The Value of Absolute Truth

[hamilrob]

If Absolute Truth exists independent of the diversity that leads to relativism, then of what value is it (Absolute Truth) if we can't know what it is because of that relativism?

If two people define a Truth in two divergent ways, both of which could be right, How do we determine who is correct? Even if the Bible were to be used as a standard and even if it WAS infallible, the diversity of interpretations still prevent it from determining absolutely what is right and what is wrong.

I am on the side of Relativism, BTW, but would like to hear from all angles.

[hamilrob]

well, bro. Dave, I went to the Uranthia site (http://urantiabook.org/newbook/papers/p189.htm), and read all of two sentences, maybe not even that much.

You WERE joking, of course?

[Joanie]

hamilrob

I think I know what you are saying. If God exists, saying he doesn't does not alter the truth of "God Exists". I just seems that If I really want to know that God exists and can challenge the statement that God exists the the only way I can accept that God exists is not to challenge the statement.

Well, not quite. What I’m saying is that there are two levels of “knowing”. The physical level is the one relied on by science. It serves well within the relativistic material world. However science chooses not to address anything which it cannot “slide under a microscope”. That automatically excludes such “unimportant” things as “what is life?”, and “what is love?” etc. etc. etc….

hamilrob

I think that's why I oppose Absolutism. It seems to inhibit freedom of thought. What if God "truly" does NOT exist? What if that's the Absolute Truth? What keeps "God does not Exist" from being an absolute truth?

If you go though life with your eyes shut, you may not believe that light really exists. After all, it is just something others claim to experience. Likewise, if we choose to ignore our spiritual side, we may miss the God who is “closer than our breath”.

hamilrob

Jesus Rose from the dead.

Jesus did “rise”, but he no longer used his physical body. Instead, he chose to appear in the kind of spirit-body which can be made visible to mortals.

hamilrob

Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit and not by Joeseph her husband.

Jesus’ birth, including conception, was entirely natural. His divinity was on his spiritual side, not his physical side.

hamilrob

Jesus Walked on the Water.

He could have, but he didn’t. It was part of a dream which an exhausted Peter experienced while they were returning from fishing.
Actually, Jesus did all in he could not to put on flashy public magic shows. There were a few exception where he was forced to feed the 5 thousand, and where he was manipulated into turning water into wine, but these and his healing of the sick as he passed by were not meant to WOW anyone. In fact, after each healing, the person was admonished to “tell no one”.

hamilrob

These statements are either true or false. That's about as absolute a truth as I can state.

As you can see, even these statements are only relatively true…

Bro Dave

[Bro Dave]

hamilrob

I'll probably get asked to describe the symbolism more in detail, so i better get out my notes!

Not by me! I tire quickly from the Christian's and their torturous twisting they go through to justify the rediculious stuff in the Bible. Jesus' message was so simple and straight forward; God is your Father, and you are therefore brothers and sisters; Love God and one another.

But with Pauls packaging of Christianity to make it palatable to the locals, that simple truth got shoved aside.(sigh)

Bro Dave

[hamilrob]

Not by me! I tire quickly from the Christian's and their torturous twisting they go through to justify the rediculious stuff in the Bible. Jesus' message was so simple and straight forward; God is your Father, and you are therefore brothers and sisters; Love God and one another.

But with Pauls packaging of Christianity to make it palatable to the locals, that simple truth got shoved aside.(sigh)

Bro Dave

Not by me! I tire quickly from the Christian's and their torturous twisting they go through to justify the rediculious stuff in the Bible. Jesus' message was so simple and straight forward; God is your Father, and you are therefore brothers and sisters; Love God and one another.

But with Pauls packaging of Christianity to make it palatable to the locals, that simple truth got shoved aside.(sigh)

Bro Dave

Bless You my Son

[Bro Dave]

well, bro. Dave, I went to the Uranthia site (http://urantiabook.org/newbook/papers/p189.htm), and read all of two sentences, maybe not even that much.

