On earth, we worship in various ways and many faiths. From tribal beliefs to organized religions. Science proves to be our best option.
Alternative facts are not truths in the eyes of our judicial system. In court, we swear a solemn oath: to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This shall and will be done.
We search for the truth and aspire towards nobility. Every one of the great Faiths asks us to strive for absolute and complete honesty and truthfulness, both internally and externally:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Honesty and truthfulness are the first steps for a pluralist since all Faiths can be similar and have spiritual teachings in common.
These fundamental human tasks—Telling the truth and knowing the truth—have a close, symbiotic relationship with one another.
When we tell the truth, we practice the essentially spiritual skill of knowing it first. Lying kills a truth barometer we all have when we are born and diminishes our ability to recognize the truth.
Liars have worst of all qualities and share the most odious of practices, and the are the very foundation of evil. There is no reprehensible quality that can be imagined in all existence. It brings all human perfections to naught and gives rise to countless vices. There is nothing than this, and it is the foundation of all wickedness.
I have gotten in plenty of trouble over the years from telling the truth. Do you know the difference between subjective truth; deductive or logical truth; and inductive or scientific truth? Also, there is the news and there are views. These two shall never be confused.
Subjective truth, then, is simply a personal opinion, influenced by life experience and taste and cultural conditioning and as widely variable as there are people in the world. Subjective truth, then, is valid—but only in a personal way.
Deductive truth—which we arrive at through logic—can probably best be explained through the example of a syllogism: all fish swim; a trout is a fish; therefore a trout swims. That’s an ironclad, logical argument—if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. Thank you, Aristotle, Wittgenstein, and Alfred North Whitehead. So when we want to have a productive discussion about the truth, we normally use the reasonable, rational framework of a logical path to reach it. Deductive truth, then, is universally valid.
Inductive or scientific truth gets trickier. From scientific observations, carefully made, we draw inductive conclusions about larger realities: we know what is true that the Earth is warming, as scientifically measured temperatures in many places and many times over such a long period.
Our task as individuals involves discovering truths, and if we keep an open mind and if we tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! https://youtu.be/8zUblhfv6GI
