Personal Truth: Where Do You Draw the Line?

When you hear of an alien abduction story, are you open to the possibility it's true? How about David Icke's reptilian theory? Icke relies on personal testimony as evidence a lot to support his theory. What do you think of that?

What is "personal truth"? My interpretation is the following:

Personal truth is what someone has come to believe as "true" for them or to them through individual experiences or insights.
Link

Personal truth can come in many forms, and it can have very significant impacts. People get lifetime disability benefits based on personal truth. People are put in prison based on other's personal truth. People give up their lives based on personal truth (in cults for instance).

There seems to be a fear of personal truth on this forum. The Mandela Effect threads are proving that. I haven't seen one skeptic yet who is able to just say, "That's your personal truth and I respect that simply because I respect the concept of personal truth."

I see a huge double standard between how people are responding to the Mandela Effect threads and how people tend to respond to religious personal truth. Why is that? If you believe that personal truth in the context of religion is somehow more valid than it is in any other context, you're not being reasonable.

When it comes to people talking about their own personal truth, I have a problem with people stating their own personal truth as absolute truth. (Please don't argue in this thread about whether or not absolute truth exists. The people I'm discussing here obviously do believe that absolute truth exists so whether it exists, in reality, is a red herring in this thread in my opinion.)

When do you know that someone is stating personal truth as absolute truth? In my experience, that usually happens when someone discusses how their personal truth is equal to absolute truth. Let's say we're discussing the topic, "Are apples red?" A color blind person (suffering from protanopia) that demanded that their personal truth was absolute truth would assert that apples aren't red because they've never seen a red apple.

I've seen the concept of personal truth as absolute truth carried to unbelievable extremes. For example, I've heard people say (paraphrasing), "I know X, Y, or Z (as absolute truth) about Jesus based on my personal walk with him." I think that's absurd, but I respect the concept of personal truth so as long as that belief stays in the realm of personal truth, I've got no problem with it.

The next step that sometimes happens is where solipsism comes in. Sometimes people that have a personal truth want to claim that it's absolute truth with no evidence offered at all (or insufficient evidence is offered to prove what they're arguing). At that point, they're expunging everyone else's right to have personal truth (or to express any possible absolute truth for that matter) and that is de facto solipsism.

Why? Because by stripping everyone else of the right to have their own personal truth (while claiming your personal truth is absolute truth), you're stating literally, "your own existence is the only thing that is real or that can be known." By shutting everyone else's personal truth (and any possible absolute truth) out like that, you're exhibiting solipsism, by definition.

And generally speaking, in my experience, once we get that far, don't even try discussing absolute truth with someone acting like a solipsist, that's going nowhere.

the most important thing about personal truth is, will believing this make my life better or worse? will not believing it make my life better or worse? if the answer to those questions is no then it doesn`t matter if you chose to believe or not believe. If the answer is yes then you should have some kind of personal experience at whatever it is. if you don`t have personal experience at it then you better make sure you do a lot of investigating before you believe or disbelieve,because your decision will affect your life one way or another. i would say it`s better to remain neutral until you find enough evidence to either believe or disbelieve.

usng your human senses you are able to discern absolute truth from personal truth? thats miraculous

life is all about personal experiences. there is only the perception you have through your own eyes

is it a personal truth or absolute truth for an ant that humans do not exist since all it can see is mounds of dirt and leaves around it?

a reply to: Profusion

There seems to be some solid material in the OP made for discussion, but I'd caution against the wall of text and, at times, what seems like a stream of consciousness. Love to participate, but the OP gets lost in translation (i.e. what is a personal truth in more succinct fashion, or what constitutes an absolute truth) and it's difficult to to help disentangle personal from absolute truth based on what you've relayed.

I agree for the most part. Here it seems personal truth can only be recognized as worth anything only if the reader agrees.

How about David Icke's reptilian theory? Icke relies on personal testimony as evidence a lot to support his theory. What do you think of that?

