As I mentioned recently, I retired two months ago, and have more time on my hands much to the consternation of my wife. I can only surf so much, about two-three hours a day if there are waves. One way I have found to spend my time is to continue learning. I plan on learning to play the piano. I also subscribed to Masterclass, an online portal with hundreds of classes and lectures taught by “masters” in their field. I’ve learned to do cup and ball magic by taking a class by Penn & Teller. I learned about math from Terence Tao, probably the greatest mathematician alive today.
This week I listened to Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about Scientific Thinking and Communication. In the chapter on “Our System of Belief”, he talks about objective truth and personal truth. Objective truth is something that can be proven, and is true regardless of who looks at it. Like the value of pi, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle, is an objective truth equal at 3.14159…., or the earth is a sphere, not flat.
A personal truth is something you hold to be true no matter what anybody else thinks of it. He said almost all religious beliefs fall into this category. If one wants to believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that is OK as a personal belief. He qualified that to say you can believe anything you want as long as it does not constrain or remove the freedoms of others.
He then talks about what happens when you have a strong personal truth, and that personal truth overlaps something that can be tested scientifically. If you have a strong personal truth, you need to be aware that you can end up confronting information that is objectively true, that is true regardless of who looks at it, and it could conflict with your personal truth. This can manifest by thinking you are special. Not that you are a special human, but that you belong to a group that is special, that your religion is special, more special than other religions. He said it distorts your ability to interpret reality. It gives you an unjustified level of confidence. You participate in this mindset because it makes you feel good about yourself and this group you are apart of. He said in almost all cases you have to denigrate other groups for this to work. The example he gives is Nazi Germany, their personal beliefs, and the denigration of other groups.
Neil deGrasse Tyson then talks about how having strong personal beliefs can prevent you from seeing, recognizing, and absorbing an objective reality that conflicts with your personal belief. There are numerous examples of this in religion. A strong belief that Adam and Eve lived 6000 years ago and were the first humans is fine, but it will prevent you from seeing the scientific facts that show this is wrong. More specifically to Mormonism, a personal belief that the Book of Mormon is historical true can lead you to ignore the fact that there is no evidence of the society depicted in the book.
What is your experience with the conflict between personal and objective truth? As you have become more nuanced in your thinking with regard to the Church (and I assume you are because you are reading Wheat & Tares), do you still have personal beliefs? If so, what are they, and how do you reconcile them when they are in conflict with objective truths?
Wheat & Tares 
Well, Bishop Bill, I usually find myself in agreement with your posts. They mostly have a commonsense basis and agree with accepted “facts.” But not this time when you express your OPINION about the Truth claims of the Book of Mormon as fact, when they are not.
Stating that, quote, “there is no evidence of the society depicted in the book…” is an opinion – that you are entitled to hold – but it is countered by the substantial objective support for historicity in multiple fields. Yes, there is still some wiggle room in how we can view the New World setting, but it must be pointed out that a comprehensive and quite plausible setting that matches both the scripture and archaeological findings very well.
But you seem blissfully unaware of the completely solid, thoroughly documented OLD WORLD setting that has been in place and growing since Nibley’s day. All published by the Interpreter journal and BYU Studies mostly. This is data that goes beyond plausibility into the strongest level of archaeological support possible – datable inscriptions of a unique Book of Mormon name. And locations that match, in the smallest details, Nephi’s descriptions.
From my perspective, perhaps the most telling strength of these evidences comes from the weaknesses of the arguments against them by both anti and cultural Mormons. Most are truly flawed.
I respectfully suggest that you put some of your abundant discretionary time aside and bring yourself up to speed with the actual state of research. That should appeal to a legal mind concerned with evidence.
After all, if the first 18 chapters are truly an historical account, and not some fiction, then so is the rest of the Book of Mormon.
I have a pile of personal beliefs but I am a little more skeptical of them since we left.
I am more aware of how I interact with world and community for beliefs or actions. Some strong personal and community beliefs I think are important for holding a culture together. I am not sure how to make and maintain that on the outside.
I was raised to always put scientific and objective truth over opinion. Religion was opinion. But it was an opinion you should have even if it was part pretend.
And sure, I found out my parents were secret apostates and had been all my life, but made us go to church because of two dominating grandmothers only after the two grandmothers died.
