2005-01-25 - 12:00 a.m.
What is truth? No seriously - is there such a thing as a truth? I'm not trying to start some Aristotle-esque conversation involving a toga and a basin of sand. I've been thinking about this ever since this afternoon when I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine. This friend is a devout Christian and we were discussing a biblical verse and this topic of conversation came up. Can you ever say that something is an absolute truth?
Surely if I sit on a park bench and watch a boy pick up a rubber ball, I can say that it is an absolute truth that he did just that, right? However, the argumentative side of me points out that though I may have seen the boy pick up the ball, that is not necessarily what happened. Imagine that just as the boy took hold of the ball, the Earth moved away from the boy and the ball. His knees extended and the ball ended up a few feet above the ground, but the boy didn't pick up the ball - the earth moved away from the boy and the ball. Can you be certain that didn't happen? With a master's degree in Aerospace Engineering, I can say that it would be very unlikely that would happen, but I can't prove it.
In fact, it hardly takes a feat of orbital mechanics to explain how I may have seen the boy pick up the ball when it did not indeed happen - I could have hallucinated the whole thing. Again, the argumentative side of me kicks in - but what if a thousand people say the boy pick up the ball - it is far less likely that they all hallucinated. True, but perhaps we saw some strange never before seen weather pattern called boy-picking-up-rubber-ball lightning which looks exactly like what all thousand of us saw. Fine, call in the meteorologists - the skies were clear! But perhaps all of them are hallucinating...ENOUGH!!!
So I can never been absolutely certain that the boy picked up the ball...I can only say that I perceived the boy to be picking up the ball. There is no truth, only perception. This ties right in with the conversation I had with my Christian friend. In the same way that you cannot be absolutely certain that the boy picked up the ball, you cannot be absolutely certain that God meant what you think he meant when he wrote a particular bible verse using a human as his scribe. For that matter, you cannot be absolutely certain that God exists, or that if he does exist, that he did indeed divinely inspire scribes to write the scriptures. If he did inspire scribes to write the scriptures, you cannot be absolutely certain that these writings have survived up to 3400 years of translations and copies in their original form. So it is wrong to say "the truth is that the bible says..." - one can only say "my perception is that the bible says..." Likewise, I can't say "the boy picked up the ball", I have to say "my perception is that the boy picked up the ball", right?
Now the practical, engineering side of me kicks in. Fine, so we can never be sure of anything, but surely we can be more sure of a boy who was observed to have picked up a ball actually picking it up than we can be of the meaning behind a 3400 year old piece of scripture, right?. I can apply the education I have to deduce the relative probability that each of these is true, correct? I mean I know that all one thousand of us could have been hallucinating, along with the meteorologists and the scientists running the accelerometers who said the earth didn't actually move, but I can continue to add layers of verification onto the observational analysis until the probability that we are all wrong has shrunk to almost zero, right? I mean, there is a difference between a physical action and an interpretation, right? I can observe a physical action - I cannot observe an interpretation. I can observe someone recanting an interpretation, but even if it is the author of the passage himself, he is limited in his explaining of that interpretation by the language he uses in addition to a great many other things (there are Arabic words that quite simply can't be translated into English). There is a difference between observing a physical action and interpreting a thought, right?
Now the scientific part of me kicks in. All human thought is the result of chemical and neural activity inside the brain. Although we are far from having the technology to actually "photograph" a thought, in theory, it would be possible to describe a thought using purely physical means. Then, you could actually compare the original author's thought to that of an interpreter and knowing everything about how the human brain works, you could decide weather or not that interpretation was true. BUT YOU COULD BE HALLUCINATING ALSO!!!
So let's remain philosophical - there is no difference between a physical action and an emotion - they are both observable only to the extent that our understanding of the universe allows. Back to the previous example though - isn't it more likely that the boy actually picked up the ball than it is that the Bible is actually the word of God? It depends:
Imagine a rock on which a colony of very small creatures live. The notice that whenever they throw something up into the air, it goes up and off to the side, then goes underneath the rock and hits the bottom having made a big loop. If they throw something downwards, it does the opposite, going to the other side, then coming up onto of the rock and falling down on their heads. If they throw something backwards, it falls down below the rock and comes up on the other side in front of the rock, and if they throw something forwards, it does the opposite and ends up behind them. This colony of creatures would form a theory of motion and a set of rules to describe the dynamics of their world and it would be perfectly applicable to what they knew. Then one day, they decide to venture beyond the rock, they have to avoid a piece of debris in their way, so they apply their rules of dynamics and they crash into the debris, killing everyone on board. These laws make no sense, do they? Well, now imagine we zoom out away from the rock and below them is a much larger rock which they are orbiting...all of a sudden, we realize that we were dealing with relative orbital motion and quickly, the creatures deduce Newton's laws and everything makes sense. They successfully avoid space debris and go onto have lots of little-creature sex and little-creature babies.
So we look at these make-believe creatures and think "silly creatures, they had no idea they were orbiting a planet - no wonder their dynamics were so messed up." But their dynamics weren't messed up - they worked perfectly well until they wandered beyond their world. What's to say if we were to zoom out of our little solar system, we wouldn't realize that we were indeed in a very special situation in which Newton's laws work just fine, but would cause us to crash into space debris were we ever to try to apply them elsewhere? We can't - we can't say that we understand dynamics, we can only say that we understand dynamics within the confines of what we know thus far.
So truth is no different - we can't say that the boy picked up the ball - we can only say that within the confines of what we believe to be true, the boy picked up the ball. You can't say that the Bible is the word of God, you can only say that according to what you believe to be true, the Bible is the word of God.
One more stab from the engineer - come on people, there is an obvious difference between saying the f--king boy picked up the f--king ball and saying the f--king bible is the f--king word of God!!! Ah, but this what I'm learning by hanging out with my Christian friends. To a Christian, they are as certain that the Bible is the word of God as we are certain that the boy picked up that f--king ball!!! There is no truth, only perception.
Of course, this brings up a whole new problem...essentially, I have just said that each person occupies their own little universe of rights, wrongs, truths, lies, tastes, opinions and morals, and each of these is as valid as the last...so how do we decide what we as a society should adopt as our set of morals? My first inclination is to say that we as a society should only forbid that which affects other people in a way they do not wish to be affected. I like that theory...you can't kill someone because that affects them, but you can burn a flag - that doesn't. Of course, under that theory, drug use would be legal and frankly, I have no problem with that (I don't think the government should be in the business of protecting people from themselves). But what happens when someone says that burning a flag affects them because they perceive it to be immoral and immoral behavior will breed more of the same? How do I argue with them - they are as right as I am because there is no truth, only perception. It stands to reason then that a democratic procedure would decide the morals for a country...wait, that's it!!! There is no truth, only perception, and so to get anything done, you don't show someone the truth - you change their perception of what the truth is.
And with that, I think I have come full circle - there is no truth, only perception - and to each who would take it upon themselves to do so, try to change the perception of something you truly feel needs to be changed. So to my Christian friend who insists on telling me that I am going to hell, please feel free to continue to tell me why you perceive this to be the case, and I'll continue to tell you why I perceive that it isn't.
