said, then can truth be wrong? If I saw that 1+1=3, is that truth? If your answer is "no" then how? What makes my answer "wrong"? Is truth something that just exists, or is truth just what the group says is true? Perhaps 1+1=3 - but society tells us its not.
Following that off, if my answer is actual "truth" why would I be told that is false? If I put that on a math test, it would be the "wrong" answer. Who decided, in this world, that my answer is wrong? Who sets the standards for "true" and "false", that makes me wrong?
Next, what is false? Is false the opposite of truth, or is falsity merely the absence of truth? Is being true and false sort of like, having light and having no light? Its understood that darkness is merely the absence of light, but is darkness then nothing?
The purpose of this is to really make my point clear. If we put it in terms of the discussion we are having, is scientific fact "truth"? Why? Who made it truth? You believe in no God, or creator, or deity- can you compare that perceived absence of God to the darkness example, as in your athiesm is merely the "absence of God"? Pointing the finger at myself, I can say the same thing. If scientific facts are accurate, honest, and are real "truths", is my belief in God a absence of knowledge or mental deficiency?
I'm sorry if its too many questions, my tl;dr is: define truth for me. If you say science is accurate and honest, or even if you say its not, is science truthful? And secondly, who or what defines reality?
Again, I will start from the top.
First off, what is truth? Lets start with the Socratic method of definitions- I ask myself what truth is, I give my definition, and then myself finds a piece of that statement that does not fit with an example. Like, if I say "truth" is honesty and accuracy, as you yourself said, then can truth be wrong? If I saw that 1+1=3, is that truth? If your answer is "no" then how? What makes my answer "wrong"? Is truth something that just exists, or is truth just what the group says is true? Perhaps 1+1=3 - but society tells us its not.
Mr Tiki gave a good explanation so I will not spend too much time on this.
No, going by the definition of 'simultaneous complete accuracy and honesty', truth could not be wrong. If you saw that 1 + 1 = 3 and believed it, then you are making an honest mistake. This is not truth because, as Mr Tiki said, 3 is defined as 1 + 1 + 1, not 1 + 1.
I believe you are forcing a dilemma unnecessarily in your next pair of questions. I am not certain what you mean by "something that just exists", but I do think that a proposition must be correct to be true. I do not think that by virtue of the group's advocacy something can be true, it must be a valid and correct proposition as well.
Please keep in mind that this was simply a provisional definition of truth that I thought of off the cuff in response to your question, and I do not think it is as important to the discussion of religion as you make it out to be.
Following that off, if my answer is actual "truth" why would I be told that is false? If I put that on a math test, it would be the "wrong" answer. Who decided, in this world, that my answer is wrong? Who sets the standards for "true" and "false", that makes me wrong?
I think that you may be making some important errors here.
If your answer was true (and it is not), then I can only imagine that any dissenters would try to contradict you because they are wrong. You are correct that 1 + 1 = 3 would be marked as a wrong answer on a math test, but I do not see the point of asking who decided this. Humanity has over the years made discoveries in the fields of mathematics. Discoveries such as the idea that the square of a right triangle's hypotenuse is always equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
We (meaning humanity) have also made more fundamental discoveries, such as 1 + 1 = 2. We have defined the concept 'one' as having the value it has, but that value does exist outside of our definitions. One antelope will always be one antelope, with or without a human to invent a word that means 'one'.
A solitary antelope joining another will always become a group of two antelopes. This is not an invention of humans, this is a discovery we made.
If we changed our definitions and decided to use the sound "th-ree" or in written form, the symbol '3', to express the concept of two, or a pair, nothing had changed except for our language. 1 + 1 = 2 regardless of what humans may say otherwise, and there is no need for anyone to set any standard.
Similarly, while we may decide upon a threshold to use to determine if something is 'close enough', like approximating pi to be 3.14, we do not set the standard of what pi actually is. What that actually is, is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. As with above, humans decided to call this ratio pi, but this ratio was discovered, not invented, and its value is independent of human influence.
Next, what is false? Is false the opposite of truth, or is falsity merely the absence of truth? Is being true and false sort of like, having light and having no light? Its understood that darkness is merely the absence of light, but is darkness then nothing?
I genuinely do not see the purpose in this line of argument, or how it relates to science and religion. That said, I suppose that I would say - using a similar format to my definition for truth - that 'falsity' is a statement or idea that is inaccurate, not merely by omission, but by actual and direct contradiction of reality.
