Why atheism cannot escape absolute truth

[Gawdzilla]

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes."

Meaning, OP, you're full of shit.

[KevinM1]

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes."

Meaning, OP, you're full of shit.

I love the irony inherent in that quote.

"Psst.  Hey, Obi-Wan?  Saying that a group of people only act a certain way is you making an absolute statement about them.  Douche."

[Alex K]

If I say yes, you're right, do I get a nice gotcha?

[Bob Kelso]

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.

[Exian]

Tell me what to do with an absolute truth. No, better yet, tell me what to do with an undefined hypothetical absolute truth.

[Edwardo Piet]

Truth is always absolute. Something either is or it isn't . Whether we know what the actual truth is is another matter.

Religious and woo nutjobs like Deepak try to turn the meaning of the concept of absolute truth into more of a big deal than it actually is.

Basically the term "absolute truth" is a tautology.

Think of something relatively true, so it is partly true. Well the parts that are true are either true or not. Truth is ultimately a black and white thing. It's subjective certainty - and evidence and knowledge that are another matter.

There either is or there isn't a God. Whether we believe, know of a god or have evidence is another matter.

He almost certainly is nonexistent and there is no evidence for him and we don't absolutely know he doesn't exist.... but it's absolutely the truth (which is just a tautology for saying it's true) that God either does or does not exist.

There is nothing hocus pocus about absolute truth for the same reason there isn't any hocus pocus regarding truth. It's the same thing! Stop mis-defining the meaning into a bunch of bullshit woo you superstitious irrational people out there!

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Jesus did a lot of babbling using the word "truth" but when asked what the truth was he couldn't answer the question.

[wiploc]

In a different thread, an atheist indicated that absolute truth is a difficult view to give up.

I know what truth is.  What do you mean by "absolute" truth? 

Your argument is interesting because normally it is Christians who say things like, "This is true for me but not for you," and who attack science and logic. 

I'm an atheist, even a strong atheist (I believe there are no gods), who believes truth exists.  I agree with you that the statement, "There is no truth," is self-refuting.  (I'm guessing that absolute truth is just the same thing as regular truth.) 


XXX

Change of topic:  Can anybody tell me how to interrupt a quotation so I can insert my own comments? 

I'm used to putting [/quote] to stop a quote, and [quote] to start it again, but that doesn't seem to work here.

[Thumpalumpacus]

That works for me.

[robvalue]

The sceptic atheist normally takes the position that although there are facts about the universe, we can never be 100% sure we actually know any of those facts. It's called intellectual honesty. It's admitting the limitations of our own ability to assess the environment. It leaves the door open to always discovering mistakes, and improving what we consider to be our best pool of knowledge.

Some theists simply announce that instead of this, they do have complete certainty in God, or whatever. This doesn't stop them being wrong, it just means they have closed their mind and surrendered their integrity.

Christain: "I'm certain God exists and it is Yahweh."

Muslim: "I'm certain God exists and it is Allah."

Even between these two, at least one of them is certain yet wrong.