how can navigate if our desire is for absolute truth...

by Ruby456 52 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Xanthippe

  the third thing that can enable us to guard against suggesting absolute truth as a form of objectivity is to consider that language tends to complicate and obscure - but we have to use words.

  Not if you use language properly. For example you are talking about scientists looking for automata on other planets. What do you mean? Machines? Robots? Computer?Somehow you get hold of a word Ruby and it seems to mean something in your own head that is different to the dictionary definition.

  Automata automatons and such like - I guess these would be self organizing systems that are self sufficient but that we would not class as life that we see on earth.

  No an automaton would be :-

  a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being.

  
  

  • 
    
• 

  Xanthippe

  Was reading something on xenobiology as this includes the kinds of life forms that astrobiologists look for and they need to keep open that other life forms may not be like those on earth so they look for what they term living entities. - Ruby

  If you are talking about life on other planets or in other parts of the universe being totally different to us, Ruby, you might be interested in Richard Dawkins' book The Magic Of Reality.

  In the chapter Are We Alone? Dawkins discusses the possibility of life forms with X-Ray vision and life forms that can communicate using radio waves but without any device, having evolved to do this just with their brains.

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/262525/we-alone
  
• 

  Ruby456

  xanth - this may help

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenobiology
  

  I wish these things were in my own mind - but what makes them exciting and interesting is that they come from other people's minds
  

  
  dawkins only represents one side of this fascinating debate - I tend to favour the other side - the self organizing complexity side

  edit: the problem with dictionary definitions is that they are too simple and too black or white although these can point you in the right direction. wiki is better cos it provides a general discussion
• 

  cofty

  dawkins only represents one side of this fascinating debate - I tend to favour the other side - the self organizing complexity side

  Doesn't sound as if you have ever read Dawkins then.
  
  
• 

  Ruby456

  i'm always open to being proved wrong, cofty. where's your evidence
• 

  Xanthippe

  edit: the problem with dictionary definitions is that they are too simple and too black or white although these can point you in the right direction. wiki is better cos it provides a general discussion

  Lol Ruby I just have to smile. Dictionary definitions of words are too black and white but they can point you in the right direction? So we all end up with a different idea of what a word means? Meanings of words are standardised so that when we talk to someone we can understand them, surely?

  So the wiki page on Xenobiology you linked to, what do you get from this discussion?
  
  
• 

  Hiemere

  Ruby456,

  I appreciate that you took the time to give me such a detailed answer, but you do realize you didn't answer my question.

  I asked,"What's the obsession with finding this thing that give you that objective view? What's the evidence that such a way to absolute truth exists?"

  And as for being unscientific, if I am not mistaken, science has no model or theory that teaches that what you are talking about, what you are searching for, exists. Again, what's the proof that absolute truth and having a purely objective view of everything is possible for anyone? If there is absolute truth, what evidence is there that you can point to that source or way to it? And then what proves you would be able to process it and understand it?

  I mean, if you were one who thought the religion of JWs was the truth, you don't have the best track record proving you can find and tell if you have "the truth" or not. "I was in a cult for several years and believed it was the truth, but now that I'm out, I'm a good judge of knowing what is true and not." I'm sorry, but how did you suddenly gain the capacity to judge such things objectively when you once failed at it so miserably?

  I wouldn't trust a surgeon who killed every patient he had for several years following some pseudo-medicine he believed was "the truth," even if he claimed he had rejected that pseudo-medicine as nonsense now. "Trust me as your surgeon if you need an operation. I won't kill you now."

  You are like that surgeon, aren't you? If you were a JW, you once claimed you had life-saving truth and in a spiritual sense "killed" everyone you taught JW nonsense to. Now that you left, you claim that there is still some single path for truth, and you expect me to believe that what you're selling now is correct?
• 

  cofty

  dawkins only represents one side of this fascinating debate - I tend to favour the other side - the self organizing complexity side - Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

  Doesn't sound as if you have ever read Dawkins then. - Cofty

  i'm always open to being proved wrong, cofty. where's your evidence - Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

  Self organising complexity is a major theme of all of Dawkins science books. From memory the chapter in "The Greatest Show on Earth" called "You did it yourself in nine months" is all about self organising complexity. It's literally all over his writing.
• 

  A Ha

  Hiemere, I appreciate your overall theme--that believing we've found absolute truth, or that it's even possible to find it--likely isn't possible, but I do have a couple points of contention.

  Why do Witnesses and some ex-Witnesses have this obsession with finding "the truth"? Nobody else has it.

  I think there are many groups that have this obsession with finding absolute truth and think they've found it. You're describing pretty much every fundamentalist group in history. Groups like Westboro are outliers in how vocal and shamelessly offensive they are in proclaiming "the truth," not in thinking they've found it.

  And to speak up for team atheist a bit... I know you weren't saying this, but I want to clarify that, while atheists can be vocal and strident, they don't claim to have found any absolute truth. In fact, I don't see any other group who are nearly as vocal in saying that knowledge is provisional.
  

  
  

  I mean, if you were one who thought the religion of JWs was the truth, you don't have the best track record proving you can find and tell if you have "the truth" or not. "I was in a cult for several years and believed it was the truth, but now that I'm out, I'm a good judge of knowing what is true and not." I'm sorry, but how did you suddenly gain the capacity to judge such things objectively when you once failed at it so miserably?

  This seems a pretty unfair ad hominem. Many (most) JWs were raised in their religion, and were never taught to think logically--in fact, were taught the opposite. This kind of mis-education from infancy can be extremely difficult to overcome. I think a case could be made that those who were able to overcome their brainwashing (and immense social pressures) actually show exceptional logical thinking abilities, since they had such a deep hole to climb out of.
• 

  Ruby456

  cofty

  Self organising complexity is a major theme of all of Dawkins science books. From memory the chapter in "The Greatest Show on Earth" called "You did it yourself in nine months" is all about self organising complexity. It's literally all over his writing.cofty

  that may be so cofty but fundamentally Dawkins is a biologist committed to studying how life originates from simple cells while in chemistry cells are an emergent property of modularity. so I guess in a sense chemistry questions some of the assumptions that biologists make because saying that cells are an emergent property questions the absoluteness of the boundaries that biologists adopt (so this ties into what I am trying hard to get to grips with) I guess it is better to say that the boundaries that each discipline in science adopt are substantially real rather than absolutely real.

  so this chimes with an earlier decision I made regarding knowledge and evidence - that it is more helpful to ask how robust any knowledge or evidence for something is than to say it is absolute truth.