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CHIT CHAT

18/5/2019

Is truth Dead ….

When we tend to discuss different world views, we need to check whether we are framing self defeating/ self contradictory questions. The question we ask ,in the first place applies to the questioner as well. If we leave our discussions and questions half way , the world view you always end up is either Pluralism or Atheism . It may be due to subjective reasons. Either we find ourselves to create an humour and joke about the whole subject , as we assume that we are observing peace , friendliness & fraternity .We end up in a common ground gratifying ourselves in uniting together in the joy of lesser evils commonly shared by diluting the main subject and turning into a humour .The topic on God and man ended with the conversation on -- empathy in Social drinking !!! We like to discuss and keep us well informed on different realities of life but are not ready to confront it . We try to expound a lot of subjects on reality ..physical and metaphysical within a breathe of one sentence . Its like we are trying to define a subject like thermodynamics or Engineering mechanics within a brief short sentence. How much more would be the contents relating to subjects of Reality.. . ….God..Man… By doing that ,just for a chit chat , we are adding more salt into the wound. Its not a proper long time solution or approach .

Mortimer Adler and his friend Hutchins have complied one of the best volumes of the Great Books of the Western World program in 55 volumes on various subjects and written by great thinkers ,authors from all ages. Any particular subject , for instance.. Universe, engineering , astrology, karma…etc each of these subjects has a comment and view point quoted by all famous men / experts on that particular subject . The Volume about the subject called God had the widest and most no of pages compared to any other subjects . According to Adler, of all the great topics/ subjects , the topic on God has always been and continues to be the one that evokes the greatest concern among the widest group of men and women. Why is that … Does an Unseen reality matter to us so much..? Does the Unseen reality influence the Seen reality so much ? Wasn’t the Apple fruit the most important goal of the Apple tree.. though the leaves , roots , soil , water and the minerals were vital ? Wasn’t Man the most important goal of His Creator….and every fruit has a mark/image of His Creator—the seed ?

Don't get mesmerized by the esoteric words or nonsense which different authors or gurus or world views come up with . Some of them may sound sophiscated, mystical and Vibrant , but hollow in its reality . Some of them may sound so pristine and make the others look horrific just like we see in politics. Brilliance need not be always the Truth . Try , not to be blown away by the mass marketing of spirituality . Search of Truth is your way to your Ultimate Reality . There is a need to ask the proper questions.

The best way of approaching is to vehemently and passionately search for the truth . But we don’t take that route further, pursuing for the truth. As long as all our needs in this physical realms are met , we don’t walk that extra yard . There is a seen and unseen reality . If we believe only in a seen reality, you are not a pragmatist neither a politician . Look at a small child, a farmer, a fisherman and a class teacher who can always envision an unseen reality in their respective fields . We may think we are clever enough to fool other people, God, or even ourselves, but little do we know of the ultimate consequences of our attempts to deceive reality. However painful or awkward the truth may be, it is "truly" our only opportunity to create harmony and receive God's grace. Any institution , country or even a small unit like a family cannot be peaceful and harmonious for a long time until it is embedded in Love . Love is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. In short, truth is mandatory in any situation inorder to display and experience true love. Honestly speaking , we are not able to handle the Truth , because of our subjective reasons. We have lot of data and information about facts . But all facts need not be true.

Truth by definition is exclusive. The moment you make an affirmation or an assertion about life’ essence & meaning, you are implicitly saying that something that is contradictory to that is either false or your way is one way of thinking and it is not the truth . Law of non contradiction ,applies to realities, opposite things cannot be true. E.g... the two propositions "A is B" and "A is not B" are mutually exclusive. Both cannot be same at the same time. Truth is primarily a property of propositions. You see this in the court room . When you go to a court of law ,you are always asked questions with the attorney on the other side of the issue looking for 2 things >>Coherence & correspondence. Correspondence- applies to particular assertions and statements eg.., If the lawyer asks, “Where were you at that place at the time of murder ?” If your answer was, “No I wasn’t there at the place of murder “. They will make sure that you will say the truth , but yet that one answer doesn’t mean that you have nothing to do with the murder, but it only says that you were not their at the time of murder. 2nd thing the lawyer will do & try to test you is not just correspondence but coherence-Are all of your answers fitting together in a coherent response for each of his questions. Truth generally in components looks for correspondence & coherence.

