Truth=God

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

(NOTE: I’m harsh here in tone, but it’s more in exclaim…not in anger.)

Damn straight…I’m calling this one out.

Why?
I’m sick of it popping up in every thread (even where it’s really not relevant) like spam.
Cardinally, Turtle; this is for you, but it’s also for TPT if he gets chimed in.
Alright…

Guys, seriously…who gives a shit?
Truth=God?
Truth=God is not that remarkable (enough to spit it up on every thread that has anything to do with God whether it’s regarding the existence of or not).

That doesn’t mean that Truth is a sentient being.

It means that the state of a thing as it cardinally is unto the universe itself is the worshiped, idolized, and adhered to.

Woopty-doo-dah!

It’s a cop out and it’s not rational.
Why is it not rational?
Because it’s the fallacy of equivocation.

Truth=God only tells me what you think is the most valuable aspect of reality.
It doesn’t make any sense at all as a rational explanation, or evidence thereof, for a sentient master being; even if laissez faire.

2

stumps-------I think you are wrong. You just don’t like someone challenging the christian concept of god being a sentient being.

3

No, I don’t care about someone challenging the sentient being theory.
In fact, I do that often.

What I don’t like is sliding that phrase INTO a conversation that is about a sentient being as if it is the same thing.
They are CARDINALLY different conversations.

They are as cardinally different as it can get.
One states that there IS a sentient being and the other states that the universe is a non-sentient apex of reality.

The non-sentient apex of reality is NOT the same thing as a sentient master being.
Ergo, they are not the same word.

Using “God”, a term for the sentient master being of Abrahamic religions, to mean the non-sentient apex of reality, and then stating that this then proves God, is the purest definition of performing equivocation.

“Can I have some Ketchup?”
“Here you go.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s Ketchup.”
“No it’s not, it’s Soda.”
“And Soda is Ketchup because Ketchup is a sauce made heavily with high-fructose corn syrup, so anything primarily made of high-fructose corn syrup is Ketchup.”

4

stumps---------what if the truth turns out to be that there is a sentient being and we find that out by exploring natural philosophy? Then how would you handle that?

5

That’s dodging the question.

The term, “God”, does not mean a non-sentient apex of reality.
That is not what people are praying to on Sunday, or worshiping at Mosque, or Temple.
Pretending that you are talking about the same thing as they are is absolutely equivocation.

And if there is a sentient master being, then it won’t mean that the non-sentient apex of reality is the sentient master being.
That would mean that the exploration of the non-sentient apex of reality LEAD to the discovery of the sentient master being.
That would not mean that they are the same thing.

The laws of gravity and thermodynamics are not the moon; they just got us to it.

6

I would loosely agree with Stumps, I’ll just take what I said in the same thread in MB and crack it right here.

That’s my input, just as a starter.

7

stumps----------I get it now. You are the leader of the religious forum. When anyone posts on that forum they should be using the christian definition of a god. There might be some confusion, unless you make the rules clear. Are we talking about a trinitarian god or a unitarian god?

8

I believe in truth. Truth exists. Truth = staring deep into the eyes of those who love you. What does anyone have to say about my idea of truth?

9

Upon reflection, if God made Himself frequently known, it might dilute the significance of His importance. By allowing agents of God (some of who are misguided) to be the bearers on that existence, then those people may make a better lasting impact.

With God being a constant presence it might cause a loss of autonomy of free will to choose for those to make a choice. This is where the dilution sets in. Unfortunately not all ‘agents’ of God place their best foot forward which casts further doubt into believers and non-believers alike. So, the ‘Truth’ may not be an obvious path to notice or follow. Truth could be an impedence for some.

10

Turtle, that is absolutely incorrect.
Again, what I find fault in is responding to other posts that are clearly regarding a sentient master being with using the word “God” as the non-sentient apex of the universe as if it refers to the same thing that others refer to when speaking of a sentient master being, and then asserting that thr reality of the non-sentient apex of the universe therefore proves God by existence as truth.
That a politician’s trickery, and a fallacy, as I said, of equivocation.

Everyone means something different by “God”, but generally speaking, it is understood as sentient in nature.

It aids nothing to clarity of conversation to assert non-sentience as a definition of a presented sentient thing and then further use this equivocation as evidence for “God” when you mean something CARDINALLY different than those posts preceding yours.

At least clarify your terms.

