Truth

Imagine this:
Two men are walking in an almost-empty parking lot. By this I mean there are approximately 60 car slots, and 7 cars. There is few enough cars to be at any point in the lot and be able to see every car. Suddenly, one man stops the other.

"There is the car," he says.

"I see no car," says the second man.

So we find ourselves in a predicament. Much like the question "does the tree make any sound?", I ask you: is the car really there? Which man is sane, and which is insane? This is a microcosm of the definition of truth. Because, isn't truth nothing more than popular acceptance? It is true that cells are the smallest unit of an organism. It is true that Columbus set foot on North America in 1492. Isn't it? What if there was another man there? A third party who says, let's say, the car really isn't there. Then the lone man is crazy and it is truth that that the car isn't there. But does that make the car's existence any more true or untrue? More probable, maybe, but truer... I don't think so. Now lets expand this microcosm into the real world, and perhaps the ratio of "crazy men" to "sane men" (who know the truth). Let's say one man claims that Christopher Columbus set foot on North America last year. All would say that he is insane. But what prevents it from being true? Or better yet, let's say all people agree on one thing, like Christopher Columbus landing in 1492. Does that make it true?

The answer is no. Truth cannot be defined as popular acceptance. Just as easily as something can be "true", it can be "untrue". These ideas form the basis of the theory known as Skepticism. That theory states that nothing can be for certain. However, I've come to realize that one thing can be for certain. That is love. Love between two people, or love between a man and God, is eternally true. That is because love is not something that can be known. That is, it is not something that can be explained. It is something that can only be felt. Knowledge is not truth. Only love is truth.

Afterlife, among other things, is the relief of ignorance and fulfillment of knowledge, as in most cultures. These cultures believe that when in the afterlife, a man knows all and his soul can rest. This is true. But people have come to regard this "fulfillment of knowledge" as knowing things, such as all aspects of Science, including the human mind, or more abstract, religious things like "what is God's plan?". The afterlife is nothing more than complete love. Love is the only truth and holding it completely will be complete truth. All aspects of the Universe are contained by love. They were created by love and are controlled by love. I'm not quite sure whether Jesus of Nazareth is indeed El Christo, but he certainly did carry the right message: God is Love. God is the ultimate, omnipresent power in the Universe. Love is that power, that we know exists, we know its power, yet is intangible.

Most importantly, you cannot know love. You can only feel it. It is truth, and all the power of the universe lies within it. Perhaps one of the greatest accomplishments of man is to not "know" love, but to know it exists.

>>30
You guys heard of Fred Hoyle before? This guy argued against the current interpretation of the Big Bang theory (he coined the term, Big Bang, by the way), but not the Big Bang itself... or something like that. I'm not paticularly sure, actually, but I found it interesting that he "cautioned that [the Big Bang] may not have been a chance happening." He said:
"The universe has to know in advance what it is going to be before it knows how to start itself. For in accordance with the Big Bang Theory, for instance, at a time of 10 [to the minus 43] seconds the universe has to know how many types of neutrino there are going to be at a time of 1 second. This is so in order that it starts off expanding at the right rate to fit the eventual number of neutrino types . . . An explosion in a junkyard does not lead to sundry bits of metal being assembled into a working machine."

And then there is a biology professor Kenneth Miller who says that "Evolution is certainly not so 'cruel' that it cannot be compatible with the notion of a loving god. All that evolution points out is that every organism that has ever lived will eventually die. This is not a special feature of Darwinian theory, but an obeservable, verifiable fact. The driving force behind evolutionary change is differential reproductive success, the fact that some organisms leave more offsping than others. Yes, the strugle for existence sometimes involves competition and predation, but just as often it involves cooperation, care, and extraordinary beauty."

And, one last quote from some guy I've only just heard of, geneticist Frances Collins says
"When something new is revealed about the human genome, I experience a feeling of awe at the realization that humanity now knows something only God knew before. It is a deeply moving sensation that helps me appreciate the spirtual side of life, and also makes the practice of science more rewarding."

So what's the point of all this crap? I just think it's interesting the way some people can incorporate science into their religion in such a harmonizing way. And it does offer a view I hadn't really thought of before. Granted, everyone can say that Darwin didn't disprove the Bible and that evolution and Christianity can go along just fine... but there's something different when a biologist tells you. But do you guys know anything more about these guys or this topic? I'm curious, but I haven't got the time to really time or energy (or, I'm fucking lazy, however you want to look at it) to google it. And I still have the Cultural Anthroplogy book to read, which is so boring I've actually cried a few times trying to read it.

If you guys don't want to get into a religious debate, don't turn it into one or just don't read it, man. No one's shoving it in your face. If it does get out of hand or you think it could be, I promise not to be offended if it gets locked or deleted.