What is truth?

What is the truth?

Do we accept truth to be what we are told or do we have to see it for ourselves.

It is probably a pretty safe assumption that most people on ATS follow the age old adage "Beleive none of what you hear and only half of what you see" but my question is:

Even if we see, read, hear the truth for ourselves, have we become so skeptical that we won't really see it?








If this is a repost I apologize, I'm fairly new but I did search before posting, please direct me to the thread if needed


echosounder

Absolute Truth is that which can not be found to be untrue in any situation.

We experience existence through our senses which are translated through our individual perceptions. Since one deciphers things differently because of one's personal relationship (interaction with self) to said thing, there are very few Absolute Truths (actually I only know of one) because you may see it in one way and I may see it in another. So which way is the truth? They are both true according to our perception to them, but neither have any Absolute truth as they both can be found untrue to their relationship to something else. It is the illusion of duality.

Here is a few examples.

1.) A victim of the Holocaust sees Hitler and what the Nazis stood for as Evil. However, a neo-nazi skin head may see the same person and events as the right and just thing to do. So which one is right? Both and neither because of the reasons mentioned above.

Evil is only so in its relationship to an opposite (Good) and so is subjective. Thus Evil and Good could be seen as either negative OR positive depending on its relationship to the person perceiving it. Evil and Good are interchangible and have no Absolute Truth.

2.) The sky is blue: False. The sky only appears blue due to the means by which one is viewing it. This is because the color is relative to the cones in ones eyes. If you are viewing it through infra-red or various different spectrums of light, it will appear to be different colors. While this is true because of one's relationship to it, it is really untrue as an absolute because in different perceptions its defined color can be seen as also false. The TRUTH can never be seen as also untrue.

Hope that makes some sense.

Absolutely agree Jonna on your good and evil, neither can possibly be a truth because the words good and evil are merely the titles we give to our perception of any given action. (And they must be actions because good and evil are not nouns.)

What I wonder is even if we are given scientific proof of any given thing that has yet to be revealed formally ie Aliens, have we become so jaded in the authorities that we won't beleive the facts when they are presented?

Originally posted by echosounder
What I wonder is even if we are given scientific proof of any given thing that has yet to be revealed formally ie Aliens, have we become so jaded in the authorities that we won't beleive the facts when they are presented?

Sorry I got philosophical about it as I hadn't realized you were speaking about aliens. If the government did say that they existed, I am sure that they would provide some sort of hard evidence. The public and scientific community would go into a frenzy for as much information as possible because it would be such a monumentus event.

As far as the government saying there is proof of aliens when there is not, I really don't see the reason that they would do this. Even if for some reason the government wanted to start a panic with lies about an alien invasion for the reason of declairing marshal law, it would seem more likely that they would use something more conventional like the fear of terrorists.

Good point, the threat of terrorism is much more plausible.

I appreciate the philosophy too as my knowledge is a little stunted in that arena. I used aliens only as an example though it could be anything we discuss here, aircraft experiments, area 51, the tunnel network, 9/11, new word order any of these.

i think the truth is mere opinion. because like opinion it is subjective and relative.

"bush is a bad man" and people claim this as fact. but they are basing this on opinion, which is nothing more than ones own personal thoughts on any given topic and they view this as fact because they believe it to be true. this doesnt make it so universally, only for them.

people often confuse the two while they arent so dissimilar from each other.

a truth would be something like fire is hot. of course it can be argued that it is simply not cold, which is also correct. this is where perspective and interpretation come into play.

from our upbringing and outside influences to our own personal experiences we develop a train of thought, a mindset if you will. in this mindset we have certain qualifiers or standards of what we accept as "the truth" and when something falls between the minimums and maximums we view it as a truth even if it isnt. now why is this? because we want it to be true. wanting it to be true doesnt make it anymore true than it really is but we still believe it is.

we also view certain things as true because it reenforces our mindset or beliefs. we see other people going to church for example and people use that as a reenforcer for their own beliefs that the church is good. their opinion is that church is good and they use other people going as the evidence to prove this assertion. but this doesnt make it a fact. this is what a lot of us do, form an opinion and then use evidence that will back up our opinion and dismiss everything else because we want to be right. most of us if not all of us do this, on a daily basis even.

the truth is whatever we want it to be based on our own prejudices and mindset. we are taught to believe something and over time we view it as being true even if it isnt. an example for this would be thievery. we believe stealing is wrong. why? we base this on what we were taught, that stealing is wrong or even our own experiences from people stealing from us or even getting caught stealing and being punished for it. however there are those who were taught that stealing ir wrong but still do it anyway. hmmm odd isnt it? but is stealing really wrong or is it just something we view as morally wrong? morality is not truth, it is an opinion that things should gbe a certain way and people should their lives according to certain beliefs.

a problem with "truth" is this, no matter how much you learn about something, say a particular situation, you're going to miss some tidbits of information. this is important because those tidbits can completely change ones PERSPECTIVE on that situation and that could cause us to view themselves as being true or false. now compound this with our own prejudices that dismiss information that doesnt fit the mold and now you have have a biased outlook.


the "truth" is based upon our perspective, interpretation and our own prejudices (our mindset, biases, etc)

even this post is a product of that.