11

First, I use Truth as a direction. We don’t know if God exists or not, or what His nature is. So what do we do? We pursue, or you could even say worship, the Truth. I believe your problem is not that God=Truth, rather it’s that you don’t have an appropriate definition of Truth–which has been bastardized, co-opted and misused by everyone from Jesus Christ to the Devil himself (a symbolic reference of course).

Before you can say that God does not equal Truth, or that the concept isn’t relevant to the discussions you’re (rather over-vehemently) objecting to, you must define the Truth you’re talking about that doesn’t equal God (and given what that is, you may be right about that particular perspective); or at least rationally discredit my definition of Truth; which is everything that is, which includes at least, the aspects of natural law, justice, love and beauty. I’ve invited criticism of my proposal for such a definition since I came up with it and have yet to come across a genuine fault.

The only thing that Truth is not, is lies. And while we’re defining things, a lie about objective Truth is an intentional misrepresentation of fact. A lie about a subjective Truth, is an intentional misrepresentation of one’s own opinion. And any lie may even be believed by one’s own self to be the Truth–perhaps the most scurrilous of lies.

12

Stumps I agree with you for the most part except in that you pressume that God is understood as a sentient being and that God IS a sentient being. People can think whatever they want about God, that does not mean that they are not in error and that what they believe coincides with what God actually is–which of course no one can know for sure in my opinion, hence the need of faith.
That said, if poster so and so says that God is Truth, that to me does not disqualify such poster from referring to God simply or solely because it does not coincide with what is generally “understood” as God up until now. God “understood”-- that in itself would make me question both the general application of the word God and even the extra-ordinary “understanding” that God is Truth. Either, to me, refers to a person’s taste. So God is generally seen as a white man with a beard. Does that mean that this is how God actually is?
Maimonides should serve as a scholar on this matter. Language can definetly hide much more than it would reveal. Whether it is stated that God is Truth, or Love, or the Good, or that which nothing Higher can be thought of, all of this represent a person’s tatse. At no time shall I grant the anthropomorphic approach a higher perspective than say the logician’s God is Truth approach. Your response to either the anthropomorphic or logical understandings of God, if you wish to criticque it, should be to test the consistency of their approach. Then you might show them that what they say and what they mean are inconsistent. It might be then that the person that advocates a God is Truth, really lust after a personal God. But that would be my end. I would not go on to depreciate their non-sentient, which has philosophical precedents in any case, because it is not applicable to the general understanding that God is somehow sentient. I would not prohibit him or her from presuming that their God is the same God of Christianity. And here I go back to philosophy. John has Jesus as the Logos, this term that was used by Stoics in much the same way as these posters use “Truth”. The Bible has many verses that would support the Stoic view of God as immanent rather than transcending Nature, such as God be All in all. When God is seen as a judge and our behaviour as having exact consequences, this is because God is seen almost as natural Law. But during and after the enlightenment, the subject of God was reopened and the idea of God as simply our Father in the sky were subverted by ideas of God as determining all things, good as well as those judge by us as bad. mathematics were seen as the language of God and the order of the physical universe, which obeyed so well Laws of Nature, reflected the Logos, both in the Christian, for some, as well as the Stoic for many. And they saw God in their discoveries just as Moses saw God in a burning bush…

That said, while I am not surprised by the statement that God is truth, I do think that there is a difference to be made between a God in Nature and a God above Nature. Unfortunately the Bible contains many contradictions, including this one, because humankind wants it’s cake and eat it too even if that is not possible they will make it possible through faith. I think that a sentient God cannot be “Truth” any more than he can be “Love”. But that is probably because of how I understand “sentient” to begin with. How is God aware? How is It a “He”? How is God sentient? At what point does the correspondence between my human words end in respect to Celestial beings; at what point to we accept limitations about how far our “understanding” can reach and how far is God “under-stood”?
So like I said, I agree for the most part with your critique of stating that God is Truth and supposing that this is the same God that feels anger and love. But on the other hand, this is not unprecedented even within the Bible, and it is the legacy of european enlightenment. What I have learned from all this inherents inconsistencies is that while we would like for God to be all, and we make Him all through what we accept on faith, it is more beneficient to accept the limits of our language in regards to the Most High, to accept that something truly extra-ordinary transcends not just Nature, if that is what they want, but should also transcend ordinary language. Even if we write truth with a capital “T”.

