What is Truth?
John 18:38
Asking such a question only leads to madness. It isn't healthy trying to find something that can’t be had. A “grasping for the wind”, it is.
Truth is not something definite or concrete, but rather, it is a conclusion derived from some source. Scripture for religion, evidence for science or logic and reason for philosophers and mathematicians. Given the evidence we know something to be true. Or, given scripture we know such-and-such is true. Given the rules of deductive reasoning.. and so forth.
We live in a startling complex world. Instead of searching for truth we should turn our attention to wisdom. Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge. We allow our knowledge to change based on new information. And we religiously tweak our methods in order to achieve our goals and desires. Some sort of absolute truth therefore becomes a burden, a distraction away from what really matters: the fulfillment of desire.
But the question still causes a heaviness in your chest and causes your nostrils to flare as you squirm in your uncomfortable chair. Can we know anything for certain?
Descartes tells us we can know we exist. That’s something. But more than this, I believe we can know certain universal truths. The universe is inherently rational. We know this because we are made of universe stuff and we are rational. The laws of nature that we've created describe and predict observable phenomenon so well, that these must be universal truths or laws. Math and logic therefore are universal truths.
But emotional would be a better way to describe most humans, not rational. And if we can determine how the universe is based on how we are, then the universe is emotional? What are emotions? Nothing but chaotic feelings, nudges, motivations that emerge from nowhere. They spring about and have their own kind of existence. Do we see anything like this in nature—chaos and complexity, phenomenon seemingly coming from nowhere? Well yes, nature is like this very much. Weather patterns, climate, ecosystems. There’s too many parts to make rational linear predictions. So we must resort to statistics and pattern matching.
So both our inner world and the external world have chaotic and unpredictable aspects as well as rational and predictable aspects. What about a will? Is there some sort of a will found in nature? If we found a naturally emerging will then we might have found God himself. A will with no body. What an interesting idea.
What would a will with no body desire? How would it accomplish its goals? What sort of goals would it have?
Are we living in the mind of God? We can see his emotions and his rational nature, but his divine will eludes us. Where is his will?
Humanity as a whole has the same characteristics of an individual. We spontaneously make decisions as cultural memes propagate throughout the population. We make sound rational decisions derived from evidence using our scientific institutions. Our will is a body of lawyers, politicians and heads of corporations. All of that is there, but its difficult to see. Perhaps God’s will eludes us because of our perspective. It is difficult enough for us to find his reasons and to probe his emotions. Even that is a stretch. But I suspect a will can be found in nature. Its just that God is so much larger (physically) than us. His parts are more numerous than we can imagine and his mind fills the entire cosmos. Its there, its just hard to see from such a tiny view.