You WERE joking, of course?

My, I AM impressed! It took me 14 years of attempting to read the forward, and finally 5 years to actually read the entire book. You assimilated it it less than two sentences.

Seriously, this is an awsome work, but not for the faint of heart. You struck me as a serious student in search of reasonable answers. Given a chance, this book acts as a sort of framework for everything starting from the nature of God, on down to us, and show how it all fits together and how it is adminsitered. If nothing else, take a look at papers 99 through 103 on religion; How it got started, and how we ended up with so many variations. It is non-judgemental, and I think the best overview I have ever seen.

Of course, its your call... you may be satisfied with your current understanding.

[hamilrob]

Seriously, this is an awsome work, but not for the faint of heart. You struck me as a serious student in search of reasonable answers. Given a chance, this book acts as a sort of framework for everything starting from the nature of God, on down to us, and show how it all fits together and how it is adminsitered. If nothing else, take a look at papers 99 through 103 on religion; How it got started, and how we ended up with so many variations. It is non-judgemental, and I think the best overview I have ever seen.

Look, Dave. I'll give it a try, but I just can't believe someone would find this any more serious than an episode of Bugs Bunny. Where did they get this stuff from? How do know what they think they know, and what is their authority to construct such completely outlandish ramblings about the nature of God.

Since you seem like a nice guy, I will give it a try, but don't expect much. I am a rational sketic and a materialist with very little respect for mysticism and free-flight imaginative nonsense. maybe i read the wrong thing or missed something.

[Bro Dave]

Seriously, this is an awsome work, but not for the faint of heart. You struck me as a serious student in search of reasonable answers. Given a chance, this book acts as a sort of framework for everything starting from the nature of God, on down to us, and show how it all fits together and how it is adminsitered. If nothing else, take a look at papers 99 through 103 on religion; How it got started, and how we ended up with so many variations. It is non-judgemental, and I think the best overview I have ever seen.

Look, Dave. I'll give it a try, but I just can't believe someone would find this any more serious than an episode of Bugs Bunny. Where did they get this stuff from? How do know what they think they know, and what is their authority to construct such completely outlandish ramblings about the nature of God.

Since you seem like a nice guy, I will give it a try, but don't expect much. I am a rational sketic and a materialist with very little respect for mysticism and free-flight imaginative nonsense. maybe i read the wrong thing or missed something.

Look, it took me 14 years of skepticism myself, so I fully understand. I suggest just reading it like an encyclopedia, or even as just an enjoyable fiction. The quality of both style and content will either justify what it says or not. Remember, this proports only to be yet another step in a very long revelatory porcess. There have been 4 previous updates so far, last being brought by Jesus. It is not claimed to be a "holy" book, and the authors were constrained from giving us un-earned scientific knowledge. But on the spiritual side, it pretty impressive. I have never seen anything approach the description of the nature of God it offers in the very first paper.

Anyway, there is so much new age garbage out there, you are right to wonder why this is any different... but IMHO, it really is!

Taie care,

Bro Dave

[hamilrob]

Look, it took me 14 years of skepticism myself, so I fully understand. I suggest just reading it like an encyclopedia, or even as just an enjoyable fiction. The quality of both style and content will either justify what it says or not. Remember, this proports only to be yet another step in a very long revelatory porcess. There have been 4 previous updates so far, last being brought by Jesus. It is not claimed to be a "holy" book, and the authors were constrained from giving us un-earned scientific knowledge. But on the spiritual side, it pretty impressive. I have never seen anything approach the description of the nature of God it offers in the very first paper.

Hey Dave.

Just want you to know. I have been checking this site www.urantiabook.org out more thoroughly. Initially, I went to the parts dealing with the resurrection and that's what I couldn't handle.