13

I could not agree with you more. So let’s get to it. Truth is everything that is. I take that as everything that exist, that has being. There are lies. But lies are not Truth, so, do lies exist or not?
next critique is that God=Truth could be either true or a lie. What is standard to determine which it is?
If God is Truth and Truth is everything that actually is then have you denoted any-thing or is God simply every-thing? Thus I would worship God by feeding my cat, and here is the kicker-- even if I do NOT have a cat. Why? because “cat” might be a ferret in my mind, but each the ferret and my designation of it exist. It is a lie? Not if I believe it (your last version of a lie). If God is Truth, which is what you, a human, consider Truth and this Truth is everything, then it includes lies you believe as the Truth.
So that is my critique. It is too broad to denote a single being. It says nothing because it says no single thing. Even when you try to set up boundaries (what Truth is not), you are defeated by the fact, which you wisely admit to) that the truth/lie dichotomy is not easily defined because we in fact can believe lies to be the Truth and find our Truths to be lies. In short, we are fallible. Thereby, you include into the what is even what is not, because either the what is and the what is not rest just the same on the fallible judgment of man. You admit that there are lies, and since Truth is all that is, and lies are, then Truth includes even lies. Perhaps this is an inconsistency or perhaps you see now that God is above such distinctions of human judgment.

14

TPT and Omar…

No, I’m fine with multiple definitions of God…really.

What I’m not fine with is equivocation.
Using the alternate definition of something to imply to someone else that the evident capacity is valid of that same name but of a different thing.

God can be a chair, I don’t care.

But when a word like “Truth” and a word like “God” are used as equal; the defining terms of BOTH are inherently subjective; regardless if you believe in universal truths or not.

What people will take TRUTH to mean and what people will take GOD to mean will NOT end up with them understanding that a NON-SENTIENT UNIVERSE was being discussed in most cases…

THAT is my point.
It’s cardinally a crap thing to spout WITHOUT declaring the qualifiers.

I don’t care that everyone has a different god damn definition for, “God”.
I hate it when the definition includes NOT BEING SENTIENT and is slapped around as IF everyone around inherently uses that same god damn definition and is used to it.

Sure, yeah…that’s the normative definition of God; a non-sentient apex of the universe. :unamused:
Fuck that; that’s called Universal Absolute Truth.

“God”, by the normative is in the Bible, Torah, Quran talking to Moses and Co.
In the second normative, “God” is a sentient collective consciousness of everything in some capacity.

If your, “God is in the TV”, in your power bar, is your love of people, etc…, is the non-sentient standing of the universe…then that is a mother fucking metaphorical use of the word, “GOD”.

How about I just start walking around declaring that Love=Superman?
And then go on later, after a bunch of confusion, stating that Superman is the non-sentient zenith of human relationships.
Superman now refers to the best possible relationship that two humans, or more, could have.
It is no longer a sentient super being known as the hero, Superman.
Hey, everyone means something different by the word superman after all.

Next time someone starts talking about how impossible it is for Superman to fly, I’ll just let them in on the secret that Love gives you wings.

Turtle above asked a question.
what if the truth turns out to be that there is a sentient being and we find that out by exploring natural philosophy?
I answered, but I left out another part of this that’s worth mentioning now in light of the last two responses.

There’s no possible manner for mixing a non-sentient apex of the universe with the conversation of a sentient master being of the universe.
Saying that God, non-sentient apex of the universe, is the same as God, sentient master being of the universe, is cardinally fucking impossible.

So God (non-sentient apex of the universe) cannot lead to God (sentient master being of the universe) because if God (non-sentient apex of the universe) lead to God (sentient master being of the universe) then obviously the God (non-sentient apex of the universe) that lead to the other God (sentient master being of the universe) would no longer BE titled “God”.

The two of you (TPT and Omar) are responding to me as if my problem is just that I don’t understand how someone holds this AS their God.
I don’t care about that; I’m not confused about that.

My problem is false representation of what the hell someone is referring to when arguing with other people about the validity of God when one side of the conversation refers to the concept (in some fashion or the other) of a sentient master being, and yet the other is radically outside of the normative by defining God as a non-sentient standing of the universe…come on!
That’s crap.

And that’s a crap move to pull.

15

Yes they exist, but only as false ideas. Man (or sentients) is the only creature that can fabricate a lie, and only men can believe it. You could say that God came to you and proved to you that He exists which did not happen. You have put forth a lie, which some may believe is the Truth, neverthelesss the Truth of it does not exist, only the untrue idea. It’s semantics. Imagination and creativity is a double edged sword.