So, I suppose I was raised different than most Mormons, but I was taught that there is no such thing as personal truth, only your opinion. All else should be tested and proven. So, your religion teaches that blacks are kind of unworthy because of something their spirit did in the pre-existence? Well, get to know some of them and either prove it or disprove it. Your religion teaches about Adam and Eve and the earth is 6 thousand years old? Well geology has already disproven that, so your religion that was written down 4 thousand years ago was written by people who really didn’t know very much. Maybe it is correct about some stuff, but obviously not that.
A lot of the stuff that disillusions people and makes them leave was stuff I was taught was just that person’s uneducated opinion and that God doesn’t correct people when those people are so arrogant as to *know* they are right. But you don’t look down on people for their uneducated opinion because you have your own uneducated opinions.
“…do you still have personal beliefs?”
I hope so. I hope everyone has personal beliefs. To hold only to “objective” truth and to deny everything else that cannot be “proven” seems an anemic way to approach life.
Is it fair to say that an approach of purposefully rejecting all personal truth is, in itself, a personal truth?
Here’s an unsophisticated yet authentic way I look at the world: my personal truth is what I observe through life’s experiences and my own thoughts and feelings. My hope is that my personal truth doesn’t conflict with scientific truth but most people probably feel this away about their own beliefs. Like they say, members of a cult never think they are in a cult even though they know about cults.
I contrast this to beliefs centered on politics and religion. Even those these beliefs are among the most strongly held beliefs we can have, they are often more correlated to what we WANT to be true than what is really true. In other words, politics and religion is often about what others in a group want us to believe as opposed to what we really believe deep down inside. And that is why I can no religious or party affiliation.
PS: that’s not to say that there is no good in any religion or political idea…I just don’t want to affiliate with any of it because it fails the BS test more often than not.
I suppose the main challenge most of us face is that we are quite good at presenting what may be subjective truth as objective truth to ourselves.
While it might be easy for me to recognize that my belief that dark chocolate tastes better than milk chocolate is a personal truth, I can still try to marshall scientific evidence for that truth. There is probably little consequence for conflating objective vs personal (subjective) here, but what about when we are talking about the role of government or the morality of particular sexual relationships? Don’t most of us begin to marshall arguments for our personal point of view and then begin to tell ourselves that our personal truth is in fact objective truth?
With Mormons this conflation can go further, because many church leaders teach that feeling good about something is in fact empirical proof that it is correct.
So I suspect it may be easier for us to recognize when someone else is conflating personal truth with objective truth, than to recognize when we ourselves do this.
I’ve struggled with this in my life. I love what Neil deGrasse Tyson says about personal and objective truths. It is not necessary to be an atheist in order to be a scientist or seeker-of-knowledge of any sort, but you have to be willing to set your personal truths aside. I am a Christian, if admittedly an inconsistently practicing one, but know that “because God made it that way” is not a satisfying answer to any mystery with a true, verifiable solution. My parents used that response for all my grammar-school questions like “why is the sky blue?” or “. . .the grass green?” I realize that children can be irritating at times (and that was doubly true for me, I think, because I had a lot of questions), but I knew then that such answers were lazy and, possibly, wrong. I tried out atheism for a short while, but came back around, although my concept of God is a kinder, gentler version of the one sold by my parents. But that’s my personal truth.
I agree with everything in the OP. I am particularly interested in the denigration of others who don’t believe the right way. The original post mentioned the Nazis who persecuted others who did not accept their personal truths over scientific truth.
A big problem with relying (and demanding reliance by others) on objective truth is who gets to define that truth. Really, what most people call scientific or objective truth are conclusions drawn from data, and really only the data is the truth. Any conclusions require human thought, and that is where the problem can enter. In our country, the ruling class, led by Dr Fauci, recently denigrated others who didn’t believe the right (meaning approved) way.
A few years ago, the scientific truth was that COVID-19 100% originated naturally in a wet market, but absolutely not from a laboratory in Wuhan. To proffer that the virus might have had a human origination was taboo, and people (including scientists) making such a proffer were quickly labelled conspiracy theorists, people with tin foil hats. Today, it is becoming more clear that gain of function research was happening in that lab, it was funded with American dollars, and COVID likely came from there. Before people throw too many stones at me, I am vaccinated and boosted. I believed Dr Fauci at the time, but what he presented as truth for a few years in and after 2020 may not have been the truth.
Objective truth v. personal truth: yes, they can conflict. And tend to follow the science. But I also know that science–or conclusions people draw from data–isn’t absolutely right all the time. Scientific truth changes, and scientific truth is sometimes motivated by personal desires (denying to Congress that congressionally appropriated funds had been used to support gain of function research at the Wuhan lab). Margaret Sanger and Science enthusiastically supported eugenics, even in this country. Fortunately Germany went farther than we did, and we backed off. But the voices supporting eugenics, extermination, sterilization, and the like were very often scientists spouting what they called objective truth.
