hi there,
I’m new to these forums and thought this would make an interesting topic here. (it has more to do with religion than other topics of philosophy).
my opinion is that absolute truth is subjective to the person who believes it for moral topics, and objective for ethical topics. I’ll expand on those ideas as the thread develops.
Since I’m a new member here as well i think i’ll first respond to a fellow new member!!
As you can probably tell by the voting percentage where i land in this topic i think it’s a little broad and has a little too many avenues it could travel down as a discussion without more direction in the orginal question.
I think that the belief of “Absolute Truth” is just used as a tool by people to get their own agendas across. I do believe that some instances there can be absolute truths, (sorry don’t know if that’s pluralized correctly:p) which is contradictory to the orginal idea. There can’t be Absolute Truth when different perspectives exist.
this one is objective, it’s known that someday we will all die.
this one is more subjective. there are things that can change the love for your family. like if they try to kill you
I think absolute truths would be things far more objective than the second item. Like the speed of light. it’s absolute. the speed of sound on the other hand changes depending on air density, or if your in water.
absolute truths are few and far between but some do exist. but the fact that there are not absolutes for every truth makes it not an absolute standard.
one objective truth would be “You must follow christ or perish in hell”
This does not have to be subjective in the case of the Sheriff. Paul says in I Corinthians 13, “True love never fails.” If you define love as that which wishes the best for the beloved (the Ancient Greek definition for Agape Love), you forfeit concern for yorself in it’s place. If one you truly love should kill you, you ideally would be able to respond, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Love is not dependent on the actions of those whom you love, it is dependent only on your decision to love.
yes but realistically how many people are capable of loving someone that is trying to hurt them physically or emotionally?
it’s idealistic to say “forgive them father for they know not what they would do” but, would you in crunch time be able to do it? chances are being human it wouldn’t come as first nature.
It’s easy to sound noble, far less easy to act noble.
It is certainly impossible unless a person has come to grips with the extent of God’s love through accepting it as expressed in the work of Christ on the Cross. Largely, when love is spoken of in the New Testament it is the type of love that Christ espoused and displayed. Christ commands his followers to love unconditionally. In regards to what comes naturally or as “first nature”, the Bible teaches that it is only through Christ that we can overcome our sinful nature (which you deny exitsts).
thinking about this (looks like you posted nearly the same time I did) it means no truth could supercede it. are any of us at a point where we could say that its impossible for any truth to supercede this?
(I think that admitting that is akin to admitting you can’t grow anymore)
I’m not trying to evade the question, but this question seems to me more ‘unknowable’ than any philisophical question.
It could be that there is an absolute truth, but whatever it is, we haven’t been able to grasp it. Or, it could be that there is no absolute truth, and that our valuyes change because absolute truth doesn’t exist.
I would like to think that an absolute truth (if there does exist one) couldn’t answer this question: is killing 100 bad people worse than killing 1 good person? If this particular question is one that you disagree with, simply tweak it according to your values, to make it as murky as possible. But the point is, what could absolute truth say about a true, clincher like this? It seems that even absolute truth cannot justify its opinions any more than we could justify ours.
unfortunatly i was pulled into the wrong side of my discussion point after my first point so i would like to readjust what i attempted to say above.
Scythekain- If i understand what you mean by Absolute truth(s), it’s in refernce to anything and everything having a “correct” answer to its question, “correct” belief for any philosophy or the “correct” action to take in any given situation. If this is correct, I would like to alter my above statement by saying no, there is no situation where there is an “absolute truth”. I think, which people may or may not agree, with many different opinions and beliefs that overlap and spread to billions to infinite amount of view points. I’m sure there are people who agree with either side of PFloyd’s quandry above but have tons (hows that for quantifying it! :p) of different reasons for their answers. Is there a correct answer to the question? Is there a correct reason for that answer?
lets say you believe (like many people did)
the absolute truth is that the sun goes around the earth. Then science discovers that no, the earth goes around the sun. this was discovered I believe 150 years before it was accepted as a truth. BECAUSE of absolute truth. people get stuck in absolute truth and it keeps them locked into things that have been disproven.
pfloyd:
well I see the killing as equally bad. whos to judge who’s good and who’s bad for the killing purposes? I realize we’ve got to have some watermark, it’s generally agreed upon that Hitler was bad, and needed to be stopped. And as of sorts hitler has become the 20th century “basis” for how to judge other “evil”.
Is this question more complex than I’m seeing it? Are there absolute truths:
Yes. “a+b=b+a” and “there are no married bachelors” are examples. There you go.
There’s no reason, when the question of absolute truth comes up, to only think of extremely complex and controversial issues like morals and such. Are there absolute truths abour moral issues? I’d like to hear a definition of ‘absolute truth’ before I answer that.
Touche’. That is a good answer, and one that is unattackable, as it is a matter of faith. Suppose I be annoying, and rephrase it:
What is the absolute truth of a situation involving letting someone die to save someone else? If there is an absolute truth, wouldn’t there be a correct answer on who to save? And if there isn’t an answer, how is there an absolute truth?
aw yes the age old question of christianity sacrifice one to save everyone. is it justified? depends on how bad of a thing we are being saved from. hellfire is subjective and not proven. sin is completely subjective.
but lets say this one person was like a “typhoid mary” and releasing him/her into the world would cause everyone to die. would it then be worth sacrificing the life for everyone on the world?
yes.
the question then becomes where do you draw the line? is 1 for 10 acceptable? 1 for 100? etc.
Of course that’s not true, if you consider babies and the mentally handicapped. Perhaps “There is something rather than nothing” would come close, but I doubt that infants believe this or anything else.
If your question is “Is there some large body of facts which everybody in the whole world believes, and always will”, then the answer is obviously “No”, and again I have to say the question seems rather simple.
Yes, if 17 is hex or octal, then 17 =17 is still true, the symbols just mean something else. If, on the other hand, [i]one[/i] "17" was in hexidecimal, and the other was not, then you'd be dealing with a different (false) statement altogther, and it's just a trick or oversight on your part that you chose to represent two different numbers with the same symbols.
So yes, 17=17 is always true. The sentence “17 = 17” may not always be true, if we willy-nilly decide to change the definitions of the terms mid-sentence.
If by subjective you mean “People disagree about it”, then yeah.