Another one additional to these two tests are Practical Test: If what you believe is practical and applicable to everyday life. A worldview test that examines a worldview's workability and practical value in the most important areas of life and experience. Match the following worldview elements or disciplines - Ultimate Reality(Metaphysics), God (theology), Nature of the Universe(Cosmology ), Human Nature(Anthropolgy), Knowledge(epistemology), Ethics, and Purpose with the correct questions.

3 steps:-

1) You are earnestly looking and seeking for truth

2) Tested with coherence & correspondence

Ultimate tests: Correspondence to truth test ( For eg…car parked outside is red color. I can go out and check it )& Coherence test(For eg.., in a court room- You say I did not kill. How can the Chief Judge check whether your statement is truth. He can check all your 10 statements you said & analyse it)

Sometimes world views are Systemically flawed (false) though they have elements of truth . Even though it is passing the Correspondence to truth test , it may not be Coherent at the same time.

3) How do you test for coherence & correspondence for any world view

3 ways of testing truth :

Logical consistency: Answers must be logically consistent or are there obvious contradictions. The aim of logic is the elaboration of a coherent system that allows us to investigate, classify, and evaluate good and bad forms of reasoning. Warrantabilty is a form of justification or evidence for a suggestion of something . Examples of warrantabilty include semantic, logical, systemic, empirical, and testimony. Logical warrantability includes the Laws of identity, non-contradiction,and the excluded middle.

Empirical adequacy Able to verify the truth like resurrection from death, archeological claims, historicity of the World view . Anything to support the claims.Documentation or Sources or Data with Evidence apart from religious texts .By a self referencing authority .

Experiential relevance: All of this should be relevant to your Life. Athesim may claim , there is no real basis for values or morality and therefore don’t exist. If we kill a baby , is it evil or what ? Atheism has no foundation for objective morality , since man is product of Time, chance and matter . After all what can a product of mere chemical evolution of carbon-based molecules in a “primordial soup can teach us about right and wrong .” Atheism believes what is known as God of the Gaps . The "gaps" points out the fallacy of relying on teleological arguments for God's existence. This argument means,” “I can’t understand it, therefore God did it.” .And of course God disappears as the gaps close.The attributes of God in which they atheists assume are different from the attributes of God a theistic thinker makes. The teleological or physico-theological argument, also known as the argument from design, or intelligent design argument is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, for an intelligent creator based on perceived evidence of deliberate design in the natural world and the universe. Designed for a purpose . Fine tuning of the whole universe for instance. Who is God? He is the nonphysical, Infinite, timeless, personal, intelligent, moral, valuable, Holy , first cause, who has given us intrinsic worth and whom we can know by personal experience. Science cannot tell us for instance whether a poem or work of literature or a work of art and music is good or beautiful. And when Isaac Newton for example discovered his law of gravity and wrote down the equations of motion, he didn't say “marvellous I now understand it. I’ve got a mechanism therefore I don't need God.” In fact it was the exact opposite. It was because he understood the complexity of sophistication of the mathematical description of the universe that his praise for God was increased. Here we are confusing between " Mechanism " vs "Agency" . We have a mechanism that does XYZ therefore there’s no need for an agent. God is the agent . I would suggest that the sophistication of the mechanism, and science rejoices in finding such mechanisms, is evidence for the sheer wonder of the creative genius of God.

John C. Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God ? Pls find below an extract from his book:-

“Science has been spectacularly successful in probing the nature of the physical universe and elucidating the mechanisms by which the universe works. Scientific research has also led to the eradication of many horrific diseases, and raised hopes of eliminating many more. And scientific investigation has had another effect in a completely different direction: it has served to relieve a lot of people from superstitious fears. For instance, people need no longer think that an eclipse of the moon is caused by some frightful daemon, which they have to placate. For all of these and myriad other things we should be very grateful.

