Hi James,
How do you define ‘true’ when talking about such an emotional subject? Do you recognise an intuition or a feeling, a poem or a love song to hold truth, or only that which is proven fact?
Shalom
Bob
In the same way as I define “true” when I’m talking about any subject - the correlation between meaning and that aspect of reality which that meaning purports to represent.
What do you mean by “hold truth”? Do you mean to ask me whether there are any truths about poems, love songs, or feelings (to which my answer is that there are)?
Do you mean to ask whether feelings, poems, or love songs can contain propositions which are true (to which my answer is that poems and love songs, in so far as they contain statements, can contain true statements, but that feelings are not propositions)?
Or do you mean to ask me whether feelings, poems and love songs are reliable methods of determining the truth about things other than feelings, poems and love songs (to which my answer is that it depends entirely on the precise suggested method)?
Hi James,
So you say that there are truths about poems, love songs, or feelings. Poems and love songs, in so far as they contain statements, can contain true statements. But whether feelings, poems and love songs are reliable methods of determining the truth about things other than feelings, poems and love songs, depends entirely on the precise suggested method.
Is there a way to prove that a fictional story, a myth or a legend is very true in it’s portrayal of it’s subject-matter?
Can I prove that an emotional statement is true, like when some says they love me?
Is it reasonable to trust a feeling?
I think you must know where I am heading. There are many situations in life when I don’t have a lab handy to prove things scientifically. Millions, probably Billions of people haven’t had the opportunity to stand back and look at life the way you and I do. That means that they have to find truth in a different way to you and I.
Truth is for them, those things that prove reliable in my life. It is the life-style that helps me prosper rather than go hungry, it is the advice that leads we to a waterhole and not into a desert. It is the look in the eye of a man with a gun that tells me to avoid him or trust him. It is a tradition, by which my ancestors have lived and which rings true. It is their habits and practises that give meaning to our lives.
The kind of truth you are referring to is a luxury that many people haven’t got, and which few people in history have had. It is also something behind which people like you and me can hide to avoid becoming engaged in activity that could help people. If Religion or theism isn’t able to be proven to be literally true, is it worthless?
Shalom
Bob
What do you mean exactly by “true in its portrayal of its subject matter”? To what particular kind of proposition are you referring?
Well, theoretically, yes. It might be very difficult to gather enough information to make a deduction with the degree of conclusiveness required for proof, as distinct from a more approximate judgment of a lower order of probability, but the difference between this and simpler matters is merely a question of degree of difficulty, not of category.
That depends entirely on what one is trusting it to do.
The kind of opportunity required to think about the abstract is not an opportunity of which it is realistically possible to deprive anybody, without also depriving them of the use of their minds.
Practical reliability isn’t a definition of truth: it’s a means of determining it, or rather, a highly generalised (and therefore not very useful) kind of means of determing it.
What point exactly are you trying to make here? Your ability to make reliable practical judgments appears to be the thing that you are describing, but how does this bear on what we were discussing?
There are not multiple kinds of truth: truth is, by definition, a singular entity. It is not meaningful to conceive of truth as a luxury: it is merely a property of propositions. You appear to be confusing truth itself with the means that people use to find out what things are true: to do so is to misconceive both into incoherency.
How is it meaningful to conceive of hiding behind a kind of property of propositions?
Literality is not a property of truth: it is a way of interpreting language. “Literally” cannot add anything to “true”.
Do you mean to ask whether it is good that people believe falsehood? If you do, the answer must be negative: the more true things that people believe, and fewer false things, the better their decisions are likely to be.
Hi James,
You are the surgeon looking for the soul with a scalpel. You are the Astronaut looking for God in space. You haven’t left the ivory towers yet to understand the nature of Religion. I have often said that this is the misunderstanding that leads to confusion in these discussions. There are those who would disagree and attempt to argue with you on your level, but there are those of us who know enough to say that you can’t discuss Religion on that level.
Religion is a structure in which life should take place. It isn’t life itself. The Bible is, like Tentative often says, like a menu, not a meal. God is a metaphor for an Ultimate Reality that remains a mystery, but a mystery that is approached by different cultures in different ages, producing the variety of Religions we find today and in history. It is just important that people practising Religion do not overrate their structure, or even start mistaking it for Life itself. The problem many critics have, is that they approach the subject from the wrong side, making all of the mistakes that religious people can make.