One person might put A, B, and C together and come to a certain conclusion, and another person can look at the same A, B, and C and come to a different conclusion. What is objective truth? It depends on the viewer’s point of view, does it not?
Chocolate is quite complex, and varies considerably according to manufacture. One of the simpler discussions here:
https://www.princeton.edu/~stonelab/Publications/pdfs/From%20Howard/RowatRosenbergHollarStoneChocolateHolidayLecture_JCE_2011.pdf
I will state that I much prefer British or European chocolate to US chocolate, because we don’t have butyric acid (vomit flavour) in ours. 😄
For me, I’ve found it’s important to separate the truth from explanations about what the truth means, why it exists, etc. I’ve learned to do this often with the church. To use your example, the truth is that there is no evidence of the societies in the Book of Mormon. The common explanations might be “we just haven’t found it yet but those people existed” (faithful) or “we haven’t found evidence of them because they never existed” (non-believing).
The trick is that I did, and still do, often confuse explanations for truth. And, honestly, it’s something I’m still untangling in a lot of my feelings and views on the world. Does believing an explanation about the truth make that a personal truth? I really don’t know. It feels more like a personal opinion or belief than a personal truth.
So to answer your question, do I have any personal truths? I have a lot of personal feelings about personal experiences I’ve had and I have a lot of personal feelings about objective facts I’ve learned, but I think I’m leery about calling those personal feelings truth. I do have beliefs about what those mean, but trying to identify the boundaries between beliefs and facts, beliefs and truth, and beliefs and knowledge is an ongoing learning process.
Believing that I can reject your personal truth as your opinion is not my personal truth. It is my opinion. Scientific *conclusions* are not objective truth. It is the scientists educated opinion based on his data. Only the data is objective truth. All else is opinion. Is it true that scientists like to proclaim their *opinion* as truth, when it is their opinion based on their observations and research. Oh, yeah. The trouble 99% of you run into is that you can’t tell the difference between somebody’s opinion and truth. Scientist publish their opinion. I don’t accept their opinion as fact until 99% of scientists say the same thing. Then I still hold out that maybe they all have the same misunderstanding. Always, always hold open the option that further evidence might prove you wrong. That is the real scientific opinion.
Sure, you can call me cynical and untrusting, but until you show me facts, it is just your opinion. I may join you in your opinion, but I still won’t call it the truth because truth exists outside of human beings. I guess I don’t believe there is personal truth at all, but that is just my opinion and I know it may not be the truth.
Sure, I believe in God, and I believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and I believe that Joseph Smith was correct in teaching that the earth is a living thing with a spirit, and that we have a Mother God. But I accept all that as my opinion and think to myself that anyone who says they *know* it is truth is an arrogant swear word because they elevate their opinion into objective truth. It takes real humility to have the opinion that you don’t know a damned thing. And one thing my parents were right about is that I don’t know a damned thing. But you don’t either. It is all subject to change if we get better evidence. I only have opinions. You only have lots of opinions. I mean, I LIKE my opinions as much as the next person. Maybe more when it comes to Trump. OK, about Trump, my opinion is True and if you disagree you’re delusional. (Kidding)
I’ve come to understand that, as humans, what we believe has little to do with what we observe about reality and far more to do with what is socially advantageous to believe. Biologically speaking, we are all still early humans whose minds are fit for traveling with a small group of hunter gatherers. And the best way to survive is to not believe things that will get you kicked out to face the cold and the saber toothed cats alone.
Obviously our situation is very different today, but we still have to manage that social pressure. I don’t know if I would have ever had the courage to leave the church if I didn’t find people on the Internet who had already navigated it. That bothers me, but it’s human nature.
So, when it comes to parsing out personal vs objective truth, I think it’s good to ask one’s self, “What would be the social consequences for me if I accepted or rejected this idea?” Our subconscious calculates this all the time, but we have to be deliberate in our awareness of it.
There’s a song by Rachel Platten that says truth is what you believe in. That’s the best summary of where I’ve landed. When I took quantum physics classes at university my mind was blown. In the subatomic level merely observing changes outcomes, position is a probability function, etc.
Yet I’ve not performed all the experiments that prove quantum theory. I’ve learned only some of the math so in a sense I’m “trusting” science in a way not unlike how I trusted my religion teachers. I used to trust that JS saw God even though I haven’t and I trust that science is right about the strong force even though that math is way above me. “My parents and teachers told me” has been replaced by “my professors and math told me.” And because 200 ton airplanes fly.