It's not originally his theory. It spans beyond someone's personal testimony-he has not experienced them for example but has shared what may be evidence to him personally.

According to an interview with David Icke, Christine Fitzgerald, a confidante of Diana, Princess of Wales, claims that Diana told her that the Royal Family were reptilian aliens, and that they could shapeshift. David Icke and others have claimed that U.S. President George W. Bush and his family are part of this same bloodline (Icke, 2004).

Source

Additionally see his Credo Mutwa interview about reptilians- video.

Mythological References to Reptilian Humanoids

Several ancient peoples all over the world have described reptilian beings, and some have described reptilian humanoids. Common in numerous mythologies are tales of reptilian creatures (usually not humanoid) who are often, but not always, hostile to human beings. Also rather common are the myths of "Serpents of Wisdom" who enlightened humanity before the dawn of civilization.

Source for more From the Americas to the Middle East

According to many descriptions, these beings, are one of those things you don't want to exist for the most part.

Nice thread and worth pondering. I would say that all personal truths are relative so therefore can not be qualified as ultimate truth. But one is able to have micro realizations about the the truth. Its when one comunicates about those realizations that problems can easily occur. These problems are what I call missinterpretations. Using an example, what is a shapeshifter? To understand that we would have to have a concise explanation and keep digging in at it over time.All in all, that is not an easy task as more and more information arrives about what a shapeshifter really is. A bit like science keeps hacking away! Then with ultimate truth, we may have had a few individuals who did realize or get to know about the ultimate. How good was our understanding of that? complicated to be sure. a reply to: Profusion

originally posted by: Profusion
When you hear of an alien abduction story, are you open to the possibility it's true?

I would interpret 'personal truth' as meaning 'this unique Perspective, at the moment.
To claim THIS Perspective as 'truth', and another, 'not truth', is just ignorance.

Every Perspective is unique, by definition/nature.

"For every Perspective, there is an equal and opposite Perspective!" - The First Law of Soul Dynamics (Book of Fudd)

"The complete Universe (Reality/Truth/God/'Self!'/Tao/Brahman... or any feature herein...) can be completely defined/described as the synchronous sum-total of all Perspectives!" - Book of Fudd
ALL INCLUSIVE!!!

Truth is ALL inclusive!

Existence = the complete Universe = Nature = Reality = Consciousness = Truth = Love = 'Self!' = God = Brahman = Tao = ... etc....
ALL INCLUSIVE!!
'One'!

Everything exists!
Right at this moment I imagined a unicorn.
Thought exists, thus the content of thought exists!
Everything exists!

(T)Here is One (unchanging, ALL inclusive) Universal Reality/Truth!

If everything exists, then Reality, being based on what exists, is ALL inclusive!
If Reality is ALL inclusive, so must the Truth, that is based on Reality!
Thus Truth is ALL inclusive!

To understand that, one merely finds the 'Perspective' wherein that 'truth' is obvious.
Perhaps the truth of reptilians and aliens and Jesus and whatever... can be found in the imagination, but that is where all exists!
So, as much as I would 'feel' so superior in discrediting something scientifically and philosophically, without the 'artificial structure' of the 'rules' of science or philosophy, there is no 'conditional boundaries' wherein we can schizophrenically discriminate between 'Real' 'and'... because there is no 'and'!
Reality is, ultimately, ALL inclusive!
It's ALL True!!

"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." -Robert Anton Wilson

"For every Perspective, there is an equal and opposite Perspective!" - The First Law of Soul Dynamics

"There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil." - Alfred North Whitehead

"That's your personal truth and I respect that simply because I respect the concept of personal truth."

