Step Five: Acknowledge Truth as Knowable

This is something I've been doing well recently. However a friend asked me how to respond to people who don't believe in truth. I thought it would be fun to write a Socratic dialogue.

HEAUTAU: You know, there is no such thing as truth.

ALETHES: That's alarming, how sure of this are you?

HEAUTAU: It seems to be the only solution worth accepting, given the state of affairs in the world today.

ALETHES: So you would say that it's true?

HEAUTAU: Ha! That's a very clever response! Of course it's true for me, because I believe it to be true - but what I mean is that truth is relative to the hearer.

ALETHES: I see - so the saying "there is no truth" refers to the idea that truth changes depending on the hearer. I wonder, for which hearers is it not true that humans need water and food to live?

HEAUTAU: Alethes, your vision is nearsighted! I'm not referring to things that science has proven to be true. Of course everyone knows that people need water and food to live. It's things that we don't have access to that lie outside of the realm of knowable truth!

ALETHES: Good Heautau, thank you for explaining this to me. Would you agree that we do not have access to historical events?

HEAUTAU: Certainly, there can be no way to know what has happened.

ALETHES: Yet we live as if we are certain the records are true, in fact the United States of America is a nation separate from England. Slavery is no longer lawful here - woman's suffrage (their right to vote as citizens) is, these things have changed places in the last 150 years.

HEAUTAU: Well Alethes, you understand that we have many independent records of this. There are eyewitness accounts as well as the societal change that accompanied such momentous shifts in culture. We can know these things to be true, or at least be as certain about them as we are certain that we are not all just brains in vats being stimulated electronically. The truth I'm really referring to regards beliefs. Things that can't be proven by science, or recorded in history. Religious beliefs for example.

ALETHES: Heautau, would you agree that many religious beliefs are contradictory?

HEAUTAU: I would, and all are true for their hearers, but none is True with a capital T.

ALETHES: I think you overstep your bounds on this point Heautau. Examine the claims of the Hindu, the Atheist and the Christian. We will limit our investigation to what happens at death. In order, these groups believe in reincarnation, the end of consciousness and an eternal soul. Can you describe a way in which all three can be possible?

HEAUTAU: You have made a good point with your question Alethes. The problem for truth lies in our inability to know which one of these aligns with reality.

ALETHES: But you yourself have already given me the yardstick with which I can measure the claims!

HEAUTAU: When have I done this?

ALETHES: Earlier you mentioned that we can know things are true if they align with our experience or if they can be proven by experimentation. Then you said we can know history is true (or we can at least become reasonably certain) if there are multiple eyewitness accounts and/or a radical cultural shift accompanying some phenomenon.

HEAUTAU: Yes, I suppose we could apply these things to religious belief.

ALETHES: Well, the Christians claim that their worldview is explanatory for all people of all time. The history recorded in their Bible has been verified by outside sources many times over. The biggest question is their claim of the resurrection of Jesus - but this was accompanied by a cultural change unheard of before or since.

HEAUTAU: Your premises are sound, and your reasoning is logical - let us investigate the Bible on these grounds and determine if the Christians "truth" can really extend to all.