Do you believe there is absolute truth?

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Reality =/= absolute truth. That is confusing statements with what the statements attempt to refer to.

Other problems:
How to define subjective vs objective? In particular, how to define a subject?

The Truth is Out There. Not in here.

ruveyn

Well, the only subject that really makes sense would be "you/me/I/however you want to say it". We interpret data and that data depends on us as subjects. I can't really think of anything else that would make sense there unless you want a broader term like "society/people/man" and even then it still relates back to the subject of you/me/I as one is a part of such a larger group.

The only thing I can say for certain is that we can reach absolute truth in our reality but from what I'm studying it's hard to make analogies anywhere beyond.
Mathematics is my perception for my sensory distortion.

I have a personal policy against offering an opinion in any topic where the OP has not which is why I only voted in this poll, without comment, when it first appeared.

I could have made an exception, in this case, because I read the last thread Ragtime started on this topic and I can make a pretty good guess on where he meant to go with this. That thread was interesting in some places though awfully ugly in others and I think it would be worth repeating if the ugliness could be removed. Ragtime appears to be a lot less confrontational these days than he was in those, so there may be hope for that.

Would it be asking too much for you to take the initiative and state why you believe there is an Absolute Truth and how man can come to know it

Statements don't have position.

'I' don't believe subjects exist.

The truth about the world lies external to our skins. Most of what is and what is happening is not IN us, it is OUTSIDE us.

ruveyn

I deny the existence of "absolute truth," on a number of levels.

First, there is human incapacity. Our cognitive capacity deals largely in abstractions. Everything that we reduce to words we put abstract limits upon. Now while some will take that as evidence that there is meaning beyond what we are able to conceive, I see that as irrelevant. Consider the analogy of the observable universe. We can perceive nothing that exists beyond the Hubble Radius, and anything that occurs outside this radius cannot, perforce, have any impact on our position in space-time. So while there are certainly events taking place beyond the Hubble Radius, they and their consequences can never cross the barrier into a time cone that we can observe. As a result, for all intents and purposes they do not exist.

Second, there is uncertainty. We have known for almost a century that it is impossible to know a particle's position and momentum. More to the point, any attempt to know one property definitively renders the other property increasing impossible to know. This is not simply a limit on human cognition and perception, this is a fundamental mechnical principle of the universe.

The 'new crowd' in WP is generally better now, I was just thinking, than it used to be years ago. It's easier to have actual discussions, as opposed to them degenerating into fights. I hope and assume that the years have matured my perspective as well.



I think I explained, though not in so many words, that I believe in the law of non-contradiction, and that therefore I believe that truth is thoroughly consistent, and thus absolute. As for how one finds it -- or rather, as in my view, an important little bit of it -- my view is that God shows people things in a purely spiritual way. Those things could be regarding personal issues in their lives, or they could be confirmations of the truths of or behind certain Bible verses. And through this method, God can, by His great power, actually cause you to know certain absolute truths. (This is merely a summary description, so it might read as more open-ended than my view actually is -- as if it allowed room for people to write "modern Scripture" or somesuch nonsense doctrine. The above is just the basics.)

I believe there is absolute truth. I don't think any human institution, religion, science or person knows it. But I believe it exists.

I am not going this far. I don't think anyone can know it. If the above quote was true, then God would have Disassociative Identity Disorder because he has revealed millions of different truths to millions of different people. Or let me guess. Yours is the only right absolute one, the other 4 trillion people are delusional.

There are only two ways one can know something exists:

1. By experiencing it through empirical means.

2. By showing the assumption of non-existence of the whatever leads to a logical contradiction.


Do either of the above apply to "absolute truth"? If not, you have no basis on which to assert it exists or even believe in it.

ruveyn

Ragtime's belief in the existence of Absolute Truth is based on logic and the logic is sound. I either exist or I do not, it cannot be neither and it cannot be both; there may be differences of opinion on which is true but only one can be true. Opinion is simply each persons perception of truth and it is limited in all the ways Fnord and Janissy mentioned and more.

Not really; Jesus did say that the Holy Spirit would lead and guide us to the truth, and those who believe in him would accept that as true. However there are other powers at work; there is the Devil who would have you believe anything but the truth, and there is your own self which, more often than not, fashions its concept of truth on what it would like it to be.

You missed my parenthetical warning, apparently. No, the truths God reveals are never contrary to one another. I believe He reveals many of the same truths to different people, whereas most of the different truths are different only because they address specific aspects of that particular person's life. The necessary corollary that I mentioned I wasn't going to get into (but now must), I did at least allude to: people cannot tell other people: "God told me this, so therefore you have to do or believe _______." Obviously, tons of trouble results many times when that belief is followed. Rather, one must go to Scripture, and keep it as the authority by which you judge all supposed personal revelations. Otherwise, cults develop.

The only thing God "reveals" to us is nature, and that is accessible by purely natural means. Our knowledge though far from complete is completely natural.

ruveyn