Truth? Where is it? (as opposed to What is it?)

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In today’s relativistic society it seems a question is more often asked of people and by people is "What is truth?’ But there is truth, here is a simple one… My eyes, as a I see them, via the refraction of light and the lights translation into electrons are blue and green and their different colors are due to a mutation. That is true, sure it is dependent on biology and physics as we know them being true. But even if both physics and biology are proved false my statement is still true because it takes the sciences as biology and physics as axioms only in that setting do I claim it to be true.

Ok so we can know some truth, my eyes for example, but that is rather useless information. There are far more important questions and we know there is truth for I just gave you a truth so it must exist. So if truth exists, where is it? I have read books on christianity from such authors as Ravi Zacharais, Peter Kreeft, William Lane Craig they all seems to know the truth but is it the truth, why? Because they present it nicely? But using enough logic anything can be true or at least make anything seem true.

So then where is truth? Shouldn’t be self evident as my eyes being green and blue and as them being two different colors? The only thing that is evident is truth isn’t there, what is there is the exact opposite, that fact “truth isn’t there (there being anywhere observable)”.

So then, where is truth? or is the only truth that my eyes are blue and green 😉 (in which case why am I not ruler of the world as possessor of truth 😉 )

**Background or how I came to be seeing this (optional reading )

I began thinking this when I was at the library for a couple hours (another story for that 😛 ). I usually looked up books in the non fiction section in the 200s to 300s of the dewey decimal system which is labeled (least in our library) as prayer, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc) and kept looking down the two or so rows of books, what I realized is this so many books, so many differing view points, so many contradictory answers, and if you read them all you’d be at the same place, equal weight on every side of truth and no side coming out any better. So then… Where is truth?

PS: I apparently talk so much to myself through posting random topics here that I have been logged out due to inactivity.**
 
I have often pondered the truth. Every major religion will tell you that it has the truth and that others are wrong. So why then did God create the world where so many are wrong. Where is the justice in someone being born in a civilization that knows no truth. So here is a thought to ponder, what if God in His great wisdom chose to spread truth amongst the civilizations and peoples of the world? What if the one true religion will not be any of them in their “pure” forms but rather a coming together of the seeds of truth from each land and it’s respective spiritual belief system. If you dare to take the time to read across disciplines, you’ll find that some beliefs are universal except in their terminology and/or details of explanation. Will we one day see a melting pot where all of the spiritual belief systems are distilled into the important and true components while boiling off the societal interpretations of it.

In Gods creation I see a beautiful act of balance and harmony. As long as there is not true harmony or unity, there will have to be a balance. The farther one portions moves from harmony, the more a balancing force must manifest. The true state of harmony will be when all are unified in the one truth.

Please pardon the ramblings of a madman at 3:00 am…
 
The only truth that can be proofed by humans are tautologies. Even science has fail very often in history(like for example: Luminiferous aether and a static never changing universe view before Humble). But tautologies are a bit useless.

However, the big Truth is proofed by God himself and is only found in the Catholic Church.
 
Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life” A great thinker said “My soul is restless until it rests in thee, O God”. The evidence lies within each one of us - in each restless soul. We all seek the truth. The turth is known only fully in the light of faith. Since you are seeking truth, look into the Catholic Church which was started here on eath by Jesus Christ? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, my friend. 🙂
 
Jesus did say that he was the “way, the truth and the life”. Yet he also said "“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” John 16:12

I struggle with the Catechism where in 842 it states that all humankind is one people and will one day be reunited, 845 states that outside of the church there is no salvation, unless according to 847 you have no knowledge of the church. So the straightforward interpretation is saying that God is able to offer anybody salvation as long as they never heard of the Catholic church. Once they hear about it, he can or will only offer it through the church. Why this sounds more like it is designed to perpetuate the church than being absolute truth is troubling to me. After all, once man steps in and making rules, we all know how often that can lead to the seeking of power and control. I have noticed in my copy of the Catechism how often the church invokes her own authority as basis for a teaching.

So are these apparent disconnected themes truth? Or rather directives because we “cannot bear them now”? Such as how Moses allowed divorce and Jesus rescinded the practice saying that Moses only allowed it because the Hebrews were a “stiff-necked people”.
 
Rudy_Baga said:
Jesus did say that he was the “way, the truth and the life”. Yet he also said "“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” John 16:12

The nature of truth. This thread has gone from truth in general to the truth of the Catholic Faith.

To answer the first. Truth is correspondence of you concept with reality. You know reality because you know " Treeness, " " Fireness, " " Humanness, " etc. You don’t doubt it because you couln’t live very long unless you identified the real things you experience around you. You recognize the truth of an endless number of propositions: the sun rises in the East each morning, there are four seasons in the year, farmers plant their crops early in the Spring, except for Fall crops or Winter Wheat, it is wrong to kill an innocent person, it is wrong to purloin something that doesn’t belong to you, you should not beat up little old ladies, the last three give evidence that you have a conscience, a nuclear bomb gose off which tells you any number of truths ( i.e. someone solved the problem of splitting the atom, someone learned how to make a weapon from this truth, someone actuall exploded this weapon, you know that an enclosed three sided figure is a triangle.
In many of these truths you recognize the philosophical truth that there are causes, effects, an order of acts to an end, etc. So what kind of truth are you looking for?