My belief is that many scientific “theories” are “facts.” Evolution is a fact. Germ theory effectively explains transmission of disease. Opportunity cost is unavoidable. There may be questions on the margins but science explains the world better than religion. And the irony is … I can’t prove that I’m not a brain in a jar like in the Matrix. Truth does seem to be what I believe.
“Speak your truth” is an axiom that I often hear and it reminds me of the concept of personal truth in the OP. I don’t believe in personal truth or individuals’ abilities to have truths that exist outside what is actually true. Human minds are capable of experiencing delusion, denial, hallucination, and episodes of schizophrenia. Unfortunately human brains are easy to trick and fool. Sometimes people trick themselves. Other times clever grifters and liars play on people’s gullibility and pull the wool over their eyes. Sometimes individuals wrap their heads around some extraordinary belief or sense of some experience and never let go. Yet truth is not something you feel, and it is not whatever you individually believe it to be. Individuals often say things to be true that simply lack evidence or are just plain wrong. Truth can be discovered through reason, evidence, experimentation, and discussion. It can be discovered through the words and writing of experts who have arrived at their positions through rigorous scientific thinking. Unfortunately understanding truth takes a lot of time and effort but it is always worth our time.
One more thing on arguments that equate religion with science. Answer this: in the last 150 years what exactly has been discovered through science that has revolutionized the world? Now ask the same question of religion. What has science been able to demonstrate through empirical proof (such as the airplane or mass-production, experiments that can be shown over and over)? Now ask the same of religion. Religion and science are drastically different. They are not comparable in the least.
“Well, science is always changing…” Actually science over the last 150 years mostly hasn’t changed. More has been discovered, sure. More evidence has emerged that has enhanced our understanding of reality, sure. And the beauty of science is that it’s open to new evidence and willing to make adjustments where needed. But since it was discovered that microbes cause disease, we’ve never gone back. Since it was discovered that atoms are the building blocks of all matter, we’ve never gone back.
Oh man, I love this topic. Personally, I think objective truth is a myth (even in science). People often point to gravity as something that is “objectively true” because objects fall whether you believe in gravity or not. But, it turns out, Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity is NOT true. His assumptions behind it are all wrong, and Einstein’s theory of relativity proved that it’s wrong (Gravity is is actually object warping the fabric of spacetime, rather than a force that objects exert on one another). Newton’s calculations are demonstrably not true when looking at Mercury’s orbit and how gravity affects light. We also know that Einstein’s theory of relativity is NOT true either. It doesn’t jive with what we know about quantum mechanics, so we know that it can’t be the way the world/universe actually works.
One reaction to this could be to say “What?! The scientists are lying to me?! I’m done with science and I’m not listening to science anymore!” I don’t recommend this approach. Even if we don’t have a complete understanding (or objective truth), these approximations get us closer to the truth and can be really useful. I mean, we got to the moon using Newton’s calculations.
When it comes to religion, I think it’s safe to say that we don’t have “objective truth”. I think that our understanding of God, faith, moral principles, ect… are not objectively true. Many things in religion are demonstrably not true. One reaction to this could be to say, “What?! Church leaders are lying to me?! I’m done with religion and I’m not listening to religion anymore!” I don’t recommend this approach. Even if what we’re taught about God, faith, moral principles ect… isn’t objectively true, I think that many of the teachings found in religions may still be useful. I think that moral living leads to good outcomes. Religions give many people a useful model of moral living, even if some of the assumptions are incorrect.
I don’t believe that you HAVE TO follow any particular model, because all of the models we have are all flawed. You are also free to create your own model (I essentially did that for myself, using the principles found in all of the world’s religions). For me, before I abandoned my model, I sought to replace it with one that works equally well or better. You might call these “my personal beliefs”. I’d agree that my beliefs are not objectively true, but they are useful for me.
Brad:
“In the last 150 years what exactly has been discovered through science that has revolutionized the world? Now ask the same question of religion.”
The gift of science has certainly transformed the world in positive ways. It has also made world wars possible. And so, science alone can’t fix everything. It doesn’t deal with moral questions–only facts having to do with the natural world. This where religion can be useful–in helping us to find purpose and meaning in our existence. Something that goes beyond an “atoms all the way down” explanation.
It seems like personal truths are things like our worldview, which is usually a set of unquestioned assumptions that we can’t even remember a time we didn’t believe them. But they are just lenses to understand the world, not Truths per se.