People like myself can accept one structure as being as good as another, as long as they promote the kind of life that allows growth and prosperity, even the prosperity of other people in other structures - which means we have to find compromise. Religious Truth cannot be looked at from without, only from within a structure, in the context of tradition.
This may frustrate you, but it is my conviction. Non-fundamentalistic religious people are looking for a structure within which they can live and are quite happy to have a highly generalised (and therefore to you not very useful) means of determining the reliability of their ‘truth’.
Shalom
Bob
Dammit, Bob- I wish you’d take another pic of yourself that’s in focus! Looking at that one makes me all woozie. 
Anyway, your words neatly summarize the original point I was getting at (lo these many months ago- I can’t believe this thread came back from the dead!:o ).
You won’t find a soul inside a skull or God hanging out in space. Partly I think it’s because he’s a fantasy. 
But beyond that, reason, logic and religion don’t play well together. I don’t mean that in a condescending or dismissive way- I only mean that religion doesn’t need the facts, figures and proofs that most of us require to believe other things.
I have respect for a persons right to believe as they like. I may not believe any Christian dogma, but the current public attacks on Christianity itself seems to me to be at least as vindictive than the persecution gays have endured in the past.
Hi Phaedrus,
We moderators are sometimes a help after all!
I have to differentiate - we all need facts, figures and proofs, but not as often as we sometimes believe. Especially within a religious framework, it is sometimes missing the mark to try and use (or find) that kind of evidence.
Shalom
Bob
So yer just gonna make me squint at that crappy pic, eh? I’m not implying religion doesn’t require “facts & figures,” but if I’m building a bridge or programming a computer, I’m gonna need some specifics. If one observatory spots a NEO that they think will smack us, I’m really gonna need some figures before I deploy Bruce Willis to shoot it down.
But as a man of faith you surely must admit that Christianity doesn’t hang it’s hat on dates and archeological evidence. It’s more about the teachings and about faith. Science has it’s own type of faith, but it’s more a non-dogmatic type of faith; no single “truth” is sacrosact, but rather there’s a faith, if you will, that our knowledge is driving us forward towards a more complete understanding of the world. The physical world, that is.
Argument by metaphor is always worthless, since it inevitably takes the same argument to show that the metaphors apply and are relevant as it does to make the point without metaphors at all.
I do not agree that it is meaningful to conceive of “levels” of discussion in this way. In what sense do you contend that it is meaningful?
It is not merely any structure, though: it is a structure predicated upon certain premises. It is the truth of those premises, rather than whether, given their truth, any particular life-structure is entailed thereby, that is being discussed. Just as with any given proposition, the truth of those premises is perfectly capable of discussion in a systematic and thorough way - indeed, that is the only way that any true understanding can possibly be reached. Those who seek deliberately to cloud the issue by refusing to engage in precise discussion, and making vague statements that do not bear directly on the issues in question, appear to be attempting to evade the discovery of truth, rather than to further it.
You misunderstood what I wrote about your description: what you described, in a highly generalised way was a kind of means of discovering which particular things are true. That vague description can apply to a multitude of actual, specific means of discovering whether things are true, some of which are more reliable than others. Everybody with a mind working to some significant extent uses some methods that can be described in that way to determine whether at least some thigns are true. There is nothing particular to religion or theistic belief in any such thing.
Furthermore, it is a serious misconception of the nature of truth to consider that it is meaningful for truth to be assigned to particular people as you appear to be indicating with the phrase “their truth”. If a proposition is true, then it is true regardless of what any particular person thinks of it; likewise if it is false. The truth of no proposition is capable of depending on the means that any given person uses to determine whether it is true, and it is not meaningful to conceive of propositions being true “for” some people, and false “for” others.
The propositions propounded by religions need just as much scrutiny as any other propositions: it is just that those who choose to believe in them do so, irrationally and quite irresponsibly, without subjecting them to the scrutiny that they require.
Why is the criticism of the systematic promulgation of falsehood comparable to the irrational prejudice against those whose sexual inclinations are to those of their own sex?
