What is "Truth"
These are notes from a BIGSCREEN virtual talk on the subject.
"Truth" is obviously a word and part of language as a whole. The word is used very differently in a religious context than in ordinary life. For example, when I say that it's true that I am 75 years old, I am using the word differently when (as it happened) somebody says that everything in the Bible is "true".
This is a distinction hotly denied by people of "faith" but calmly accepted by everyone else. Religious "truths" are intelligible (but may still be debated) within a religious community. For example, at one point, the difference between Catholics and Protestants was whether the "host" (the crackers) in communion are "really" the body of Christ.
Another issue that came up was the difference between opinion facts. We have seen that graduates of American High Schools are unable to tell the difference. It is unsurprising that our young evangelist arrived in the conversation packing a truckload of opinions that he could not see as opinions.
Differences over the "truth" can, in principle, be resolved by debate or further observation.
Before the discussion was hijacked by religion, we drilled down a bit on the "hard truth". We challenged the intuitive idea that what is true is what we experience at the moment. For humans at least, the "moment" is heavily pre-processed by memory and experience. More subtly, it is full of expectations - for example, what would happen if you dropped a wine bottle.
There was some arm wrestling about the role of approximation - whether truth can be approximate. I must I was guilty of raising the question of whether a religious truth can be approximately right. Rabbit hole.
Most of the usual canards came up at some point, such as the idea that all religions agree on the basic stuff which, even if it were true, sheds no light on the question of whether the "basic stuff" is right. I suppose the existence of the soul (apart from the body) would be such a basic idea. It is not "true" in the same sense that protons consist of 3 quarks or that the Universe is 13 billion years old.
While we are on the subject of quarks, I introduced the unsettling fact that in the reality of quantum mechanics, things can be both kinda true and kinda false. Only our observation forces the world to "make a decision". Conterintitvely we can devise experiments that prove show that the A or not A distinction does not exist before the measurement. Einstein hotly disagreed. I refrained from raising the other example, even more troubling, that any interesting logical system will contain statements that are both true and false (Goedel). It proved difficult to convey the Physics 101 "basic truth" is that we don't know what the world "is", only the results of experiments. There seems to be a very hard barrier to finding out anything really "true" in the way we would like. Wilczek addresses this subtle issue, but the Tao Te Ching handles it as well. The Tao that can be named is not the real Tao.
In practice though (the way we "normally" use the word), "truth" does mean something - most easily experienced by noting what it is not. Perhaps that's the role of Science - not to tell us what we know but to rule out things we knew that weren't true. Even so, we have seen the lengths we have needed to go to to "prove" that Trump didn't win the 2020 election. In a world where opinions are facts, I suppose this will never be truly settled.
Our Trumpy religious guy said a few things about his "truth" that were kinda off the wall. For example, all leaders are appointed by God. What about Hitler? Well, he was there to punish the Jews! Definitely a "quotable truth". Here is a peek into the last stand the religious right can take: After all, Trump was appointed by God.
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