Havoc said:
I am not a relativist, if that is what you are referring to. I firmly believe that there is an absolute truth, a way things "are" as it were.
I wasn't implying that you were a relativist, only that you were pulling the relativist line. In that sense, it was "relativism talking." What goes into the way things are for you? A mere description of nature (science) or is there something more to it?
Truth is not subjective. Human perception of truth, however, most certainly is. The Christian claim of absolute truth, for instance, is a subjective claim. It may correspond to the absolute truth, or it may not. Without hard, objective, irrefutable proof your claim is a subjective perception.
Like I said, I couldn't agree with you less. This is like saying "Oh yeah, there is such a thing as beauty, only its in the eye of the beholder." Truth is not like beauty, if it is absolute, in that it cannot depend on any subjective perception. This is the case by your own admission of objectivity. There is no such thing as "irrefutable proof." It doesn't happen outside of the realm of purist mathematics, which is completely abstract. Science's knowledge, for example, would be non-existent if the height of the bar set for evidence was at the level of "irrefutable proof." There is always in science the possibility of false positives (and negatives). Does this mean then, that what science knows it does not know with enough satisfaction for it to be considered true? I don't think this is the case. Similarily, what one religion may have to say about reality may fit the details better than any other religion might. Christianity, I would argue, gives the best answer to the questions of moral objectivity, human Reason, why we are here, why things have gone wrong etc. Its not that I
feel that it has the best answer but because it gives the most logically sastifying answers. This is all we can expect of a science, and therefore it is all one can expect from a religion. Such lust for absolute certainty is entirely unrealistic.
Compounding the problem is that many other religions also claim to have the "absolute truth". They have, in essence, the same amount of proof of their claim as you have of yours, ie none. There are still more religions who recognise the subjectivity of human perception of truth and therefore forgo the claim of "absolutism" in favor of a much more tenable position of belief.
On the contrary, this is an excellent solution to the problem. As one weighs various scientific hypotheses based on the evidence one also can weigh various religions based on the evidence. The evidence, in this case being moral objectivity, human reason and the problem of evil, as I said earlier. Arguing that this is not evidence for a religion merely puts you into a new religious sect, namely naturalism. They have to argue that what they are saying about reality is truest also, so we can weigh them in with the rest to see if their answer really does offer the most truth.
So the problem remains in how does one pick the "right" religion when the only thing one has to go on are conflicting claims, human perceptions, and a complete lack of proof?
Agreed, there is definitely a problem at the outset as to which religion is most truest. The question is, will we seek to reasonably answer the question as we would a scientific delimma, or will we raise the standard impossibly high and leave no room for knowledge outside of science. To do so is to form an unfair dichotomy saying this area need not have absolute proof, yet the other must. In effect, if you are going to hold to this claim across the board and not just with religion you're going to have to give up knowing anything as true at all, and I highly doubt you wish to do that, because, as you said, you are not a relativist.
Garret
