You cannot prove the truth of a book from its content
You cannot prove the truth of a book from its content because any source of information has a natural instinct to perpetuate its own life.
Any source of information, any natural body and any being has an interest in its own survival. Therefore its natural reaction is to fight to survive.
A story will try to convince the reader that it has such value that it needs to be repeated, needs to be kept, needs to survive. And that is also the interest of the author.
Put this against the background that any structure will naturally resist attempts to change or end its existence. Any structure or organisation will strive to keep intact the structure that gives it power. Therefore, the members of any organisation will defend the power structure, even if the power structure does not benefit them most.
In human nature it possibly rests on the instinct that what I have accepted, I must defend. That is why it is so difficult to convince people to change their views. Once I am part of the structure from where I gain power – how weak it may be – I need to defend that because it is my only call on power.
Couple that with the need for people to belong and you have a structure that will violently resist attempts to change or end its existence – regardless whether it is proved to be untrue.
That is why people kill each other in the name of religion. That is why people give their lives to promote their religion to such an extent that it will allow them to rule other humans. And that is why the bridge resists attempts to demolish it.
People are not really interested in the truth. They are interested in what benefits them. That is why people will only change if the change ensures something substantially better for them.
People don’t work for a better world to make the world better. They work for it to make it better for them to live in. People do not support welfare because they care for the less fortunate, they support welfare because it makes them feel better. People conserve nature not because of Nature’s rights, but because their existence depends on it or because being conservationists personifies what they want to be (not what they are).
People cry when a loved one dies. Is that because of the dead? No, it is because of their own sense of loss. People say they cry because they loved the person who died. That would then make love the most selfish emotion.
You cannot prove the truth of a book from its contents. Proof can only come from an objective source.
An objective source would then be a source which has no interest in the survival or extermination of the book. An objective source would need to be unemotional towards the truth on which it must deliver a verdict.
A logic conclusion would then be that humans are unable to be objective by the mere fact that they are emotional.
How then can the truth be found?
Objective reporting is the personification of what journalism wants its profession to be. It is an unattainable objective because people cannot be objective. The only thing journalists can do is put all the information in the spotlight for their readers to draw their own conclusions.
That means that the truth needs to be found in something that in itself is true. That, I believe, is why people are increasingly turning to science to find their truth. The only problem with that is that science can only be the truth if we know everything. But we know that humankind does not know everything and that scienctists also still look for answers to many questions.
We don’t even know yet what the human brain is capable of evolving into.
How about “belief” as in “religion”. Only problem I have with that is that anything can be true depending on what one believes. If I really, truelly believe, it makes it true for me, but it does not make it objectively true – and trying to prove the truth of the book from its contents does not make it true.
Which brings me to the question: are we asking the right question?
Rather than claiming that we have the truth, should we not acknowledge that we don’t have the truth?
What if we said we are part of humankind who is searching for the truth and that we will increasingly find more of it, that we will probably never have the whole truth because even nature changes all the time and that we will spend our energy to search for the truth rather than kill people because they do not believe in our truth?
Will we then have personal and world peace?
And how do we attain that?
Hi Nic, I read your post about the impossibility of proving the truth of a books content, and I agree. I believe that we as a specie do not know the truth of anything; we say- yes we do, but truth is only that which we know about something in the moment.
Authors should always attempt to state their findings as their opinion or their own truth and not a new world truth.
To gain “truth” is a term one cannot realistically use, we “try” to understand would be a better term. People should look at or read books to help them create a broader perspective on life or about the specific subject they are studying. To create a broader perspective is a form or tool which can help us to strive towards peace, whether we will ever achieve world peace is an open question, and might ultimately depend on the literacy of the world community as a whole, and then that literacy should be of global value and not restricted to the vision of one or more visionaries from a limited group of countries. It should also not be that of all the world leaders, but be an effort from all walks of life, to achieve this would possibly take another couple of milleniums due to the fact that we as human sapiens do not take new ideas easily.
Gladly there are groups around this beautifull blue planet trying to make people more aware of their dependance on all others living here, all we can do is giving such groups all the support they deserve. This blog of yours is one of them, keep up the good work.
Walter.
↓ Quote | Posted November 23, 2009, 12:22