Truth

I became irritated while listening to an introduction to a discussion about belief and doubt.  It began by referencing how several US presidents had conversations with Billy Graham.  The commentator said that the thing about these conversations was that they were about a truth.  The commentator then posed the question as to why they believed as they did.  This was not a religious program but rather an introduction to some TED talks.  I do not know why the commentator used "truth" in that context.  But I think that it is a misuse of the work.  Truth relates to facts and evidence.  Of course, people misunderstand what evidence is but that is worthy of a separate discussion which I think that this will may lead to.  For now, let's look at "truth" for a little while.

I tell you that I ride a recumbent cycle.  You can say that this is a truth for someone who has directly seen me riding.  Beyond that, my statement about cycling cannot really be determined as true for most other people.  It's more like spectrums of belief.  Even accepting my YouTube videos as evidence without close examination is a level of belief.  I propose that the claim of truth should be held to a very high standard.  People have gotten to the point where "truth" and "belief" are used as if they mean the same thing.  But this is inaccurate.  Truth should be limited to things which are fact.  There are degrees of believe, some which come close to truth.  But truth is not relative.  You can say that certain things, like my long hair, were once true but are no longer so.  You can also say that certain things are true in some areas but not others, like I am currently on vacation but others are not.  So there is some relativity to truth.  But I think that it is a disservice to truth to mistakenly call something true when what is actually meant is belief.

I spent my childhood and early teens in the "show me" state.  There was a certain amount of pride about that, until I moved to an environment where many things which I took as fact because people told me they were true turned out to be false.  But childhood habits are sometimes hard to break.  Well into adulthood, I continued to discover how things which I assumed to be true were not.  The quality of communication is corrupted by the misuse and misunderstanding of what truth and facts are.

This reminds me of the Fargo film.  It opens with "THIS IS A TRUE STORY.  The events depicted in the film took place in Minnesota in 1987.  At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed.  Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred."  This is almost completely false.  It was eventually revealed that an entirely different case was an inspiration for the movie.  A woman was killed by her husband in 1886 in Connecticut and chopped up through a wood chipper.  That's way different from what the opening statement says.  Why did the Coen brothers make the statement in the movie?  They said that this was a device for manipulating the audience.  I think that this is horrible.  It's as bad or worse than taking an actual event and changing the details for entertainment or political purposes.  These manipulations happen so much that a lot of people think that things happened which didn't, at least not as was portrayed, like Noah's flood and the Exodus.

The last speaker in the TED talk compilation which I started this was completely confusing belief and truth.  In the end, he was basically saying that every ones individual beliefs are as valid as everyone else's.Now, I am not saying that all truth is absolute.  A lot of things are relative to regions and people.  But that does not mean that all belief's are equal.

Let's look at a non-supernatural spectrum of beliefs.  There are, from time to time, unidentified flying objects.  As a radar operator in the Navy, I had direct experience with this.  I have a bit more validation than people who simply believe that there are UFO's.  But simply a belief in UFO's is not necessarily that far from what is real, since it is, at it's base, an acknowledgement that there are some things in the air which have not been identified.  Now, on the other end of this spectrum are people who assume that UFO's are extraterrestrial. Most of these people don't need any evidence.  They simply believe that extraterrestrials visit our planet.  A believe that there are some things which have not been identified is quite different than connecting the unidentified objects to beings with no confirmation as to their existence.  How can it be said that these are equally valid beliefs?  By the way, I actually do believe that there is a possibility that intelligent life beyond Earth.  But I cannot be abolutist about that nor can I attribute Earthly phenomena to them.  Just as this spectrum illustrates unequal validity in a spectrum of beliefs, I see the same thing in supernatural beliefs.  Accepting the possibility of a super powerful being who may have sparked life is a far cry from believing that this being requires you to perform rituals and obey strict rules with no explanation.