Originally posted by echosounder
Even if we see, read, hear the truth for ourselves, have we become so skeptical that we won't really see it?

Truth is seeing both sides of a subject unbiasedly then from this forming your own truth of how you and your own beliefs see it. I mean I suppose the "truth" of anything can be argued against. Hell, I bet some can argue a case against the grass not really being green or something like that, but your own common sense should prevail.

Now, is Dubya a liar? Are all politicians liars?... Hopefully common sense will prevail...

Originally posted by John Nada
Truth is seeing both sides of a subject unbiasedly then from this forming your own truth of how you and your own beliefs see it

Can anyone really see things unbiasedly? One's viewpoint is hopelessly contaminated by their morals, values, sense of reality, etc. To do so would amount to contemplating something as though you and your personality did not exist, not an easy task to say the least.

"forming your own truth"
Is it really Truth if we are just making it up by what we think as the logical conclusion is not always Truth. People once thought that the Earth was flat beause that is what the senses (vision) told them logically. However this was not Truth. Are you talking instead about personal Truth as in relation to the self?

Re:Can anyone really see things unbiasedly? One's viewpoint is hopelessly contaminated by their morals, values, sense of reality, etc. To do so would amount to contemplating something as though you and your personality did not exist, not an easy task to say the least.



I would say the answer is no we can't view anything unbiasedly, at least not past the stage where we can understand our parents.
Everything we are taught is biased, from the first rights and wrongs we learn at our parents knee to the things we're taught in school.
I suppose in theory the only people who can see anything clearly would be infants.
Also the major problem with our education systems is that we are taught how to regurgitate information and not how to think.

You aren't born with bais towards anything Jonna. You develope them and it's how you take that early information that counts. Sure, extremely religious, racist e.t.c. parents can mess you up in childhood but these things can be unlearned, they really can. That shouldn't be an excuse.

Originally posted by echosounder
I suppose in theory the only people who can see anything clearly would be infants.

Now we are getting into psychological conditioning. From the moment of birth, we are expected to act in a certain way as we have that way pushed upon us. This is easiestly seen in the way of gender roles as boys and girls are influenced into a certain conditioning by the use of everything from toys to clothing to the way that others interact with the babies.

We are all conditioned in ways that are out of our control (during infantcy, society, religion, culture, education, etc), this, our interactions with everything, is how our personalities develop. We can not escape our conditioning, but, when we attempt to understand the how and why we believe and act in the ways that we do, we come a bit closer to understanding ourselves.

Originally posted by John Nada
You aren't born with bais towards anything Jonna. You develope them and it's how you take that early information that counts. Sure, extremely religious, racist e.t.c. parents can mess you up in childhood but these things can be unlearned, they really can. That shouldn't be an excuse.

What excuse? I never said that we were born with it!?!

As for "unlearning" information, it can not be done (short of an alien mind wipe). Once you learn somthing it is always in the folds of your brain although perhaps on a subconscious level. You can uncover, understand and deal with/correct something seen as a problem, but you can not simply say it never occured.

Some fanatic, Jimmy Jones I think, once said, "Give me a child till the age of seven and he will be mine forever." This is because what we first learn as trusting children is so imprinted on us that we define reality with it for the rest of our lives. These are the hardest traits to overcome when the individual gets older because they are rarely questioned.

jonna is pretty much correct on this.

even if we make a concious decision and actually try to "erase" these biases it cannot be undone.

everything we hear see and learn from our parents, friends environment....are there permanently. they have forever altered us, even sub conciously and it is impossible to eradicate all prejudices biases from us. we can suppress them but we cannot erase them from our minds.

nada its a nice notion but NONE of us, not even you are capable of this. as much as we'd like to sometimes, it cannot be done. we can pretend and put on an act and even supress these things in our mind but eventually they always come out.

there is also the notion that even if we are capable of this we'd never really have a way of knowing if we're truly unbiased or not, to be biased or unbiased is subjective and varies from person to person.

while i'm sure you feel you are unbiased i assure you you are biased. i know i am and i'm sure everyone else is as well. this isnt a bad thing, it is what it is. some biases are good and some arent. this is of course relative to our own views, a bias in itself.

i could go on but i dont think i need to.

[edit on 12-6-2004 by ThePrankMonkey]

Originally posted by echosounder
What is the truth?
...

Something we don't know. Why would one want to tell a lie.