Georgis’ comment, aside from being a strawman argument, isn’t really about personal truths vs objective truths. There were doubtless some journalists whose values led them to downplay the possible lab origins of the pandemic, thinking it would whip up racist fervor (which was already high). But even now we don’t know the origin. Scientists, as I recall, didn’t have a definitive answer and still don’t. It could have come from the lab. It could have come from the wet market. There are examples of viruses coming from both those sources.
To me, facts require proof or something to be disproven. Even if there is strong evidence of something or experts agree, new evidence could alter how we understand things later.
I’m firmly in “there are objective truths” category. For instance, there is only one bed in my bedroom; I am currently wearing socks, etc. Look, I know I could be in a Matrix, etc, but that changes nothing about how I operate or live my life. If someone were to look at me right now and sincerely (not just for theorretcical fun) argue otherwise, I would question their logic and decision making on any issue.
It’s like discussions of determinism or deconstructionalism. Whether we have agency or if words can ‘mean’ anything is besides the point (though I find the discussions fascinating and even helpful at times), because we all function like we can choose and words do have meanings. Now, whether blah, blah, large issue is true is usually complicated. I think most people believe in some objective truths. That’s why we do anything at all.
Too many (most) people, unfortunately don’t question much of what they do or why it. And too many people (thankfully fewer and fewer these days) don’t question things in the name of some religion or another. And thankfully more and more people (still too few) are learning that learning through the scientific process can help them make better, informed decisions.
The world is beuatiful and wide. Don’t let anything tell you otherwise.
Georgis,
“the scientific truth was that COVID-19 100% originated naturally in a wet market, but absolutely not from a laboratory in Wuhan. To proffer that the virus might have had a human origination was taboo, and people (including scientists) making such a proffer were quickly labelled conspiracy theorists, people with tin foil hats. Today, it is becoming more clear that gain of function research was happening in that lab, it was funded with American dollars, and COVID likely came from there”
It was never a “scientific truth,” but an educated hypothesis based on observations about the origins of other viruses, at least at the time that COVID emerged. Additional research over the past four years has routinely upheld the zoological origins of COVID, and the most recent evidence shows that raccoon dogs sold at the Wuhan wet market were likely intermediaries in the spread of COVID. The fact is that increased human contact with wildlife is dangerous in the emergence of new viruses and long has been. AIDS likely came from the human slaughter of chimpanzees in Africa. It is possible that COVID leaked from a laboratory, but the evidence for that is weak, and this is admitted by the government agencies that have supported such an idea. Additionally the idea of a lab leak and zoological origins are not mutually exclusive. It could be that researchers found a virus in the wet market and took it to the lab for further research from where it got out. Gain of function research is a necessity to fight the spread different virus strains, such as new flu viruses or worse viruses, so that we can stem their spread through vaccination programs. Science saved tens of millions of lives because of COVID interventions of mass masking, social distancing, and vaccines. That’s an incontrovertible fact. Another fact is that disinformation abounded during COVID and it was necessary to shut it down on social media platforms to save lives using the best knowledge we had. Lots of mistakes were made, but that’s because there was such a much needed rush to produce information and develop interventionist policies to save lives. Thank goodness for public health. They were amazing during COVID. Fauci was amazing, and one of the heroes of COVID. Yet at the same time, about any other epidemiologist who took the job that Fauci had would have said about the same things that he did. The logic in your comment misses the forest for the trees, throws the baby out with the bathwater, and shows an outdated viewpoint that doesn’t take into consideration the latest science.
Jack, you didn’t show what contributions religion has made in the past 150 years that even come close to what science has contributed.
Brad:
“Jack, you didn’t show what contributions religion has made in the past 150 years that even come close to what science has contributed.”
To answer your question more directly–I’d say providing the gift of the Holy Ghost and the necessary powers to ascend into the eternal presence are worth more than all the technology in the world. But even so, I don’t view our increase in scientific knowledge as having no basis in religion. IMO, the explosion we’ve seen in that kind of knowledge is a result of the overall knowledge that the Lord is pouring out upon us in preparation for his coming.
Here’s my question: when we consider that the vast majority of humanity has lived as paupers and peasants or servants and slaves–would belief in an afterlife have been helpful to those people? If so, should the advent of modern science replace that hope? In my opinion–no. When our wealth and superior technology replace the hope of an afterlife–then they become a distractions.
Religious belief–personal belief–has to reconcile itself with scientific truths–objective truth–at some point, or the cognitive dissonance will push personal belief to painfully accept objective truth, or cause the person to become disassociated with reality.
