Opinions are Cheap

In My Opinion

A friend emailed me the other day and voiced an opinion about “God” and “truth.” S/he said that s/he believed in God and that God’s existence is an absolute truth. S/he later defined “God” not as a personal and interactive partner in this world with us, but like the ancients, as the Prime Mover, who created the world and stepped away saying, “Now you’re on your own.”

This got me to thinking, not about God, but about “truth, “knowledge,” and “reality.” For my friend, “truth” should be capitalized and is always absolute. But history shows that truth is mutable and culturally dependent: didn’t Copernicus’s Solar System model replace that of the Earth-centered model of Ptolemy? Didn’t the discovery of oxygen knock off the phlogiston theory of combustion? And didn’t Einstein’s version of gravity eclipse that of old Isaac Newton’s?

So, I thought, given science’s unstable past, how can we consider any of our current knowledge to be permanent and how can be talk about truth as being absolute when what we think is true today, becomes just another discarded theory tomorrow?

This brings me back to my friend who somehow transformed belief into knowledge and then into truth. We often do speak of our knowledge of God, but this isn’t empirical knowledge as in the sense of being scientific. Our knowledge of God is based on an intuitive, internal or spiritual energy from which we derive meaning and our religious natures. Even so, our experiences of God and our own spirituality are not absolutes and do not reveal absolute knowledge; rather, they are personal and interactive, relationship oriented, and fluid.

They are not scientific and to speak of God in scientific terms such as truth and knowledge is to beg the question of our own faith and imperfection. When I go to church I understand that the person in the next pew has a different relationship with God than I and that his or her conception of the Almighty is perhaps different because of differences in life experiences and understanding.

Harriet Hall wrote in On Being Certain

“We would like to think that if everyone had the same information they would necessarily reach the same conclusion, but that just isn't so. There is no such thing as pure reason. Reason is not disembodied as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences…Whether an idea originates in a feeling of faith or appears to be the result of pure reason, it arises out of a personal hidden layer that we can neither see or control. No amount of rational argument is likely to change us…If science and religion could both accept that all our facts are really provisional, absolutism could be dethroned, and a dialogue might be possible.”

This philosophical problem of truth has been with us for a long time. In the first century AD, Pontius Pilate (John 18:38) asked “What is truth?” but no answer was forthcoming. The problem has been studied more since the turn of the twentieth century than at any other previous time. In the last one hundred or so years, considerable progress has been made in solving the problem in the empirical world, but this has had little impact on matters of faith and service to others.
The truth that sustains ordinary living is not scientific or theoretical; it cannot be manufactured in a chemist’s laboratory or be deduced from a series of axioms; rather it is imperfect, comprehensive and spiritual. For example, for the person of faith it matters little what theory of creation is being taught in our schools—science is science and faith is faith, and their belief matters more than scientific explanations.

Our faith compels us to turn to our human relationships and understand that creativity, purpose, meaning, and spirit and the sense of being fully alive are elements of our spirituality—the energy that drives the life lived in relationship with others and our creator. The fabric of our spirituality is woven with the ethical practices of living with others in community. This is a life-long commitment; a process of giving birth to our spiritual natures as we mature in our human relationships. It is a spiritual meaning (and truth) that grows within and identifies our lives as moral creatures.

Michael Lerner said that “to be human is to recognize a categorical obligation to an objective moral task of world repair.” This task is far more important than arguing matters of truth and falsehood. Lerner concludes, “The self is in need of a meaning which it cannot furnish by itself.” This meaning is sacred and is found within our spiritual natures and in service to others.