What is truth? Well one man claimed to be the truth. Believe it, dont believe it..up to you:

"I am the way , the TRUTH and the life" Jesus Christ

I think truth and falsity, like good and evil, are human concepts we have developed to help us make sense of the world. As such the exact meaning of the word "truth" can be debated. People have different knowledge, and different beliefs as to what the "truth" may be.

However the "truth" is not just a set of data or sequence of events. Underlying the word is a greater concept that can't easily be defined by logic or semantics. Rather it is an Ideal, a universally understood idea that represents integrity, accuracy and reliability in our interpretation of the world we live in.

Interesting thread.

I think that you can be whatever you want to be, regardless of how you were brought up or whatever information you were given, learned, etc.

information has no moral relativity to it. It is just information. How you process or incorporate that information is what creates morals and ethics and your lifestyle and how you view the world. And you can change that truth during your lifetime.
The truth changes, because our perspective changes as we grow, learn more, and incorporate that learning into our lives.

Originally posted by Jonna
Evil is only so in its relationship to an opposite (Good) and so is subjective. Thus Evil and Good could be seen as either negative OR positive depending on its relationship to the person perceiving it. Evil and Good are interchangible and have no Absolute Truth.

There is nothing subjective about good and evil. Good is good and evil is evil. Good is positive and evil is negative. This is part of the natural order of the universe and the infused knowledge of the creator.

Where the argument becomes interesting is in the mind of the person perceiving what is good and what is evil. This is a very subjective process and one where a person could perceive evil as something good. The neonazi praising Hitler for example. Just because he perceives it as good doesn't make it good. In fact, it implies that the person, at least in that regard, is evil by nature.


Saying that evil and good are interchangeable and have no absolute truth is simply false. It's another form of the argument that many people use to justify evil actions (sin) as being required by God. I'm sure you know the argument, "God couldn't exist without sin because how would we know what good is without sin."

Originally posted by Jonna
What excuse? I never said that we were born with it!?!

I know you didn't say that, I said it. Not everything's about you bud.
j/k

Anyway Jonna and TPM I'm afraid you're just plain wrong or you've got your wires crossed about what I said.

Originally posted by ThePrankMonkey
nada its a nice notion but NONE of us, not even you are capable of this. as much as we'd like to sometimes, it cannot be done. we can pretend and put on an act and even supress these things in our mind but eventually they always come out.

This is just wrong and just because you can't change your belief structure doesn't mean no one else can. You hear stories all the time of kids that were raised to be God-worshipping Catholics e.t.c. then one day, could be when they're 25 or 75, see or read something that will make them completely reject the idea of God. Their idea of truth is no longer what it once was, and it can happen at any age.

This also applies to racism and plain ignorance. For example, there have been children that have been raised all their lives to hate everyone from say...the south. They could go through their whole lives being hateful little bastards to southerners then one day something happens like a Southerner saves their life, then they get to talk with the person from the south and find that they really like them. After all them years all their misconceptions and so called truth about people from the south is gone, and changed into a new truth. This scenario applies to anything including race, sexuality, religion nationality e.t.c. and the circumstances for the change are always different.

Of course it isn't easy and unfortunately a lot of people get stuck in their ways and their twisted version of the truth, but to say that NONE of us will ever get over these concepts we learn as children ever is complete horse manure, and I speak from experience.

[Edited for typos]


[edit on 13-6-2004 by John Nada]

Truth is different to absoloutly everyone, one truth could be one others lie.

To define truth with a lie, I think it's best to rely on pure intuition/instincts. This is because the subconscious tends to be able to tell what is happening without the use of the senses as a main object. Our senses can be complete liars to us and they can trick us into believing illusions, like for instance, put someone in some kind of interrogation torture and then within 24hrs nearly all the victims forget their interrogator, and some even mistake the interrogator for a different gender...that how powerfull the mind is, because of these 5 senses. But Intution works on a diferent leval all together.

For example:

The train bombings in Madrid... the train tickets and people using that as a transport fell dramatically on that day, because even though the day looked, smelled, felt (as in touch), sounded and 'tasted' normal, their intuition/instincts picked up something was terribly wrong and for those who tend to rely on their intuition/instincts will straight away change what way they would go to work/school/etc... there are the unfortunate ones who either didn't get their natural instincts come to them, or they completly ignored it, probably juding that they may be late for something if they don't catch the train, or that they are only fantisising such a thing...etc...

That was just one example..and this happens all the time...I must admit, I once completly ignored my intuition and told myself I'm being silly..and where did it get me? It got me running for my life halfway across town.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is that the intuition is the best guid to truth, if you want the truth, trust in yourself and no one else...even things you see can all be a lie, an illusion, that is when you have your intuition turned 24/7. Oh and take this on, next time something 'big' happens...don't look at what has happened, instead listen to your intincts/intuition and see whether it feels real or not, if you cant decide, meditating helps a lot.

I hope something here helps.

Love and Light
Phoenix