Today, for example, you do not hear sermons in isolation on the power of the priesthood to heal disease. You hear church leaders recommend that the sick seek medical help–I recall this is quite explicit in the general handbook of instructions. This is a change over the past century because over that time, hospitals (and medicine) have gone from being a place people went to die to a place where people go to be healed. Modern medicine is far more effective at curing aliments than priesthood blessings are, regardless of the faith. When I was a boy, I heard over and over about the efficaciousness of priesthood blessings to heal, contingent upon the faith of the sick and the person offering the blessing–I don’t hear this instruction in today’s church. Why? Modern medicine is more effective at curing ailments because of its science based, objective truth.
In the 1980s, the church viewed same sex attraction as a sin and the simple admission of being gay was grounds for excommunication, whether the member had acted on their attraction or not. William Bradford, the brilliant BYU biology professor, Harvard College graduate, successful mission president and father of a gay son, demonstrated objectively that being gay was not a choice, but was very likely genetically determined. His science-based arguments, along with others, were persuasive enough that the church changed its views on being gay; the church abandoned its religious belief in favor of objective truth. Instead of viewing being gay as a perversion, as Spencer Kimball and Mark E. Peterson did during their years of gay member inquisitions, the church views it instead as a matter of biological determination.
Religion may lag in its embrace of objective truth, but if it doesn’t at some point accept objective truth, it risks becoming irrelevant to the lives of its adherents.
Jack, Jack, Jack, (shaking my head sadly) knowledge of an afterlife was used to KEEP people in positions of serfdom and slavery. To keep the US slaves “happy” in slavery, they were purposely taught Christianity and then told Bible quotes about how Jesus expected them to stay as slaves. Kings in Europe ruled by divine decree and religion was used as an excuse to justify why the poor should be kept starving because God supposedly wanted it that way. So, no, you are dead wrong about faith in an afterlife making their lives better. It made their lives so much worse because their oppressors used it as a weapon against them. Not everyone who professes to believe in Christ is kind and loving. Most of the so called Christians throughout history have used His Name to kill and oppress. Christianity has probably done more damage than good throughout history. Just as today, Moslems justify the murder of family members as “honor” killings and conduct “holy wars” killing and raping as they go, using their religion in horrible ways. Christians have been no better. And what is more, if you get into uncorrelated history of Mormonism we have done no better. If you have any doubts, check out Mormon Meadows as a first stop and the Dannites as a second stop. Please don’t use history as an example unless you have a clue what you are talking about.
Now, give us a real example about how religion makes people’s lives better.
While I agree with much of your comment, Anna, (and I think Jack terribly naive), I don’t think the blanket statements about either Christians or Muslims help your argument (a few qualifiers would help). And while I have moved largely away from organized religion and I find many, many faults with them, there are plenty of good, peace-loving Christians and Muslims. Also, yes, I, too, believe that hope in an afterlife can be a very dangerous concept as it often allows others to mistreat or dismiss those who are suffering and to ignore our effects on the planet. I would definitely consider ‘the afterlife’ a ‘personal truth’ in no way verifiable.
BigSky, to your point about religion eventually embracing scientific truth, I recently heard someone make the point that most Christians only pray for miracles that science can perform on its own. The example they gave was that you never hear anyone praying for limbs to grow back. We pray for pain to go away or surgery to go well or cancer to be quelled but not for limbs to grow back. I guess deep down everyone knows that just doesn’t happen.
Now of course there’s some mental gymnastics you can do to do reconcile that with a belief in an omnipotent god—“God helps those who help themselves” or “God only reveals his power in response to human efforts” or “our faith just isn’t strong enough.” But the same set of facts more easily sets up the conclusion that when miracles do happen, that’s just humans doing good work and giving God the credit.
I did not mean to say that any religion is all bad, only to point out that none of them are what we might consider all good. they can be used for good or to harm others. Just like admitting the existence of the atomic bomb does not say that nuclear power can never be used for good. We do generate electricity from nuclear power and although there have been accidents, they have been less destructive to human life than all the men killed in coal mines and the pollution of burning coal. Most things, religion included can be used for good or harm. Perhaps it should be Jack calling me out on just how destructive science can be. War for example has become much more horrifying with nuclear bombs.
