Back in college a good friend posted on Facebook asking if there existed a Truth with a capital T. A lot of our other friends answered right away that there was no Truth. Each person has his/her truth but no one could say for certainty that one person's truth should be imposed on someone else's truth. I found this very disturbing especially coming from a lot of my friends who were intelligent individuals. I don't usually comment on posts but I made the exception in this case.
I forgot what I said exactly but it came in the form of, "Yes, there is a Truth. Everything we believe in like Science and Religion exist because there exists an absolute Truth which we feel the need to understand.
She quickly messaged me saying that she knew even before she posted that question and I would be among the people who would say outright that Truth with a capital T existed and she wanted to talk about it. Looking back, I could've explained it better but I was still happy with the response I gave her. I could sense she was truly curious and wanted to know more on the subject. (I think I'll ask her again now, if she believes in a Truth)
I chanced upon this image that one of my friends posted. It illustrated his belief in relativism. He captioned it, "We look at one thing with different perspectives. No one can claim monopoly of truth."
I actually like this image as it explains pretty well what absolute truth is and what it is not. One view of this picture says someone can see the Truth and say, "It's a blue circle." and another person can say, "No, it's an orange square." My friend's point in his post was that both persons can't claim to tell the other they're wrong. Instead, both of them can claim to be true; thus, truth is relative.
I'd like to tweek the text in this picture a little bit. Instead of saying, "This is true," I'd like to replace it with, "This is a perception of truth." There still exists only one Truth but there exist an infinite ways of viewing the Truth incorrectly or shall I say, incompletely.
I'd like to use an example, the Earth's movement around the Sun. Before the Copernican model became accepted, a geocentric model of the universe was considered true. It was never true but that was our perception of the truth given out limited knowledge. In fact, saying that truth is relative, pretty much disregards everything that science sets out to do, which is to get a clearer picture of this absolute Truth. You might say that before, we saw cylinder as only a blue circle and after numerous scientific discoveries, we discover, "Oh! This blue circle can actually sometimes be an orange square and sometimes, it's a mix of both." My point in this is to say, that we may never get to see the actual Truth of the universe's workings but with every scientific breakthrough, we get a clearer and clearer understanding of the Truth and our perception of the Truth comes closer and closer to the actual Truth. Certainly, there also exist people who insist on their perception of the Truth to be true even when they're clearly false (i.e., Flat Earth Society - I still can't believe these people exist.)
Well, how about religion? So far, my very few examples only include scientific truths not religious or philosophical ones. I say the same line of thinking. There exists a Truth about religion. All religions have a perception of the truth which may or may not represent the truth well. Some may even deny the Truth outright and pass it off their perception of Truth.
I will concede that every person will have a different perception of truth. But to say that each of those perceptions is in fact true, would be a step back in our intelligence. Imagine if we allow scientific facts or for that matter, mathematical facts to be subjected to relativism. "This is my truth and you can't impose your truth on me," is a statement I hear a lot and it sounds great but can have a lot of dangerous effects.
This exists a Truth, people and the closer everyone knows this Truth, the better for mankind.
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