Many people lack the critical skills required to make good decisions. That is the capacity to validate information and exercise objective thinking. Much of the information is simply false, distorted, or misleading. Misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and yellow journalism, call it what you will, have become widespread online since many people accept such information as accurate. They do not have the tools to handle information. Also, they often have not been exposed to other views. Therefore, the purpose of Your Problem with God is to present a different perspective about certain topics conventionally accepted as factual. Because when these topics are reexamined, they often present defects, like contradictions, inconsistencies, and even absurdities.
A reason for the dissemination of so much inaccurate information is that bad actors of all types find it very effective for manipulating our attitudes and behavior. It is not our nature to validate information efficiently, so they take advantage of our weaknesses. However, we should validate the information daily to make the correct decisions.
In addition, our understanding of the concept of truth is usually deficient. However, we still need to define the concept of truth correctly to examine the arguments of any topic at hand and validate its accuracy. So what is truth? Is truth absolute or relative, is truth a religious matter, a moral, or a philosophical one?
In today’s culture, most people believe in the relativism of the truth, often at the expense of an absolute truth. Those attempting to define the truth discover that it is not very easy to define. In fact, in philosophy, there are at least 4 different theories for this concept. Since there is not a commonly accepted concept, relativism of the truth is common. Although, sometimes, it is vital to fully understand the concept of truth. For instance, for a government’s justice system to work correctly. People’s lives can be in jeopardy if errors are made by a justice system that can not determine the truth of a case to be decided. A relative truth will not be sufficient in those cases. Equally, understanding what is truth is crucial for this blog to fulfill its purpose.
To define an absolute truth, we could start by defining a relative truth, which is much easier. One definition of relative truth is that whatever you believe or accept as true is true. A relative truth is then your personal, privately owned truth. Your perspective really. So, quite often relative truths are completely useless. For instance, no one would like to go to trial under the standards of relativism, where a person’s fate may depend solely on the beliefs of the jury or the judge. Relative truths are not enough to reach the correct decision when judging a criminal case.
There is relativism of the truth, no doubt. Even Einstein’s Theory of Relativity depends on the relativism of an observer’s position or his experience of an event. In fact, because it depends on each individual observer of the event, this theory is called the Theory of Relativity. Equally, every person has a personal perspective or experience of every event. So, if there was ever any confusion about what a relative truth is, hopefully, we understand it better now. But that was the easy one. I have never heard of anyone complaining about relative truths.
In reality, the problem has always been to define what an absolute truth is. If we go back to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the interesting part here is that he formulated his theory after realizing that the speed of light was a constant that does not change. Even the Theory of Relativity, with all its relativism, possesses constants. Absolute means that it is constant and that it does not change. So the real question is, what is an unchanging truth? Absolute truth = unchanging truth.
Absolute truth is a truth that is not dependent on a person for its existence. It is independent of witnesses or people’s opinions or beliefs. An act or event complies with all these requirements. An act is definite. After an event occurs, it cannot be erased or undone. The facts can be erased, but not the action itself. For instance, if I ever become deranged and shoot someone, I cannot undo the act of the shooting, although I can probably hide the fact of the corpse, clean the blood, remove the evidence, etc. You can only change an action with another act or event. So absolute truth then can be defined as an action or an event. And a relative truth will be our perspective about that specific event.
Absolute truth is narrow, and specific, while relative truth is broad and flexible; as wide as each person wants this to be. Absolute truth has often been associated with God. For some, the Creator has the last word and that is it! Thus, an unchanging, or immutable, creator god could be called the absolute truth, at least from a religious perspective. That concept works fine for the faithful, but it may not be enough for the rest of the world. So the question arises then, what is an absolute truth from a practical perspective?
A more practical approach to absolute truth, comparable to a creator god, would be what a creator god does. He creates, so the action of creating could be the truth and the resulting creation could be the facts and the reality, after the action of creation itself. In short, absolute truth is an action, an event, or an occurrence that creates facts and reality. It is a case of yes or no, where your opinion is irrelevant and does not actually matter.
We are referential for acquiring information, knowledge, and truth. Thus, in that sense, we are born as blank slates that do not know anything until we learn it. We are relative to our sources of information. Thus, if this is correct, the truth is outside of us, not inside. But choose carefully because such truths define your attitude, behavior, and actions.
You can have God’s truth or you can have your truth. If your truth is money, sex, or power, that is your god. If you belong to a particular religion, those specific beliefs and doctrines become your truth. The god you have will become the truth you have; our truth becomes our god and vice versa. Being born into a religion is not the best way to determine who God is! In short, our god determines our truth, and our beliefs become our god. So we need the real God! Or you can have your truth that will eventually hurt you.