So, to kind of say, sorry to Jack, I will help him out by way of showing that religious ideas have helped make the world better within the last few hundred years. AA is not a religion, or, well it kind of is but doesn’t claim to be. So, anyway, it uses religious concepts of God or a higher power to help alcoholics find the strength to stop drinking. My brother was not finding it helpful until his sponsor called him on his atheism and told him he needed to find a power greater than himself to lean on, or it wouldn’t work. So, my sarcastic brother picked this tree. And his sponsor said he could work with that. This tree became not just symbolic of nature, but a spiritual thing. Like Joseph Smith believed the earth has a soul, this tree was given god like qualities found in Native American and Polynesian religions. My brother the pantheist stopped drinking with the help of this tree. It is still my brother’s religion.
Jack
“Here’s my question: when we consider that the vast majority of humanity has lived as paupers and peasants or servants and slaves–would belief in an afterlife have been helpful to those people?”
This idea has lead to justification for humans to stay their hands and use the possibility of eternal reward as a way to extract money from the neediest.
Your idea of offering people a “Belief” about something we know nothing about is so so so convenient. How about we figure out a way for religion to be what Jesus actually suggested, doing good right here, right now, helping people in their current situation. Jesus said, “On Earth as it is in Heaven”, he was always teaching that, whatever afterlife you hope to have begins right now.
BigSky, just want to correct the name of the BYU professor in case anyone wants to look him up: William Bradshaw
@your food allergy
Thank you for the correction! Yes, William Bradshaw. My apologies.
Anna (and toddsmithson):
“So, no, you are dead wrong about faith in an afterlife making their lives better. It made their lives so much worse because their oppressors used it as a weapon against them.”
There’s no question that religion has been used for evil purposes. Even so, the question I have is: is it better to break up rocks from sun up to sundown for the whole of one’s life with zero hope of getting a second chance at life? Or is it better to have that hope even though some of the purveyors of religion are black hearted?
“Now, give us a real example about how religion makes people’s lives better.”
Study after study shows that people who are active in their religion–on average–are happier and healthier.
Anna, I loved the story of your brother and the tree. He was lucky to have such an open-minded sponsor. I remember sitting under a shagbark hickory years ago on a beautiful fall morning. The nuts were falling from it every few seconds. As they hit the ground, the husks would split open to reveal the creamy-shelled nuts within. It felt magical, and even though the objective side of me understood that it was simply a natural process unfolding before my eyes, I felt a sudden and deep kinship with people past and present who choose to worship trees.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
you may remember that Trump undermined the medical people like Fauchi, by initially playing it down and then offering solutions like drinking bleach or taking Hydroxychloroquine which has now been seen to increase deaths from the virus. Sometimes leaders following their own beliefs, instead of scientific advice has incredibly bad consequences. If America had the same death rate from the virus as Australia, there would be 900,000 Americans more. Those who died from the virus needlessly. And this man is leading in the polls to be leader again?
I think there should be a third section for irrelevant beliefs. Things that don’t affect us and we can’t change anyway. Like Georgis beliefs about the source of the covid.
I have a belief that quality engineering is beautiful and worth seeking. I had a Jaguar period, then a mercedes period, now starting a tesla period. Which may be the last. I have never had a toyota period.
Jack, you seem to be confirming my point that religion and science are significantly different and that religion hasn’t really done much to reveal truth in the past 150 years. Your responses have been essentially, “well, religion makes people happier.” Perhaps. But that seems beyond the point. The original topic was about truth and objective reality. And what humans have revealed about reality through scientific thinking has been leaps and abounds beyond what has been revealed through religious thinking.
Brad D,
I think we’re talking about two different animals. Yes, I believe that all truth can be categorized as Truth with a capital T. But even so, not all truth can be quantified with the tools and methodologies of science. But that’s not to say that those things that are beyond the reach of science are not real or useful. I’m very appreciative of the medical technology that allows my wife to easily track her blood sugar levels through an app on her phone–what a blessing! And so, while I’m grateful for how science has enabled us to better care for the body–I’m even more grateful for how the gospel helps me to understand what the purpose is for our being here in the first place. What we’ve learned through the Hubble Telescope (and now the James Webb) is truly stunning. But even more stunning–to me at least–is the cosmic picture that the gospel presents us.
All of that said–I realize that I’m not talking about what may be categorized as objective truth. Even so, I think both you and I know that truth cannot finally be categorized as useful by determining whether or not it’s objectively verifiable. There’s a whole laundry list of subjective truths that we take for granted on a regular basis–not least of which is love–that science cannot accurately measure. We need to employ other epistemologies in order to know what love is or what good art is or what revelation is.
Oh no, I feel a very long rant coming on.