Hi James,
What is the proposition upon which Christian faith is based? The proposition depends to some degree upon what denomination you belong to, whether your understanding of scripture is literalist or open, and whether your church allows the newest theological findings to be made known.
The tradition of the present is generally based upon the assumption that God ‘is’. Further, that Jesus of Nazareth was a manifestation of that God redeeming the world. The tradition of Christianity says that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them; and hath committed to us the word of reconciliation.” (2.Cor.5,19)
As we know, Christian and Jewish scripture has adopted the form it now has comparably recently, some hundreds of years after the supposed date of Christ’s death. There are varying versions of how Christianity came into being, some of them contraversial. In the age following the European Enlightenment, some Christians too started looking at their traditions with scrutiny and have brought forth an understanding which is criticised by the literalists and the atheists alike.
I count myself to those who have adopted this understanding into their “Worldview” and regard Christianity as a framework based upon the premise that “God is Love” and merciful, and that human-beings should persue the goal to give “Agape” room in their lives, based upon the faith of Jesus from Nazareth, who told us we should trust God and his own witness.
I doubt whether any Christian proposition can be scrutinised from without. I believe each of us has to find his own answer to the question, whether we want to live our lives within such a structure. No reason for wanting to do such a thing is likely to be convincing to someone who observes without concern.
Shalom
Bob
Hi Phaedrus,
OK, OK, I’ve changed it.
Yes, that was the point I was making too. Not ‘Religion’ but ‘Christians’ need facts & figures in normal life.
Shalom
Bob
Propositions, plural, not proposition, singular. Any given religion will be predicated on a very large number of propositions. The most significant of those propositions, however, is that there exists a deity: that is the proposition that is here challenged. That proposition is common to all Christian denominations, and, indeed, to all monotheastic religions.
From without what? What, do you contend, is special about those propositions that happen to be those upon which the Christian religion is predicated such that methods of scrutiny that apply to all propositions, merely by virtue of their being propositions, somehow do not apply to these? How, do you contend, is that possible of any proposition? There is nothing particular about those propositions upon which any given religion is predicated that prevents their truth or falsity being able to be ascertained in the way in only which the truth or falsity of any proposition can be ascertained: by reason.
What do you mean “his own answer”? Do you mean that each person has to do the reasoning her or himself to arrive at the true conclusion (which is perfectly sensible), or that the truth of the answer is capable of varying with the person who decides whether it is true (which is incoherent)?
Why not? And without concern for what?
Hi James,
Aha. It is wearisome sometimes, but is the ‘deity’ in your question “any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force” or could the deity ‘God’ be a metaphor for the Ultimate Reality or Being itself as against ‘a being’? Would you challenge that in the same way?
Shalom
Bob
I meant “deity” as a sentient entity, necessary for the existence of anything else, whose conscious choice(s) have caused things to exist as they do now.
As to the second question: no, I should not challenge it in the same way; I should challenge it in a different way, since the “metaphoric” kind of a deity that you describe does not seem to have any meaning at all. What exactly does “ultimate” add to “reality” (or capitalisation add to “ultimate reality”); what is “Being itself”? How can a word with no other meaning in this context be a metaphor for anything? What precisely is this thing that you think that “God” is a metaphor for?
As I have explained before (although possibly not on this thread), argument by metaphor is always worthless, as the exact same argument is required to show that the metaphor is relevant and applicable as is required to make the same point without the mataphor at all.
jamespetts,
It is interesting that you make the assumption that truth/falsity is external and independant of mind -ie- discoverable only through the process of applied logic. It is true that much of religious doctrine and dogma is subject to the discipline of logic or ‘reason’. Any of the issues under the general heading “How shall we live?” is a proper subject for rigorous examination. The nature of our spirituality doesn’t lend itself to examination within the process of logical determination. Of course, one could argue that nothing outside logic is valid, but that is simply locking up the conclusion in the definition.
I would offer that no small part of this discussion is less about the particulars and more to do with perspective. It is a forest/tree discussion. Are we looking for what we can 'know? (validity through logic), or could we be looking for understanding? It would be easy to say that there is no understanding without ‘knowing’ (through logic), but that is another round of claiming that validity can only be ascertained through reason.
