Finding Objective Truth

This philosophical topic is inspired by a late-night conversation with my housemate. In this tangent, I touch on religion and my stance on it. I write this post with no bias towards any one religion and I respect an individual’s freedom to practice any religion they feel inclined to believe. I will not dive into my own religious beliefs. As a matter of fact, this post takes a skeptics stance on religion as a whole. For that reason, if it may upset you to interpret these existential thoughts without any religious presumptions you may have, I do not suggest you read this post.

With that said, what is objective truth? By definition, objective truth is absolute. There is no room for interpretation on objective truth, it just is what it is. For example, an objective truth to this post is that it is written in the English language. In that case, what is the objective truth to the universe and our existence? This question is one that I believe mankind has asked since we became self-aware. Perhaps, we were too busy as cavemen worrying about hunting our next meal to think about this question often, just as we are so caught up in our aspirations and careers to think about this question today. But regardless, I believe we have always asked this important question. It is, after all, life’s greatest mystery.

Collectively, humankind has not agreed upon any single objective truth. Sure, many different religions of the world seek to provide an answer to our existence and our purpose, but there are so many vastly different beliefs that I cannot say we have come to any consensus. Therefore, I will generalize our entire species to one entity and claim that we are UNENLIGHTENED. This does not mean we’re stupid, this simply means we have not discovered and proven objective truth.

Commence my allegory. Imagine a vast and dense forest with two locations. One is where humans stand. This location represents the current beliefs humanity hold. This can be represented by a single defined point representing our unenlightened state. This exact location is unimportant, and the only important characteristic of this location is that it is not the same as the second. The second location represents objective truth. This is all of our desired destinations. We ask questions about our existence, study religion, study science, and ponder philosophies, all for the purpose of reaching this destination. The bleak truth however, is that we do not know the exact location of this objective truth. It is not marked by some massive tree or open meadow. Because of this, even if we are standing at this location, we will not be aware of it. Consequently we are destined to search forever. We may get closer and closer to this location, and perhaps some individuals already claim to have reached it, but we will never know with 100% certainty.

Here is the catch. This forest is strewn with a network of trails. Each trail represents one way in which the lost human is trying to find the location of objective truth. Some are straight and easy to travel, others are winding and snakelike, and a few are even incomplete. Here are some of the trails I am aware of.

Religion:

Religion is the direct path. For many religions, objective truth is presented in a straightforward manner and is centered around a deity. There is God and The Bible for Christians/Catholics. There is Allah and The Quran for the Islamic. There is Buddha and The Pali Canon for Buddhists. Each of these examples uses a figurehead and sacred text to convey some kind of objective truth for all that exists. The figurehead is the omnipresent creator whose motives have transcended above a level which mortals can comprehend. The text seeks to justify and convey their story. Because of this, followers of many religions are asked to have unshakeable faith in their respective deities and their sacred texts. The human cannot even begin to think and understand at the level of these deities, so absolute faith is the only way.

Religion is widespread and offers comfort and assurance to the common man. It requires little subjective interpretation and no proving and deductive reasoning, yet confidently answers questions about our purpose an existence.

Philosophy:

Philosophy is the winding road. It has been travelled many times by great philosophers throughout history. There is Plato and his Allegory of the Cave. There is Descartes and his famous quote “I think therefore I am”. Even authors such as Albert Camus have made their mark in existentialist and absurdist philosophies with works such as “The Stranger”. Philosophy is open to interpretation and debate. Great minds have gone back and forth between theories and beliefs, creating many loops and U-turns along the path. Many forks exist in the road where philosophers disagree. In fact the road leads to many branching destinations which philosophers of ages past have decided as their “final choice” of objective truth. It is their best bet as to guesstimating the location of the objective truth.

The path of philosophy is confusing and riddled with uncertainty. Only those with the time and conviction to study and mentally map out all of its existing paths stand a chance at not getting lost. Additionally, those that take this path must be unafraid of veering off course and blazing their own path as they formulate their own original philosophies towards life.

Science:

Science is the incomplete path. Based entirely on empirical evidence, the foundations of this path have been laid down by some of the greatest theoretical physicists of all time. Standing on the shoulders of giants, Isaac Newton laid the groundwork for Newtonian physics. The discovery of the atom changed the entire world’s perspective on matter. Physicists today still continue to crunch numbers in hopes of proving complex ideas like String Theory. Each monumental leap forward in science inches humanity a tiny step forward along this path for objective truth. Each stone laid down on this path is laid down with confidence as it is supported by a combination of more fundamental but equally sound stones. There is no gap in logic, no room for interpretation along this path. When it is discovered to have been laid incorrectly, the incorrect path is completely demolished and the newly believed “correct” path is paved.

Science is the most tedious and frustrating path to take. Progress is slow, and requires countless hours of study and comprehension to make seemingly minor progress. Frankly the path is also incomplete. Science is still a long way from reaching any sort of end-all-be-all verdict. Not all scientific discoveries have been bottom-up justified. Why is the universe made of atoms instead of buttered toast? Such questions sound stupid but are virtually impossible to answer!

A Confident Guess:

Given so many options (there are many more paths to objective truth that I did not mention), which do we choose? Each of these paths seek to find the same location, but if the location is unknown, then why even bother taking any? My best answer is a subjective one: try all of them. There is no rule stating that you can only take one path to objective truth. There are always multiple ways to get to Dairy Queen (as my math teacher would say). Consider all paths and try to find some agreement between them. If you follow 3 different paths on your quest for objective truth and all three lead to the same point, you can be pretty confident that you have found the location of objective truth. However if 4 other paths also lead to a different common destination, perhaps you would be more confident with the latter. Of course, it is never a 100% certainty, but confidence gets my vote.