It’s quite common to hear that religious truths and scientific truths are each in their own domain and therefore complementary rather than contradictory. This idea, termed “non-overlapping magisteria” (or NOMA) by Stephen Jay Gould, seems to work well as an olive branch between religionists and scientists, but that doesn’t mean that it necessarily holds water.
It’s no secret that there are areas of blatant overlap. As mentioned in the OP, the age of the earth is an obvious example, with young earth creationism and scientific consensus in strong opposition. I submit that, in addition to cases in which science definitively rules out religious claims, there are far more cases in which science reduces the plausibility of claims rather than slam-dunking them.
Consider the existence of souls, a subject that Gould said could not be touched by science. I’m no neuroscientist or psychologist, but it seems to me that the correlation between brain states and mental/emotional experience is extremely strong. If you whack me in the head, I may suffer amnesia. Whack me again even harder and you’ll put me in a coma, and no one would question that my mental impairments are caused by damage to my brain. But religion posits that you can restore my memories and my consciousness by whacking me yet again, this time so hard that my brain ceases to function at all. On its face, this seems an unlikely hypothesis, so please don’t try it.
One apologetic workaround is to claim that the brain may be a type of receiver, necessary for us to think and feel in the physical world, but is not the actual source of thoughts and feelings. One problem with this argument is that, if taken seriously, it would cast doubt on all inferences of cause and effect, because anything that seems to be a cause may in fact just be a middleman for the undetectable real cause. It would be like saying that the sun doesn’t produce its own light via nuclear fusion, but rather borrows its light from some other star. (Wait… why does that sound familiar?)
Speaking of which, what does science have to say about God as a physical being living in a different solar system? Science has no problem with that, except when we claim that He can communicate with us interactively in real time. Surely God can overcome the speed of light limitation, right? It sounds simple enough until you try to pin down exactly what that would mean. The nature of spacetime is such that a shared “now” is nonsensical for distantly separated objects.
And speaking of relativity, an immortal physical being is an oxymoron in a relativistic universe. If, on his way to deliver the plates, the resurrected Moroni had passed between two black holes whose event horizons almost touched, so that half of Moroni was in one black hole and his other half in the other, it would be impossible for Moroni’s body to remain intact.
If that scenario seems a little out there, we can instead consider what would happen if Joseph Smith had pulled a Nephi when Moroni first showed him the contents of the stone box. What if Joseph grabbed the sword of Laban and, with a mighty swing, chopped off Moroni’s head? (Pardon the grisly imagery.) Would Moroni’s headless body (or bodyless head) continue to function? Or would the blade simply bounce off of Moroni’s neck?
And speaking of immortal beings, why are they homo sapiens? Our bodies are a result of the environmental pressures and speciation events in our evolutionary history. How does it make sense that God had a body like ours even before any of that evolutionary history took place? And why will we be resurrected with a body that was shaped by evolution for respiration, digestion, blood circulation, temperature regulation, stereoscopic vision of a narrow electromagnetic frequency band, hearing in a certain frequency range at a certain air pressure, mobility and dexterity for hunting and self-protection, gravity of 1 g and the earth’s atmospheric composition?
Oh, and why do heavenly beings descend when they visit us, and ascend when they leave? Where are they coming from and where are they going? To put a ridiculously fine point on it, consider that Moroni initially visited three times, which “occupied the whole of that night”. If we assume conservatively that his visits totaled 6 hours, it follows that 4 hours passed between his first and last ascensions. In that interval, the earth rotated 60 degrees, which means that, given the latitude of Palmyra, the directions of his first and last ascensions differed by about 50 degrees. Where was Moroni headed? Was there a spaceship in geosynchronous orbit overhead?
(And just for good measure, even though it has nothing to do with science, why do celestial beings wear robes? Why not pants, or nothing at all? What is their clothing made of? Are there cotton fields in heaven, or is the material polyester? Are there textile mills and tailors?)
Robert said, “The nature of spacetime is such that a shared “now” is nonsensical for distantly separated objects.”
I am NOT a physicist. I do NOT understand quantum mechanics. But what about quantum entanglement?
I have a habit of listening to books about theoretical physics that I do not understand. As I listen, it often seems to me that the discussions share a lot of characteristics with religious discussions. LOL
I love this, Robert! Thanks!
All legitimate considerations. Do you have education & experience in the sciences? Write science fiction?
What are your insights on time travel?
More than 40 years ago I began a serious search for a truth that is true all the time. Since then I have found 2 capital T Truths that I believe are true all the time.
I arrived at the first in the 1990s. The second, prior to 2008. I have since seen no evidence that either is incorrect.