“The only way to the heaven is through the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe me, that is the gospel truth.” These were the words that a friend had offered to me in one of our religious debates. This idea of truth, the one he represents because of his Christian faith, is flawed. The flaw, however, is not that he believes truth to be an absolute entity, because it is absolute, but it is that he thinks that Christianity is that absolute.
Before I can explain properly the flaw I mentioned above let me first define truth. Truth simply is what is. That is, in the absence of all hindrances of interpretation as a result of socialization, religion, education and all other shapers of realities, truth is what remains, absolute and nonnegotiable. Say that there is a fish tank with a fish in it and there are five people at various points about this fish tank, four of them are looking into the fish tank and seeing the fish and another is backing the fish tank and is not seeing the tank nor the fish. To each of the four persons who are looking into the tank the fish will appear to be at a different point in the water due to the refraction and reflection of light, through the water in the tank, the glass of the tank, and the air, and then of course the actual interpretation of the information collected in their eye and processed in their brains. This is reality to each of them. Not truth, reality. Reality is shaped and developed; truth is absolute. None of these four persons will argue as to the existence of the fish, but they will argue about its location, colour, size, and other things about it. Were they to graphically represent the fish and the tank, taking into account the physical issues of interpretation, such as refraction and reflection, they would each get the same and exact location of the fish (accounting for parallax of course). In a scenario where this happens truth is discovered. As for the person not looking at the tank, there is no fish tank in his reality, and he therefore does not know about it nor the fish. However, because he does not see it or acknowledge it does not mean it does not exist. In his reality there is no concept of the fish in the tank, but the truth is that there is a fish tank.
My friend is like one of the four persons looking into the tank. He lives a Christian reality and has seen the truth, but has not yet realised the inaccuracies that have led to his point of view, in other words he has not had the opportunity to graphically represent the fish and the fish tank.
Examine the real core principles of any major religion in the world from antiquity to present and notice that they are all the same. From the forty-two laws of Ma’at, through the ten commandments of Moses, through the teachings of Buddha and of Jesus, to the modern day laws of countries, they are all basically the same. Even the non-religious believe in the basic core principles of their religious neighbours. Atheist will call these principles, “living right and moral lives.” The perfect being, or highest authority of any religion - God - is the representation, embodiment and source all of these principles. While even an atheist does not accept the existence of God they do not argue about the existence of these principles or that society and life operate much more efficiently when we live by them. These common principles are the fish. The separate religions and atheism are the fish tank, the water, the refraction and reflection, the air and all of the other things that affect how the fish is viewed. The interpretations of this information are the realities that are shaped just as each of the four persons thought the fish to be at a different location.
Truth is without facade, it is not a slave to opinion or influence. Reality is nothing more than a point of view, which means that it can be changed. If it can be shattered of shifted, it is a paradigm, and a paradigm is a reality. You have heard of paradigm shifts and reality checks, but never of a truth shift or a truth check and that is because truth is, as was said earlier, absolute and nonnegotiable.
The truth however is not always what is important or even relevant. The truth is inaccessible a great deal of the time. Reality/perception/interpretation are more important. Ironically, that is the truth about that.
*This is not to say there is a god, or that there isn't. I used the religious theme because the conversation with my friend, at the time of writing this, was fresh in my mind.
