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I think it's the same thing with "truth" Basically we make the assumption that reality is such that, given enough people looking at the same phenomena from different vantagepoints of reality and those expressed differences, we could theoretically come to a point of agreement on at least SOME of the things for said phenomena.

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I. B. Meph's Note.--I didn't see anything about any reasonable sense of "correspondence" or "coherence" From your perspective as an existentialist, I'm not that surprised, but I would have figured more of an emphasis on the latter than the former. After all, that's how truth is prehended subjectively, is it not? It has a logic and coherence all it's own...according to the structures created by the individual person...even as it helps substantiate the structures themselves. This is how, for a paranoid delusional person, any act of kindness by others, no matter how benevolent, can be construed as a ploy to kill or deceive that person. Other viable options of said acts don't jive with the person's "grid" of delusion...ie it's not coherent with his delusional scheme and MUST be reconfigured. On a lesser scale , of course, isn't this the same thing that occurs with you?

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You may liken me to a delusional person if it pleases you, but my delusion is that I must relate absolutely to Christ, the Absolute, and relate only relatively to all else, for all else is indeed relative. This is a delusion I happily have been embraced by in my encounter with the Lord. When one has "met their maker" everything else becomes relative. To speak otherwise is to doubt the most obvious truth.

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Oh, boy. I hope this wasn't misconstrued. I wasn't calling you delusional or identifying you with a delusional person. What I was noting was that this process is not necessarily truth conducive. One can do this and be under total delusion. That's what I meant.

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If Truth is an idea, then how do you avoid the obvious implication that God is the absolute "Thought Thinking Itself"? No, this must be clearly rejected, God’s will is supreme over any "idea" of "truth". It is God who is the Truth, the only Absolute. God is not a mere idea, this is why personal (existential) categories are inherently more relevant than sheer logic. Math is always based upon abstraction, it does not reflect reality, it is a tool for disecting it, and there’s only so much you can do with lots of little dead pieces and loads of missing data.

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I think we're crossed here. What I meant was that Truth is ultimately an idea in the same way that perception is the only reality. "Truth" is an idea in the mind of the PERCEIVER of truth. I understood that you were calling God "Absolute Truth", but I was trying to say that even this ends up an idea in the mind of the perceiver. (See my critical realism and conceptualism at work?)

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As for the cosmic joke possibility, yes, it is a logical possibility. There are an infinite number of such possibilities. I rest on the testimony of the witnesses who go on record in Scripture, under the guidance of the Spirit to proclaim the goodness and faithfulness of our Lord! This is confirmed in my personal experience of God as Lord in my life.

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This is my whole point. We have absolute certainty about almost NOTHING, least of all the concept of the Christian God. Most everything we build our faith on has the possibility of being misinterpreted information. If I were to ask you were you ABSOLUTELY sure that Heaven , Christ, and God existed, I think you, as a thinking being, would ultimately say "No." If you are You don't "know" in the formal sense of knowledge being justified TRUE belief. You have good reason to believe and trust...and based on that, you do believe and trust. You don't know the ultimate objective reality of any of your beliefs. ( To me, too many people indulge in psychological certainty where it is very unwarranted. That's what I wanted to note.

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Meph, you seem to conflate subjectivity and relativity. This is easy to do, but is nevertheless inappropriate. Like relativity, subjectivity deals with the "relations" involved, but unlike the usual sense of the term "relativity," one can have an ultimate, even Absolute, inter-subjective relation. This is coherent within the relational world view of Open Theism.

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Hmmm...maybe I was thinking wrong. But, what I meant by "utter subjectivism" was the precursor to relativism. To me, subjectivism TAKEN TOO FAR logically leads to relativism. This is what I meant.

Hope this clarifies some things, ol' buddy, ol' pal.



PS: YO, how about y'all speak out on my "Was it Worth It" thing??

Love God. Love People. Love Truth. Dedicate your all to that which you love.

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Mephi: Could an existential truth ever be different from ontological or even epistemological, and still be justifiable?

Doc: It may be "justifiable," but not TRUE. Newton wasn't "justified" in thinking his three laws of motion were universal, though it turned out at least one of them is not. The TRUTH was further disclosed with Einstein.

Our perspectives on truth, of course, are relative. But even this TRUE observation (note) presupposes that we affirm a TRUTH outside of ourselves that we are -- in our limited fashion -- approaching. Hence we can't reduce TRUTH to our relative perception, thus rejecting absolute truth, without involving ourselves in utter nonsense -- such as we are finding with much of the post-modern drivel.

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