As far as the Truth of the Catholic Church and its teachings there are certainly valid reasons for it. The reasons are contained in the Truth of the Scriptures. This Truth leads to the Truth of the Catholic Faith. Christ founded the Church and gave Peter the Keys to bind and loosen, and promised that the Advocate would guarantee the adherence of the Church to the Truth of Salvation given by Christ ( the truths of faith and morality as taught by the Church through the Magisterium).

Now the Church never taught that you had to be a baptized and bonified member of the Catholic Church to be saved. The Church has always taught that those who through no fault of their own do not believe in the Catholic Faith or who may be completely ignorant of it can still be saved but that it is the ideal situation for all that they belong to the Catholic Faith. Because moral and religious truth is guaranteed only to the Catholic Faith and that only the Catholic Faith has the complete Sacramental system intended by Christ to be the channels of his graces - the graces of Salvation.

However it is true that since Christ founded his Church and intended all men to belong to it, those who are saved will be saved through the graces bestowed by Christ on his Church for the Church constantly asks Christ to bestow the grace of salvation on all men, irregardless of whether or not they are members of the Church.

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Truth is simply a property attributed to certain statements. It depends wholly upon conventionlized meanings, and conventionalized paradigms of correspondence. Indeed, if any statement is repeated consistently enough it becomes accepted as true.

Why should we care about ‘truth’ at all?

An ‘untrue’ statement, in sofar as it pushes the limits of linguistic convention, is, in fact, more likely to offer a genuine insight and creative energy.
 
Qoeleth said:
Truth is simply a property attributed to certain statements. It depends wholly upon conventionlized meanings, and conventionalized paradigms of correspondence. Indeed, if any statement is repeated consistently enough it becomes accepted as true.

Why should we care about ‘truth’ at all?

An ‘untrue’ statement, in sofar as it pushes the limits of linguistic convention, is, in fact, more likely to offer a genuine insight and creative energy.
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Good Lord! what are you rambling about? The question is not “what”, it’s 'where". Philosophy is leading you around in circles. The truth is evident is each one of God’s people. It guides us through the conscience. Secularism or modernism seeks to quiet or numb the conscience and has succeeded in doing so with the constant hammering on the sins of the flesh and how eveything is “OK” and “natural” as it pertains to greed, lust, avarice, sloth, gluttony. the truth is Christ and we know we can trust in Him. When he said, "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now, he was speaking to his apostles and disciples before His ascension into heaven and before the descent of the HOly Spirit. We cannot know all things now, but we can strive for holiness so that we might be with Him eternally when all will be revealed to us.
 
Zimm3r said:
I usually looked up books in the non fiction section in the 200s to 300s of the dewey decimal system which is labeled (least in our library) as prayer, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism etc) and kept looking down the two or so rows of books, what I realized is this so many books, so many differing view points, so many contradictory answers, and if you read them all you’d be at the same place, equal weight on every side of truth and no side coming out any better. So then… Where is truth?

PS: I apparently talk so much to myself through posting random topics here that I have been logged out due to inactivity.
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Truth can only be found by first making a choice:
Either you decide there can be no truth (then you can stop wasting time on it)

or

there is truth.

Then the only method to finding is to look into yourself and try to discern whether there is something, which you know and feel to be true even beyond you own life, something which you have confidence to be even true when you are long dust. Take it and whack it, try to hammer it apart, try to imagine its untrue. And if it still feels true, start trusting it with care and see what all those different books have to say in respect to what you must consider to be true.

For me personally it was “All human life always matters.” In the end there was mostly only one book left, because all others contradicted what i must consider to be true.
 
An excellent question.:clapping:

The truth is nowhere! Like freedom, justice, equality, purpose and love it is an intangible, eternal and indestructible reality.
 
Used2beSherryG said:
Good Lord! what are you rambling about? The question is not “what”, it’s 'where". Philosophy is leading you around in circles. The truth is evident is each one of God’s people. It guides us through the conscience. Secularism or modernism seeks to quiet or numb the conscience and has succeeded in doing so with the constant hammering on the sins of the flesh and how eveything is “OK” and “natural” as it pertains to greed, lust, avarice, sloth, gluttony. the truth is Christ and we know we can trust in Him. When he said, "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now, he was speaking to his apostles and disciples before His ascension into heaven and before the descent of the HOly Spirit. We cannot know all things now, but we can strive for holiness so that we might be with Him eternally when all will be revealed to us.
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There is no necessary conflict between the position that truth (in the sense in which the word is normally used) is a matter of language, which is a matter of convention (cf. Heidegger, Wittgenstein), and Catholic morality.

I would hold that almost any statement could be both true and untrue, depending upon how the words are understood or ‘meant’. Thus, ‘truth’ is relative. This does not imply, however, that reality or moral standards are relative. Note that ‘moral standards’ are distinct from ‘verbal articulations of moral standards.’ The former I hold to be absolute- the later, relative, since they are dependent on language and interpretation.
 
There is one Truth, God. There are many truths relative to what you believe. That is why our culture belives in death and calls it something else, and all the other errors being called the truth.
 
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