God=Truth can only be true by definition, since I’ve stipulated that God may only be an ideal (god), not a being. But if you were to say that God, a supernatural omnipresent being, equals Truth, that would be a lie, unless you somehow possessed certain knowledge of the fact.

This is the stumbling block for so many people. It ISN’T MY Truth, it is THE Truth which I’m only in possession of a small amount, except for my subjective opinion on subjective subjects like beauty.

That’s the problem, I don’t state the qualifiers every time??? ](*,)

16

Paineful,

God=Truth
First of all, besides the fact that it is a capricious (read: personally motivated) redefinition of God, one should be careful not to reify Truth and Untruth as if they exist as more than mere concepts. To say that untruth exists is to say that something, ‘a’, can be perceived as something else, ‘not a’, or something like that; and truth, forgive my vulgarity, is just getting it right. You want to call this phenomenon God? You must have your reasons (from what I’ve read I don’t follow them) - just consider the following: 1) truth is not the origin of the universe and 2) truth isn’t the kind of thing that can “give” of morality or direction. Explanation below.

1 - Truth, a type of conceptual relation, does not have causal power.
2 - Truth does not have any will or included instruction about how to respond to it - that comes from you.

This one’s just for fun: even if truth were remotely the kind of thing that could pass for God without being ridiculous, what reason do you have to prefer that God is truth rather than untruth?

As Stumps said, there is nothing ridiculous about people having different conceptions of God - as long as they are at bottom still talking about the same kind of thing. Once people are no longer talking about evn remotely the same kind of thing, then it does not make sense to call the two things by the same name if one can help it.

17

TPT:
It’s not just you, and that’s really not that small of an issue when one variable of the baseline of the formula is presented in a term understood to include a VERY important sub-variable that has become the normative of the overall variable itself.

E=MC^2

If I personally change what C incorporates as it’s behavior on a cardinal level to the point that it no longer is categorically including the properties of a photon as understood by normative science and then wander into a discussion regarding a problem with E=MC^2 and state that Frequency = C and therefore the entire problem people are having with E=MC^2 is no longer an issue, then I have falsified the presentation of what I am talking about because C is no longer the speed of light under the normative understanding of science; it is now a radically different description.

The same thing is taking place here.
Switching the variable, “God”, from SENTIENT as a sub-variable description to NON-SENTIENT without making that overtly clear is falsified representation of the formula.

The variable, “God”, is historically understood to dominantly inherit sentience by the normative understanding of the term.
People don’t pray to the non-sentient universal absolute truth of the universe.
People aren’t arguing whether the non-sentient universal absolute truth of the universe created Adam.
People aren’t asserting that the non-sentient universal absolute truth of the universe doesn’t exist as a divine entity in reality.

So throwing non-sentient universal absolute truth of the universe in as the defining sub-variable of, “God”, into a formula that has ran for the past 2,000 years (and more) with the inherited understanding of including a sentient supreme being as the sub-variable and not declaring the difference IS a rather large problem.

When people want to radically change the perception of a commonly understood term, they write entire books (or at least chapters) on the matter to clarify the conceptual shift of the extreme difference and how that trickles down.

That’s why you will find several occurrences of, “Kant’s _____”, “Nietzsche’s _____”, “Sartre’s _____”, or “Plato’s _____” all over this site.
Because these thinkers and authors used different sub-variables to describe a term that otherwise means something completely different in the normative construction of the use of the term.

It makes a HUGE difference.

I will even take a further stance than this and assert that the non-sentient universal absolute truth of the universe is absolutely NOT, “God”.
That is not what that term means to ANY theology…even Deism.

In fact, if a person stands that, “God”, is the non-sentient universal absolute truth of the universe, and involves no sentience to it, then they cannot be anything other than an atheist.

ANY theist of any form requires a belief IN a divine sentience; period.
ANY agnostic requires the unknowable conclusion BETWEEN the non-existence and existence of a divine sentience; period.

The ONLY category that does NOT require a divine sentience is the category of atheism.
So asserting that a thing that is not sentient IS a divine sentience (“God”) is utterly false by the purest definition of the cardinal terms involved.

So while I have no problem with everyone claiming, “God”, to be whatever they want, I DO think that it’s incredibly faulty to assert that, “God”, is a non-sentient thing.
It’s not that it’s not even the same term…it’s not that it’s not the same ballpark of the term…it’s instead that it’s not even the same game of the term.