This is my core believe and conduct of behaviour when it comes to CT's.

a reply to: Profusion

A "personal truth" is a belief, lacking any type of substantiation by a 3rd party in a provable and repeatable manner. Or otherwise known as a delusion.

a reply to: Profusion

Personal truth is what someone has come to believe as "true" for them

So self deluded is now "personal truth"?
I've seen people who only pay attention to whatever enforces their own ideas and ignore anything that would prove it false. How is that "truth"? There are people who have text book night terrors, but still insist it's alien abduction, even when they are videotaped all night and it shows nothing happening. They insist the "aliens" edited the footage.
Believing something does not make it true.

a reply to: Profusion
I try to be more open as much as possible. I constantly try to re-calibrate my BS meter not too sensitively as I get older, and if the needle starts moving... well, be it a story, an idea, a theory, or a belief, it may still be something worth thinking about. I guess my woo threshold is pretty high.

Regarding the Mandela Effect, it reminds me of a Jacques Vallée lecture I watched years ago on YouTube, please bear with me, I can't still wrap my head around the idea but I have a hunch that Vallée could have the explanation... so, here it is:

Everything that we did in the past affects us now, and will affect us in the future, and what we do right now will also affect our future, right? But according to Vallée (if I understand him correctly) everything that we will do in the future will also affect our past and our present. How's that for a theory, I mean a hunch?

originally posted by: Profusion
When you hear of an alien abduction story, are you open to the possibility it's true? How about David Icke's reptilian theory? Icke relies on personal testimony as evidence a lot to support his theory. What do you think of that?

Imagination, dreams!
And lies.
And more imagination.
And combinations of ignorance, superstition, 'belief infections'... and lies!

What is "personal truth"? My interpretation is the following:
"Personal truth" is what someone has come to believe as "true"

A 'belief' is an infection of the imagination, a Zombie (dead, fossilized) 'thought'!
Everything exists!
Thus everything is Real!
Thus Reality is ALL inclusive!
Thus, being based on 'Reality', Truth is ALL inclusive!
To have a 'personal truth' is schizophrenia, insanity!
Ignorance at the very least!

"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." -Robert Anton Wilson

"For every Perspective, there is an equal and opposite Perspective!" - The First Law of Soul Dynamics

"There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil." - Alfred North Whitehead

'Personal truth' is the tiny bit of Perspective/knowledge, at the moment, while denying or simply unaware of the vastness of that which you do not perceive, of which you are ignorant!

The 'moon' is the whole of "personal truth" to the telescope facing it, at the moment!
To the 'telescope', the moon IS the Universe!

a reply to: Profusion

Regarding "Personal truth is what someone has come to believe as 'true' for them"

This has all the appearance of a word game.
For any person X and any proposition P:

"P is true for X" is logically equivalent to "X believes that P is true"

For example, let P = "Aliens exist."

"Aliens exist" is true for Jill, and false for Jack = Jill believes that aliens exist, Jack does not.

"Personal truth" may substituted for "belief" but it doesn't add anything that wasn't already there.

I am open to hear what others say about Alien abduction stories.

For me personal truth is just as important as absolute truth.

Well sort of as important, personal truth on a situation/subject maybe more life changing to an individual of what they seen or heard.

Absolute truth is what actually happened and can be seen/heard by others as evidence,,,that said personal truth can change a life/belief as much as absolute fact/truth.

Guess it's all depending on what personal truth is to each individual and same for absolute truth.

a reply to: Profusion

Pretty challenging topic.
There is an absolute truth, the construct of shared reality, like "money has value", while if society would crumble, good luck eating your dirty paper.
There is absolute truth, when 2+2=4, but that's also a bit open for discussion because four big apples can contain a considerable amount more calories than four tiny ones. So is 4 always the same as 4?
Personal truth is nice and all, as long as it doesn't lead you to far away from the shared reality. But at the same time our progress is built on people challenging our shared reality, from Jesus to Newton.

What we are facing nowadays and what I find deeply concerning is, whenever someone dares to share a thought outside the box, you have idiots screaming "take your meds!". On the other hand better than "burn that witch!"...

If you have scientists openly naming physical processes "spooky action" everything is open for discussion, I guess...