No, I do not think that not having truth is necessarily the presence of falseness, because an absence of ideas is simply an absence, not a contradiction of the truth.
Darkness is not nothing, darkness is not a thing.
It is a concept invented by humans to visualize patterns of light and where it does or does not fall,and nothing more.
The purpose of this is to really make my point clear. If we put it in terms of the discussion we are having, is scientific fact "truth"? Why? Who made it truth? You believe in no God, or creator, or deity- can you compare that perceived absence of God to the darkness example, as in your athiesm is merely the "absence of God"? Pointing the finger at myself, I can say the same thing. If scientific facts are accurate, honest, and are real "truths", is my belief in God a absence of knowledge or mental deficiency?
I'm sorry if its too many questions, my tl;dr is: define truth for me. If you say science is accurate and honest, or even if you say its not, is science truthful? And secondly, who or what defines reality?
There are a lot of questions all interwoven with each other here, so I'll try to take them one by one, thoroughly.
If we put it in terms of the discussion we are having, is scientific fact "truth"?
So far as we can tell, yes, by my earlier definition at least. It is a fact, and true (to our best understanding) that humans evolved from earlier species, that we all share a common ancestor, that the planet Earth is over 4 billion years old, and so on.
Why?
Those facts are true because they are accurate to reality and (though this is only truly relevant when discussing the claims a given scientist may make) are professed honestly.
Who made it truth?
By defining truth the way I did, I made them truth. If I had defined truth as 'something that is blue', then what is or is not 'true' would change significantly. Another way to view it is that no one made them truth. They were discovered to be true by scientists, but no one needed to designate them as true for them to be truths.
You believe in no God, or creator, or deity- can you compare that perceived absence of God to the darkness example, as in your athiesm is merely the "absence of God"?
Yes, though is would change the wording slightly. It is not that my atheism is "the absence of God", rather it is "the absence of a belief in a god". Theists have a belief in a god, atheists do not. I am not sure what is meant to have been proven or clearly expressed here.
Pointing the finger at myself, I can say the same thing. If scientific facts are accurate, honest, and are real "truths", is my belief in God a absence of knowledge or mental deficiency?
No, I do not think so. Firstly, I would not go so far as to claim you have a mental deficiency. I would not define your belief in god as an absence of knowledge, I would call it a falsehood. I would say that, to my understanding, is unfounded and likely contradicts reality.
I'm sorry if its too many questions, my tl;dr is: define truth for me. If you say science is accurate and honest, or even if you say its not, is science truthful?
I suppose I did not make myself clear enough. I have tentatively defined truth as a simultaneous combination of accuracy and honesty.
I think that your questions about science are missing the point of science. Science is not truthful, it is a method, not an idea or statement whose validity can be assessed as true, untrue or false.
The ideas proposed by science may not be true. However, the goal is to bring our understanding of reality as close to accurate as possible. Earlier in this post I mentioned that we can define our own thresholds for accuracy, and this a part of that. We do not know for certain if a given claim is accurate, but we can have varying degrees of confidence. That is what science does, it allows us to test our ideas and see how well they fare when compared to the evidence.
And secondly, who or what defines reality?
This completely misses the point of all of all my posts.
Reality is independent of our definitions of it. The Oxford English dictionary defines reality as: The state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
That is the definition I am using. What is the definition you prefer?
Please don't assume things about my opinions or intentions. I'm not "wise" or trying to downplay human knowledge achievements at all. Really what I'm trying to say is that science or our human definition of reality is probably wrong, so why would we claim to really know what's true and what's not? You can base your life on the worlds proposed reality if you want to.
I do believe that a lot of modern science's conclusions are probably incorrect or incomplete to some degree.
That said, the majority of them are close enough to being accurate that they can still be used.
I am very interested in hearing what you believe should take the place of the somewhat flawed scientific understanding of the universe, as to my understanding, it is, with no caveats or close runner-ups, far and away the best model of reality humanity has ever discovered.
Now, as for your final sentence, the only thing I recognize in this world as 100 percent true, and that I am 100 percent right on, is the existence of a God.
Please elaborate on this, explaining your reasoning for holding this belief at all, let alone with such a degree of certainty.
- Love, Killington
P.S. junedragon please come back!
EDIT: I forgot to insert one of the quotes, and one of my responses was without context.
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