Is there objective Truth?

[pocaracas]

Is there ultimate, immaterial, Universal, objective truth? Objective truth would not be persuaded by authority figures, but rather dictated by nature. And while we may never achieve 100% truth during the human experience, the goal is to be as close to the truth as possible.

Or... is truth subjective. And we determine how sure we are via confidence levels. Truth is persuaded by authority figures, and dictaded as such.

Recources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth
http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-truth-objective

Not making a claim just yet, although it should be obvious what the answer is. What are your opinions?

Ah... truth... that one word that has more than one meaning and believers are too blind to realize it!

First off.... here's a nice link you should read: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/

Truth is a characteristic of a statement.
A statement is classified as true, if it conforms to some criteria of agreement with experience.
A truthful statement can be clouded by faulty perception, a fault that can be compounded by psychological effects.

I can say, truthfully, that I see a red star through my telescope... but is that star really red?
Did you notice that I switched to "really" at the end of that sentence?
What could make me see that star as red, if it's not so?

Enter the concept of reality. Reality is that which is, that which exists, independent from any observer.
Truth, with a capital T , is an accurate description of some aspect of reality.

Accuracy should also be defined, but suffice to say that, for our purposes, humanity's present level of technological prowess provides us with enough accuracy for most things.

I claim that there is a Truth which is the accurate description of reality and a different truth that is a description of the perceived reality by some individual (each individual consciousness possessing its own truth).
These "two" should, in ideal conditions, match up.
Sadly, as should be apparent in the red star example, our individual perception can be faulty. Such fault could arise from imperfect sensory apparatus interior to the individual, or exterior (say... a painted lens, or one with some chromatic aberration), or some psychological effect, arising from expectation (some colleague told me to look for a red star in that constellation) or some chemical imbalance common among some drug users, or....


So, conceptually, one can envision a universal Truth - that which accurately describes reality, independent from any observer, Universal in applicability, independent from language or measuring apparatuses.
In practice, we are restricted to our human truths.
Many truths have been brought forth to describe all sort of events... but many many many have failed to do so with a modicum of accuracy.
So humanity has come up with a technique to minimize the error between truths and Truth - Science.
Science provides humanity's best truth.

Any mechanism claiming to provide a truth with is closer to the Truth, other than Science, is lying.
Mind you, that is not to say that the truth espoused is wrong. It could be right... but the best way to verify that is by employing Science. If the mechanism claims that Science is inapplicable, then we have a bit of a problem, don't we?

An unverifiable claim is a useless one. Or should be.
Human psychology is crap at being rational about certain subjects, leading many people to accept parts of their faulty psychology as evidence of the unverifiable mechanism.

But, if one is to be intellectually honest, one will understand such faults in human beings and discard any such evidence... and wait until Science can be applied to that mechanism... if ever. Until then, better not rely on that mechanism.

TLDR:
In other words, better not follow any form of faith-based system which is scientifically unverifiable. Better follow Science... wherever it leads...
Oh, and don't extrapolate too much for you will land on dangerous grounds...


The red star?... turns out it's just moving away from us... the light that leaves it is as yellow as our sun... but we are moving apart and the light wave suffers some Doppler shift towards the lower frequencies, longer wavelengths, moving from the overall yellow to a more pronounced red... an effect discovered some 150 years ago.
The star is both yellow and red (and all colors in between)... the color is relative to the observer... Reality got the better of us humans with our simple instruments and simple minds for too long...