“Truth Detour - Road Closed”

“Truth Detour - Road Closed”

Recently while driving there appeared a sign, “Detour Ahead.”  Soon another appeared “Detour Ahead” and then a sign that read, “Road Closed.”  Not being familiar with the area did not help matters.  As you might suppose the road was indeed closed and with such being so, a fair amount of back tracking became necessary.

In the course of seeking genuine reality/truth one travels many roads.  However, what is most disconcerting is to encounter someone who claims a willingness to travel any road necessary but soon erects “Road Closed” signs. 

How can such be so?  It seems that if one is a genuine seeker of ultimate truth, that person would be willing to take any road necessary and then follow that road wherever necessary.  Sadly such is not so!

There are those who fall within the Reverend George McDonald* observation,

“To give truth to him who loves it not is to only give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation.” 

How does one know if they are dealing with one who will seek truth no matter where the road leads and no matter the costs involved?  You can most often identify those who are in such honest pursuit as they exhibit certain qualities.  At this point it must be said that no one possess or is possessed of perfect integrity—all are fallible.

THE ROADBLOCKS TO REALITY

The pseudo-seekers of reality share several qualities, among them are the following.

Dismissive:  To immediately dismiss a potential threat to one’s truth paradigm is often counterproductive.  The person who would seek genuine truth is one who submits all to careful examination no matter the outcome.

Existential superiority:  In a recent interaction a significant body of information was dismissed based upon one’s experience.  The notion of personal experience trumping the veracity of a truth claim is dangerous for reasons that will be explain below.

Explicitness:  Any profitable interchange deals in specific subject matter.  To cast generalities back and forth serves little in the pursuit of truth as both the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins amply demonstrate.

Fair exchange:  There is a great difference between argument and attack.  It is one thing to question the foundation, logic, and conclusion of an argument and it is something else to argue with innuendo, misstatement, projection, and misrepresentation.  Such interactions are nothing other than attack as opposed to sincere quest for truth.

Vulnerability:  Because at times truth is illusive there are those who will take a chance, pass a “Road Closed” sign, travel that new road, think a new thought, come to a new conclusion, be faced by a new finding, and most of all they are willing to challenge and have their conclusions challenged.

THE EXAMINATION OF GENUINE TRUTH

The genuine seekers of reality share several qualities, among them are the following.

Foundation:  Sound conclusions are built upon sound presuppositions.  When one encounters a new truth paradigm, it is well to ask, “What is necessary for such to be true?”  If the foundation is faulty then there is a very strong possibility that the structure of the argument is going to be faulty.

Logical consistency:  If truth is genuine, the pathway to that truth has a certain logical consistency.  In that vein, one is wise to carefully insure that a seeming illogical argument is not dismissed for other than logical fallacy.

The Comparative Measure:  To verify a truth claim, it must be compared to, based upon, and in sync with a known and verifiable truth.  All else is theory until proven otherwise.  This very often is where the one claiming an existential foundation for truth runs into difficulties for such is without connection to verifiable and proven realtiy.

So here is the question.  Passing all of the signs along the roadway to truth, how have your beliefs fared.  Did they stand up to the test or do they need to be re-examined?

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*The Scottish Reverend George MacDonald was an accomplished author, poet, and writer of fantasy literature.  It is said that Lewis Carroll was influenced by his writings and thus wrote the wonderful, “Alice in Wonderland.”  Others fell under his influence to include C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

"The View"

 

Our views are bounded and often restricted by our assumptions, biases, prejudices, convictions, and so much more.  Yet, if just for a moment, we could set aside those things, we might find such understand that it would allow us to see more about truth, reality, and life.

The Perfect Panoramic View

Imagine there is this very beautiful panoramic view, just perfect. The view includes all that you had ever hoped for in such a sight.  From sky and earth and from side to side it was captivating.  If it had a voice it would call to all who came by to stop a while and have a look into me.  Yes, into for one did not look at such a view but into.  

It would call out to all, "See me in the winter snows.  Watch me in the blooming spring.  See what is here in the summer sun.  Come and be mesmerized by the colors of fall." 

 "Look and see me in the flash of lighting as they play across the skies and the finds its way to earth.  Hear the thunder roll and echo through my canyons and valleys. Watch the rains as they play upon me.  See the morning fog as it seeks to hide in my valleys.  Hear the wind as it makes its way through me to you.  Watch as the rain washes and renews me and the sun glistens and shows to you more colors than you thought possible as it reflects and refracts off of a million rain drops."

Not only did it have life, it called to you and gathered your interest into the depths of the view and yet you knew there was more than one could ever see.  More than any paint could capture or photo reflect.  There was a certain enormity if not eternity of sorts as one could never tire of such a picture.

Captured with a Home

As it happens you decide to build a home and in that home a window.  A window placed strategically in such a way so as to invite any and all who entered to enjoy that picture—the interesting and captivating perfect view.  It would be an attempt for such a view could never be captured by a window no matter how grand. 

It would be a home but more importantly a place of refuge, a place of peace, a place where one would marvel at both the place of peace and the ever deepening panorama that stretched into what seemed to be the eternal distance.  Panorama?  Yes, but more properly panoramas as the wonderment of the scene was that as it drew one ever deeper into its beauty, there seemed to be more to see and such seeing brought seeking.

The Home is Built

So it is that you engage a contractor.  He sends over his architect who begins his work by asking you question after question.  Then he asks what restrictions you might have for the plans he is about to draw.  You add several and it is then the architect goes, he stops and views the site, and then does his work.

The contractor then has the builders come and do their work.  The landscape folks do their work according to the site plan.  Then of course the interior designer comes and does his work.  The list goes on and on of the people who come and work on the project.

