Is there an absolute truth?

Question:not just in religion, but in life. consider this example:

a class reads a short paragraph and is asked to count the F's in the paragraph. half the class counts 12. the other half counts 10. in actuality there are only 10 F's. how do you dispute the fact there are 10 F's?

look at the word 'book'. i tell you that there are two 'o'. how does one who doesn't believe in absolute truth debate that?

is truth in perception or is perception irrelevant to truth?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: not just in religion, but in life. consider this example:

a class reads a short paragraph and is asked to count the F's in the paragraph. half the class counts 12. the other half counts 10. in actuality there are only 10 F's. how do you dispute the fact there are 10 F's?

look at the word 'book'. i tell you that there are two 'o'. how does one who doesn't believe in absolute truth debate that?

is truth in perception or is perception irrelevant to truth?

I think any perception is narrow. Perception comes from an ego that is limited in itself having basically come into existence from social conditioning, personal experiences, education, etc. So that perception is, of course, narrow and can't see truth which is always new and in the here and now of the present. To see truth you have to stop your ego's perception by turning it off, so only consciousness coming from your Self, or God, remains. That consciousness is in itself Reality and God.

There is, but "why" is an enclaved, non-sequitur illusion.

There certainly is such a thing as absolute truth -- but that doesn't mean that we can necessarily find out what it is. Einstein concluded that the speed of light is constant, however measured, and since that has led to a great deal of subsequent physics, it is a good bet that it is absolutely true. But people said that about Newtonian mechanics for 300 years -- until new experiments showed that it was wrong.

That's a really good question. I'm taking a Critical Reasoning class in college right now and we discussed exactly that. Something you might want to think about is"there's no such thing as the 'truth,' at least not 'Truth' with a capital T." Basically, The so-called truth is always relative to some particular point of view; in other words, whats true for you may not be true for me. This is refered to as relativism, and the interesting thing is is that you can't say you belive in realtivism without contradicting yourself.

truth is what state of the matter is.
Our perception of the truth can vary - I am sure if 10 people are given five different shades of red and are asked to grade them from lightest to darkest, we will have many different opinions as our eyes do not see the same.

But how can we know? We do not have the ability to do that yet, although we have come far technologically otherwise hopping up to the Moon would not be possible.

Death is the only absolute truth.

No Wait, I am not sure as some viruses die and live as they transit from space (living organisms) to space ( dead atmosphere).

EnJOy

They say death and taxes .

It's not absolute. You are still assuming, for example, that there are two "os." But the concept of "two" is not absolute. Practically (alternatively), think about...are there really two of anything? The two o's on the printed page occupy a different place in space and there are miniscule differences in their print as well. What justifies you lumping them together? Are you assuming an independent "o" shape outside of time and space? You are relying on various assumptions to come to the conclusion that there are two o's between "b" and "k." The colcnlusion that there are 10 Fs and not 12 Fs happens to be more powerful given convention and a a priori definiton of what it means to be accurate, among other things. For *almost* all standards of truth, the 10F conclusion is superior to the 12F conclusion. But it is not absolute. Absolute truth makes absolutely no sense...btw, absolute relativism doesn;t make any sense either.

Yes there is. Love.

Well the best way to answer your question about absolute truth is to tell you a short story. A man once lived his life to the fullest. He asked the Reverend at the end of his life, is their an absolute truth? The Reverend shrugged his shoulders and said, death. As he went home, the man pondered this thought as he looked back on his life. The next day, He walked down his driveway on a bright sunny spring morning. He opens his mail box and finds a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that he owes taxes. The man asked himself is this truth in perception or is perception irrelevant to truth. Well, some five days later the man is laying in his bed very ill, his body is cold and he is chilled to the bone. He thought about the question of absolute truth and he then realized, he had two things to do. He stuck a stamp on his tax envelope and had his wife put it in the mailbox at the end of the driveway. When she returned, he was dead. The morale of the story, is if you become dead perception is irrelevant to truth because it no longer matters for you. While you are living the perception of truth is very real. While you are on this earth, you have to pay your taxes. Their you have it, the absolute truth; death and taxes.

Whenever you have a problem like this, it is best to say "According to xxxxx, there are ten F;'s in this text. According to yyyyyy, there are twelve."

I myself would trust computer software to make this count--especially if another piece of software also made the same count.

Of course, you can always get counts from multiple sources and determine their mean (a statistical term for the kind of average we leaned how to calculate in elementary school).

Harleigh Kyson Jr.