(October 3, 2015 at 4:50 pm)Delicate Wrote: In a different thread, an atheist indicated that absolute truth is a difficult view to give up. He's right.
But it's worse than that: It's impossible to give up absolute truth.
The reason is, in any conceivable universe, operating under any given specification of natural laws, if we reject absolute truth, we reject the ability to say anything meaningful about these possible universes. The very claim "In universe1 there are no absolute truths" is either true or false, and absolutely so. Once you jettison absolute truth, your statements about this possible universe become meaningless.
But the problem goes further than that. If you simply want to reject absolute truths in our world, you demolish the foundations of reason and science, which are irreparably dependent on absolute truth.
Hitting closer to home, the claim "There are no absolute truths" held as a claim cannot be rationally affirmed or denied if it is true.
Thus, atheists cannot escape absolute truths, on any level.
Incorrect. "1" and "0" exist in probabilities purely as context. We can never be absolutely certain something is a physical certitude or an impossibility. Probabilities are always inbetween 1 and 0 based on the few factors we are aware of in a universe in a constant state of flux.
We know we are limited in our abilities to conceive of all possible factors, we work with what we've got. We can be as close to certain as humanly possible about something but we can never actually be certain.
If there is such a thing as an absolute truth you are not capable of verifying it because you do not have a conscious awareness of every single factor about any one thing in your life. This makes absolute truth a flaccid concept. We are sure something is true or false to varying degrees and we can act upon the conclusion with varying degrees of confidence but if someone tells themselves they know absolutely if something is true or false then they are vastly overestimating their mental and physical abilities to a laughable degree.
There is nothing reasonable about claiming absolutes.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die."
- Abdul Alhazred.
- Abdul Alhazred.
