What is Truth? Part 2

We said in Part I that trying to nail down a Universal Truth was too hard. We said that truth must be personal, and feel good.

Many practical people (and scientists) would say that truth is what can be observed. If someone asserts something as true, they will say “prove it!” and what they mean by proof is, “does it exist?”, or “can it be demonstrated?”, which is the same thing.

All material objects can be regarded, validly, as truth. All you have to do to verify this is touch it, or look at it, or hear it, or taste it. Case closed: truth is what can be observed and measured. This is the position of the materialist and orthodox philosophies. Well, not so fast!

If we look a little deeper, we can see that what exists is the result of the decisions and conclusions of conscious beings. The house you live in, the car you drive, and the TV you watch were all constructed from blueprints of thought. Without those templates of thought, action is random and uncoordinated, like a child’s drawing.

Let’s take our reasoning deeper still. If blueprints of thought created the material objects and devices of our modern society, then what is thought? Some say that thought is a biochemical reaction in the brain, but that is a superficial definition. It is merely descriptive and doesn’t tell us what created the energy that makes up the quarks and the atoms that form the cellular structure of the neurons where thought supposedly comes from, and the genetic material (DNA) that programmed the whole thing.

To solve that problem we would have to answer the question, “What is energy?” But the great physicist Richard Feynman has already told us, “We don’t know what energy is.” Eventually we reach a point where we say, “Well, the energy in the universe came forth from a singularity or a quantum excitement,” or something vague like that.

We know from the Law of Conservation of Energy that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Therefore, according to the singularity hypothesis, all of the energy in the universe must have existed, in some form, without reduction or increase, since the beginning of time. But that is absurd, for it means that at time t = 0, all of the energy in the universe, even if it existed in a singularity, was created from nothing. But then of course where did the energy of the singularity (or the quantum excitement or whatever descriptive term is used) come from? Usually this leads to logically prior entities or energies, or parallel universes, or string theory, but then we must ask how these structures came into existence. A materialistic argument always breaks down, because something cannot come from nothing!

Or can it?

Ultimately, all questions about the origin of the universe and Truth with a capital T come back to a non-physical, causative, creative principle, and so Truth must be related or associated with that animating principle.

Although it is easy (and obvious) to say that truth (small t) is what can be observed, Ultimate Truth, or Truth with a capital T, must be something quite different.

Truth is not what manifests. Truth is not what exists. Truth is not an object.

Truth proceeds from the decisions and conclusions of conscious beings. Or even more precisely, Truth (capital T) is the creative principle of consciousness.

In other words, what we observe around us is not the truth. It is the result or end product of Truth.

Looking to matter and energy for proof that something is true is like saying the cart draws the horse. It is the consciousness of the horse (and human) that directs the horse and cart. Cause is consciousness, effect is matter and energy (the horse’s body, the human’s body, and the cart). Those who are uncomfortable with these arguments may have to wait for the death process for the Truth. Every incarnated soul on the planet will understand it then, even skeptics and materialists!

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