Can we know the truth?

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We each view the universe with minds developed for survival in an environment restricted to this very small insignificant planet with severe limits. With modern instrumentation we can channel data normally unavailable to our limited senses into forms we can perceive. That we have just very recently discovered that the bulk of energy and matter in the universe has been previously unperceived is a clear indication that there is a good probability that much more is unknown and therefore cannot be integrated into what we know. To speak of truth as an absolute to be totally knowable under these conditions of fragmentary perception and even more fragmentary integration of knowledge into understanding is hubris of the highest order. We have found much that is useful and we are continuously discovering more. I find that satisfactory.

Each one of us lives in a house in a city, which is in a bigger country, which is in a continent, which is in an area of the Earth, which is in a solar system of at least 8 planets, which is in a spiral arm of a galaxy known as the Milky Way, which is one of many billions if not trillions of galaxies in the Entire Universe. Now, open your minds to the view of the whole Universe looking in at you, and you will realise the truth then - for how inconsequential we all are in the great scheme of things, for however big the Universe is, it can never be pictured or imagined without causing our brains to implode.

There is no truth. Only conspiracies.

Even paranoids have enemies but that's no reason to carry things to extremes.

in short, no.

We are but biological creatures with biological perceptions, how could we ever know the truth?

Or, imagine a black rose in a field of red roses. Now keep your eyes on the rose as you zoom 10,000,000.000 light years away, while the field is growing exponentially. Now zoom back in as quickly as you zoomed out. Has your head imploded yet?

What do you mean by "know" ?

I mean whatever you want it to mean. Knowing can be synonymous with believing, it can be synonymous with having proof of, or it can even be an impossibility. I want people to put down what they think is true rather than analyze it, because if I gave you an answer to your question, then I stop being able to figure out what you believe, and I start seeing what you are capable of analyzing.

This makews no sense at all. Restate w/ simpler language?

Basically, in a infinity sense, no absolute truth can exist, because infinity allows for all possibilities. Due to this, a truth in one universal aspect will be false in another. Therefore to say absolute truth of anything, it would always imply a paradox and/or contradiction in a infinite scope, and thus it can't be absolutely true.

Last edited by Nexus on 06 Jun 2008, 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Many have glimpsed the Truth. Many have known it. Our minds allow us to know the Truth. The brain is the biological tether of mind, and mind the antenna to Mind.

See above rose analogy.

Finding the Truth requires insight. Insight requires going beyond thoughts and thinking, beyond logic and calculation. Machines can't do this becsause they are just machines. The human mind is able to find insight because it can detach itself from logic and escape the limitations of perception. Einstein's level of insight would not have been come to him had he not had such a strong imagination. Same with DaVinci.

I don't know what the rose analogy is supposed to mean.

The insistence that humans are not machines is the last refuge of someone who claims some sort of hogwash about humans not being made of the same material stuff as everything else in the universe. It is a claim never substantiated in any reasonable form.

All right, now looks like a good time to throw in Keats' poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.