I saw this statement today. What would you say to this person? What is absolute truth?

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Absolut Truth is inclusive, not exclusive.

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May your awareness be perfection

I would say that it is true but doesn't concern us. Being that we live in Plato's cave attached to shadows, all we know is Christendom which contains only subjective truths

There is only ONE absolute and That is GOD. God did not "invent" religion, people did.

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Only Love Prevails,
Don

Truth in my belief is a relative concept... Bahá'ís believe that truth is relative rather than absolute. In other words, any statement which is made is only true to a certain point, and can be challenged when knowledge has increased.

Anyone who follows science knows that we can only approxiamte what we think is reality... like the measuring tape where we are allowed to progress half the distance at a time there is always more we cannot know for sure.

- Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

Years ago, I would have answered this by saying something like "There undoubtedly are such things as 'absolute truths', but we cannot be certain exactly what they may be since our level of awareness is not absolute". However, with our increasing awareness of quantum mechanics, I can no longer say that.

Shalom,
Vern

We put ourselves in the middle of the question which IMO distorts it. Let me ask you this form of the question:

If a giant asteroid collided with the earth killing everything including mankind, would the universe continue functioning. If you believe like me that it would, then you believe in objective reality.

The continuing universal processes after our collective demise would be objective reality and objectively true even if man on earth is no longer alive to create subjective interpretations.

Nick, I think there is probably a difference between the question "Is there absolute truth" as asked, and your response. The question "is there absolute truth," seems to me to refer, in the context provided, to the moral and teleological purposes of human existence. In this particular case, the reference was to the Christian religion's answers to those very pressing questions.

Your response goes more to existential matters -- for instance whether there is an objective reality (as opposed to "truth") to the universe, however, we may perceive it, or whether, as Plato might have supposed, nothing outside of the realm of ideas is real.

This is not a bad question -- in fact it's a very good one, deserving of spirited debate. But it might be better addressed in the Philosophy Debate forum. Why don't you begin a thread on that subject?

Meantime, do you have thoughts on the notions of "absolute truth" in the teleological sense asked here?

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

Inner morality is not absolute truth but inner knowledge resulting from the objective connection of our essential self with it. External morality is the result of experts getting together and confusing the initial impression of inner morality.coupled with the gullibility of people to believe these self proclaimed experts. As such it is a product of our acquired self and easily becomes its opposite especially when no one is looking.

It is useless to consider the teleological question without first admitting the existence of objective reality. What would the God/Man relationship be based on without an objective reality that distinguishes one from the other? The only alternative is for people to think themselves god.

I'm no expert on ACIM but I imagine they would say that since there is no separation there is only our subjectively created reality. In relation to the biblical "A Am," they would believe the "I" part as God but not the "Am" part which is creation distinct from God.

I believe in "Am" as well as "I" and believe in the objective reality of the universe existing beyond the awareness of the limits of our subjective level of being as we exist in our dreams within Plato's cave.

Since the absolute truth of Christianity exists outside of Plato's cave in the realm of objective reality and we are within the cave, the Christendom that exists for us cannot contain absolute truth but at best, a blend of partial truths.

Then "truth is relative" is at most relatively true, and only true to a certain point. Therefore, there is absolute truth. IOW, if "any statement which is made is only true to a certain point," is only true to a certain point, then there must be a statement that is absolutely true.

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peace for all
love for all
bliss for all

...may your journey be graceful...

If anything is possible, then the statement, "anything is possible," is possibly false.