So far, I see good evidence of the position I took in my book at www.ggod.info. My Position was that God is a construction of human imagination, basically. As I read (in Urantia) about the refinements in the conception of God, I am further convinced that I am right. It seems these authors have taken it upon themselves to explain how God came into being and how His understanding has evolved over the course of human history.

As regards our topic, Absolute Truth, it is clear to me that this work exemplifies the subjectivity with which humans approached their knowledge of God. As far as I can see, there is no reason for me to change my thinking based on what I read so far. The Jews, just like every other culture in human history, crafted a God relative to their personal experience and concurrent with their level of intellect and consciousness. This renders the whole business of Theism as a matter of Relativism which would have to include the validation of atheism as yet another way of defining God be denying His existence.

That may be a wild assertion, but atheism is a truth (subjective maybe) in itself and relative to personal experience just like any conceptualization of God of which there are many. The focus of my thesis is that humans are responsible for far more they are willing to accept. We create the truths that serve us best, and as human society has evolved from tribalism and closed groups into today's open world, diversity of thought and opinion regarding religious matters along with everything else reveals the relativism that casts doubt on the absolute nature of the entity we accept or reject as God.

We may never know this entity(God) in a singular way which the entire world can agree to. Does that mean it does not exist? No. However, it can accommodate atheism in a positive way. Saying “there is no God” does not harm society any more than the religious wars of antiquity on up to present day have. I won't go to far in this area because the point is to understand the nature of absolute truth. It may just be that we are bound by our opinions and if there is such a thing as absolute truth, we may never know what that is.

In a free society, any attempt to canonize absolute truth and suppress contrary ideas should be recognized as invalid and managed in such a way as to prevent it from oppressing people and restricting the evolution of human intelligence toward greater levels of enlightenment.

The value of absolute truth would have been to bring the world together, but the reality and fundamental necessity of relativism has produced a world of religious conflict which is causing a lot of global stress.

What could be the solution? Perhaps we should recognize that our human-devised truths are essentially subjective and therefore not worthy of being used as absolute positions from which powerful nations and religious organizations can dominate and oppress the freedom of the world.

[ST88]

If Absolute Truth exists independent of the diversity that leads to relativism, then of what value is it (Absolute Truth) if we can't know what it is because of that relativism?

There are Absolute Truths and relativism does appear to work counter to that claim. But relativism isn't the reason that the Absolute Truths you are discussing can't be known. Relativism exists because Absolute Truths can't be known. Whoever set up the nature of those Absolute Truths, made it quite clear that they can't (and perhaps shouldn't) ever be known for certain. But since the human animal requires explanation -- and the human brain unconsciously strives to make narrative sense out of seemlingly unconnected and contradictory information, we are all subject to the relativism of our own interpretations of what those Absolute Truths might be. It just isn't acceptable for many people that there are things that can never be known, so they make things up. This isn't necessarily a conscious process, but it is a real process nonetheless. The absence of information that is widely sought but not achieved creates a knowledge vacuum that must be filled by a) the first rumors of information about it, b) random suppositions based on small pieces of information, and c) attempts at logic that are usually heavily flawed.

[Joanie]

[quote="Bro Dave"

Jesus walked on water

He could have, but he didn’t. It was part of a dream which an exhausted Peter experienced while they were returning from fishing.
Actually, Jesus did all in he could not to put on flashy public magic shows. There were a few exception where he was forced to feed the 5 thousand, and where he was manipulated into turning water into wine, but these and his healing of the sick as he passed by were not meant to WOW anyone. In fact, after each healing, the person was admonished to “tell no one”.




Let's back up the truck here just for a moment.
Bro Dave, I would really like to know what version of the bible you are reading. Just where does it say Peter was dreaming that Jesus walked on water? And just when was Jesus forced or manipulated into doing anything?

If Jesus was forced and manipulated into doing things, does that mean God can be as well?
This takes away from His supposed authority over all things.

In my opinion, this is just more twisted interpretation of scripture.


What is the truth???