18

Personally motivated? Do you know me better than I do? Are you privy to aspects of my personality I’m not aware of? And how is it a redefinition rather than just a further exploration of the possibilities, starting from scratch? What definition of God do you go by? Whatever God is, or is not, may we not approach it by the pursuit of the Truth?

Why?

As happens routinely. And “exists” is a semantic slight of hand as explained above: “Yes they exist, but only as false ideas. Man (or sentients) is the only creature that can fabricate a lie, and only men can believe it. You could say that God came to you and proved to you that He exists which did not happen. You have put forth a lie, which some may believe is the Truth, neverthelesss the Truth of it does not exist, only the untrue idea. It’s semantics. Imagination and creativity is a double edged sword.”

Is beauty not subjective Truth? How then do we “get it right”?

What is, God? Would that God, the creator and perhaps embodiment of all that is, not be the embodiment of the Truth of the Universe. There’s a theory that the universe is a giant quantum computer, defining natural law and recording every quantum reaction. If that computer had sentience, would it not be God? If it had no sentience, would it not still be god (the ultimate reality or power)? And in either case, could we not refer to it as the one Truth it embodies?

Conceptual relation? Are you saying that objective Truth is whatever we say it is, that it exists only as perception and is therefore not objective?

In practice, yes, whether there is a sentient God (who must be laissez faire) or not, the Truth for us is passive. But laissez faire does not imply lack of the existence of will, only the lack of exerted will.

The reason is not mine, and I have no preference, beyond hope anyway. If God were untruth, then He wouldn’t exist, but the Truth still would–leaving the origin of the universe as much a mystery as the nature of God would have been. Yes, either possibility is ridiculous. Perhaps inscrutable is a better word. I see no reason for ridicule.

That’s why I use the convention, God and god, sentient and not; both are an ultimate ideal, but only one or the other can be the ultimate Truth.

19

Hello TPT,

— Yes they exist, but only as false ideas.
O- It does not matter the quality of their existence, only that they exist and since Truth is here defined as all that exist, this would include, within Truth, even lies, which seems to be a contradiction in terms.

— Man (or sentients) is the only creature that can fabricate a lie, and only men can believe it.
O- I disagree. There are many kinds of animals and plants that utilize deceit to catch their prey. But as to our subject here, even if it is accepted that it is as you say, the deception exists within man and man within Truth and so deception exist within Truth, which is inconsistent with the term.

— You could say that God came to you and proved to you that He exists which did not happen. You have put forth a lie, which some may believe is the Truth, neverthelesss the Truth of it does not exist, only the untrue idea. It’s semantics. Imagination and creativity is a double edged sword.
O- But if you believe that God spoke with you, which in itself proved to you that God exist, it may still be the case that you did not speak with God but with a member of the Q species (Star Trek NG) for example. Q is not God, even if you honestly believe that It is. If you say what you honestly believe, then you might be wrong, but you did not lie. You said what you believed to be true in every sense of the word. It is more than semantics, imagination or creativity. The problem here is that we are not God, that we are fallible, that when you get to the ultimate form of knowledge, like what is God, what is Good, what is Truth, Pilate is right to ask us “What is X?”, because we tend to exceed the grasp of our reach. There is no way to verify the objectivity of our beliefs about such abstract ideas.

— God=Truth can only be true by definition, since I’ve stipulated that God may only be an ideal (god), not a being. But if you were to say that God, a supernatural omnipresent being, equals Truth, that would be a lie, unless you somehow possessed certain knowledge of the fact.
O- Then it does not matter what name you use here. “God” is probably the worst name you could have picked, because God is not used as an idea, but as the Root of all existence. Secondly, what proof do you have that God may only be an ideal and not a being or a form of existence? I don’t think that you can demonstrate that such a being exist, but nor do I think that you can demonstrate that such a being cannot exist. Either assertion is not based on a demonstration, but is an article of faith.
Third, the issue here is just about that knowledge. My critique is about judgment. “Knowledge of the fact” is an interpretation in itself, so there is a certain circularity because your belief is judged by yet another belief. Never do we emerge from the mediation of our mental constructs.

— This is the stumbling block for so many people. It ISN’T MY Truth, it is THE Truth which I’m only in possession of a small amount, except for my subjective opinion on subjective subjects like beauty.
O- It is always your truth. Even the opinion that what is in your possession is only a part of the truth is itself your truth.

20

Paineful,

Sorry. It didn’t make much sense for me to say that your redefinition is personally motivated when I think that everything people do is personally motivated. So forget that. However you have to contend with the apparent capriciousness of your redefinition.