But in some quarters the very success of science has also led to the idea that, because we can understand the mechanisms of the universe without bringing in God, we can safely conclude that there was no God who designed and created the universe in the first place. However, such reasoning involves a common logical fallacy, which we can illustrate as follows.

Take a Ford motor car. It is conceivable that someone from a remote part of the world, who was seeing one for the first time and who knew nothing about modern engineering, might imagine that there is a god (Mr Ford) inside the engine, making it go. He might further imagine that when the engine ran sweetly it was because Mr Ford inside the engine liked him, and when it refused to go it was because Mr Ford did not like him. Of course, if he were subsequently to study engineering and take the engine to pieces, he would discover that there is no Mr Ford inside it. Neither would it take much intelligence for him to see that he did not need to introduce Mister Ford as an explanation for its working. His grasp of the impersonal principles of internal combustion would be altogether enough to explain how the engine works. So far, so good. But if he then decided that his understanding of the principles of how the engine works made it impossible to believe in the existence of Mr Ford who designed the engine in the first place, this would be patently false – in philosophical terminology he would be committing a category mistake. Had there never been a Mr Ford to design the mechanisms, none would exist for him to understand.

It is likewise a category mistake to suppose that our understanding of the impersonal principles according to which the universe works makes it either unnecessary or impossible to believe in the existence of a personal creator who designed, made, and upholds the universe. In other words, we should not confuse the mechanisms by which the universe works either with its cause or its upholder.”

Pragmatic tests - the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected. The Ewe creativity test is similar to the pragmatic approach, with one important addition: what is true is not only what is practical but, also what has the power to bring about a better human situation.

4) What are the questions you need to ask on any world view? Five questions on :-

Origin, meaning, Purpose, morality & destiny--Questions to be asked in World view. It has to be tested.

When we get the answers for Origin, meaning,purpose, morality & Destiny in a corresponding , coherent and a practical way , we understand the truth . A truth which can set you free. (God is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth, Ps 145: 18). Its journey we need to make with a child like approach.

Oct 2015, my wife and 11 year old son Joshua had to fly immediately to Kerala, Trivandrum for Joshua’s 3rd surgery for a cyst underneath his ear on the side of his face. There was a cartilage and fibrous tissue growth in his external ear. The doctor here in UAE had said there is a tendency for the cartilage to grow, because cartilage has a memory to grow. It is tending to cover because of the Memory in its cells to grow back. This was the word the Doctor specifically told us—memory . As he was a child and had to go through different surgeries , it was not at all easy for us as parents to go through such painful procedures . At that time , we were praying with utmost grief and pain. I was here in Dubai,UAE with work at a Fitness company . We didn’t have the courage and boldness to make any decisions . The earlier surgery was for the inner ear canal. Finding the cyst itself was a miracle. It appeared only just as a small redness under his ear. This was external ear portion where the surgery had to done to block the growing cartilage . His hearing was perfect . There was no problem with his inner ear. Sobha received a word from the Lord on the eve of the surgery .The amazing word Sobha received before the surgery was so specific. It was Ex17:14 Verse 14 - "Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this as a MEMORIAL in a BOOK and recite it in the EARS of JOSHUA, that I will utterly blot out the MEMORY of Amalek(enemies) from under heaven.” It was a prophetic word which spoke to our son . Joshua asked , how is that God could speak to us so accurately into my situation.

1. Memorial in a book

2. Ears of Joshua

3. Blot out the Memory of the Cartilage from under heaven.

After the surgery was done, the Doctor said ,that we had to stay in India for the next whole year so that he could monitor him on a regular basis out of his deep concern. The doctor had told us to pack our bags and be in India for the rest of our lives. The cyst may grow into the brain and can bring the child into any mental situation and can lay him of as well . We met another child the same day evening , who had gone through similar experience and had to eventually do many radiations on his skull .When you cry out for the revelation of truth , God opens his word . But when we receive his word , we know its for us and our part is to receive it and obey it . Joshua is still in good health , and no knife has touched his ear after revelation of this word, God willing. When we seek the truth, God will ensure He gives it . And He does it liberally not looking at who you are , or where are you from , or what religion you follow. But there is need for us to understand the right source of truth and obey it .