For all the power of reason, there just might be others ways to find truth or understanding. It all depends on the view angle.
JT
It is not an assumption: it is a carefully reasoned conclusion (albeit one not so far expressly addressed in this thread). Truth is a property of propositions, and so, to understand truth, one must first understand the only kind of things to which truth can apply: propositions.
A proposition is a communicable (but not necessarily communicated) unit of meaning, and meaning, in turn, is data that a conscious mind is capable of understanding. More specifically, a proposition is a unit of meaning that purports to represent some or other facet of the world in which the conscious mind for which it is meaningful exists. The property of truth is a measure of the success of a proposition in that regard: a proposition is true if it does, and false if it does not, accurately represent those data of the world which it purports to represent.
It is not meaningful to conceive of truth in any other way, since, in order for there to be any sort of meaningful communication between two or more conscious minds, they must be able to exchange units of meaning (propositions), which, in order to be meaningful to all communicants, must purport to represent for each the same aspects of the world which they all inhabit.
The very fact, therefore, that you can understand me at all, and that you think that it can be meaningful to disagree with me, entails that you already accept the account of truth which I give above: that is, a proposition is true in so far as its meaning corresponds with that aspect of the world with which it purports to correspond.
Indeed, would you not claim that the proposition that you are trying to make about truth itself is true in that sense? If so, then this necessarily contradicts the proposition itself. If not, then it cannot possibly have any meaning.
In what sense is it meaningful, do you contend, to conceive of examination without the process of logical determination? Indeed, how but by logic can you arrive at conclusions like that above? Moreover, in what sense do you contend that there can exist any meaning or understanding other than by the use of logic?
My point is more fundamental than that: it is that logic is inherent to all meaning, and that validity itself is a property of logic. Whatever you are trying to do by thinking and communicating otherwise than in accordance with logic, you are necessarily bound to fail.
I think that I have made my point about the worthlessness of argument by metaphor above.
As stated above, understanding entails logic. If you are trying to understand something, you are using logic, whether you realise it or not, and whether you succeed in using it correctly or not.
As stated above, the claim is more fundamental than that, and therefore devoid of the circularity that might be argued is present in your weaker characterisation.
Again, given that reason is merely the application of logic in order to reach conclusions, there inherently cannot be any other ways (except randomly) to acheive understanding or ascertain truth but by reason.
Another worthless metaphor.
Hi James,
If I could tell you precisely, I wouldn’t need a metaphor. The idea generally goes that ‘God’ is no-thing, but the reality we apprehend, thus ‘Ultimate Reality.’ It could be that we are having difficulty with explaining sentience because (another metaphor) we’re like fish in water (the water being ‘God’) and ‘God’ “who did make the world, and all things in it, this One, of heaven and of earth being Lord, does not dwell in temples made with hands, neither by the hands of men is He served—needing anything, He giving to all life, and breath, and all things…” (Acts17,24-25)
In Acts Paul is said to suggest that mankind could “seek the Lord, if perhaps they did feel after Him and find — though, indeed, He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and are…” (v.27-28)
Shalom
Bob
If you cannot answer my question as to what you mean, then you are not in any position to be making the statement in the first place. How can you possibly argue for a proposition that you do not understand? What do you think that you mean when you say “there exists a deity”?
Why have you used the phrase “ultimate reality” again, whilst simultaneoulsy refusing to answer my question about what “utlimate” adds to “reality”? And do you mean by this that, when you use the word “God” you mean exactly no more and no less than “the universe”? If so, do you accept that it would be nonsense to state “God created the universe”?
Who’s trying to explain sentience?
Why do you persist in invoking metaphors given that I have explained how they are meaningless in this sort of context? Do you have any sort of argument against what I write about metaphors, or do you accept that they are worthless? If you have an argument, what is it? If you do not have an argument, why do you persist in using metaphors?
Hi James,
When have I said that?
Whether God ‘is’ the universe I don’t know - it doesn’t equate in my understanding.
Coins from a past currency may be worthless, but later become valuable. How can you say that something is worthless without saying in what context it is worthless? Do you mean it is worthless to you or utterly worthless?
Shalom
Bob