The Unveiling Day

Then comes the big day, the day for which you had planned and waited—the unveiling day.  You arrive at your new home and from the moment you arrive you can see it is picture perfect.  Everything as you imagined it would be. You are some kind of excited.   From the moment you step onto the property there is a prevailing sense of peace and joy.

You take time looking at the landscaping all so perfect.  First you look around one side of the house and then the other and yes there is the view.  You anticipate seeing its magic, its majestic beauty from your home, a home that would welcome all who cared to stop by. A place of refreshing and reflection as one seeing the view could not help but reflect upon it.

Meanwhile the look of the flowers, the walkways, the house, are all so picture perfect.  It is like it is a cool drink for the parched soul. The character, the ambiance of the site, the way the home is situated on the site, the outside architecture is just perfect, just as you had many times imagined that it would be.

Present that day are all of the people who had a part in the project--project, what project.  It was a dream, yes a magnificent dream.  They are there waiting for you to enter your perfect home.  How excited they are for you to enter and to explore all of the rooms, nooks, crannies, etc.   Most of all you are excited to see the view that made all of this important even possible.

The Entrance

Then it is time to go into your home and to the view that was so important to the project.  The contractor with a hug smile opens the front door and says something like, “Welcome to your new….”  His words are lost to your shock.  You hear yourself gasp.  You stammer out, "Wha... wha… what happened to the view, what happened to the big beautiful picture window?  Where is it?  Something is wrong? This cannot be, it is impossible.”

The contractor nods at the architect who with great sensitivity approaches you and kindly explains. Do you remember that when we visited, you placed assumptions and restrictions on what I could and could not incorporate into the design?  Well following your words meant that the window you see before you is all I could give you.  Not only was the window much less than I wanted it to be and much less than it could have been but the view beyond is restricted, distorted, and not the view for which you had hoped.

The Offer

The architect continued.  If you would be willing to give up your restrictions and free me to redraw the plans and the builder to rebuild, then you will have your window.  You will have all for which you had hoped and more.  This is the offer I can make to you but, it all depends upon whether you are willing to give up your assumptions, biases, prejudices, convictions, etc.  So here is the offer, you have to decide. 

For the One who would seek Realty…

So it is with our views of truth and reality.  When our views are boxed in by our assumptions, biases, hard heartedness, prejudices, and druthers, it limits our view.  Said another way these are the things that block our views of many realities including that of God.

Ephesians 4:17-19 17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. NASU

"Truth--Assumption, Presuppostion, and Frame of Reference"

Puzzle Instructions.  Without making an "X" in the following diagram, draw two perfectly strait lines, two dots per line which at some point intersect.  Can you do it?   Here is the diagram.

 

FRAME OF REFERENCE 

 

Though from the world of physics, frame of reference has become employed in other application not the least of which is in the study of truth (alethology). It most often has to do with what one presupposes or one one's assumptions.  That is to say that what one assumes to be true has great power in the life of the individual for such is necessary for in order for one to arrive at some conclusion or another.

When in a disagreement, be it major or minor, most often the difference is in the divergent assumptions.  Therefore, one might safely conclude,

"It's all in the presuppositions!"

Since such is so, it is incumbent upon each of us to make a thorough examination of one's frame of reference.  Such is necessary for one to ascertain the genuineness or we might say the legitimacy of one's reality (truth).  A failure to do so will leave one afloat in the world of theoretical speculation.

So then we might conclude that it is all in the assumptions that one takes to be true.  It is presupposed assumptions that provide the capstone that holds one's truth paradigm together and consistent within itself.  If the capstone fails or is proven faulty then like an arch with a failed capstone, the truth structure then falls apart.

There is nothing more unfortunate than one who holds a faulty truth paradigm because they are unwilling to have their assumptions tested.  An example is found in the likes of the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins who were and are unwilling to debate the issue of evolutionary theory with other scientists some of whom are not even creationists but see form and order in nature.

Open or Closed System

For almost all of recorded history there has been an assumption of an open system in which God or gods had a part in one's truth paradigm.  Such a paradigm allows for the intervention of God or gods.  In Western thought it was most often Judeo-Christian while in other places it might be a pantheon of gods, some other notion of a deity, or even ancestor worship.

Even such practices as magic (not to be confused with slight of hand magic), shamanism, etc. were only possible because the practitioners and followers accepted open system theory.  However, man was to "progress" beyond open system, after all such gave room for there to be the divine and the divine sometimes is just inconvenient!

Then with the Enlightenment came rationalism and such discounted outside influence.  Left with a closed system then those who assumed this position sought to explain all of life's processes in a cause-effect modality.  This falls within the context of Western Modernism.  Those who still embraced some form of Deity took the position then that God created and left (Deism).

The difference in the two systems (there are others) was in the assumptions about outside influences.  On the one side were the open system assumptions and on the other the closed system assumptions.  Of course when pushed out to their logical ends the outcomes were truth systems that were ever diverging.

Then to the mix add the assumptions of the Post-modernist who rejects all assumptions that lead to a notion of a consistent truth paradigm.  While the Judeo-Christian position and the Modernist position at least hold that there is truth of some sort, the Post-modernist mantra goes something like, "Who says so and what do they know?"

 

Contributions to Assumptions 

 

As surely as one makes a contribution to a savings account, there are less material goods that contribute to one's assumptions.  What might contribute to such a system of assumptions?  One has noted that contained within one's assumed frame of reference are "...a structure of concepts, values, customs, views, etc...."*  Of course there is a healthy dose of life's experience, upbringing, formal education, informal education, etc. that contribute to one's frame of reference.  

As well one cannot over estimate the power of what the word pondering.  Found in the writings of Moses and others it is a Hebrew word which contains the idea of mentally comparing and contrasting ideas and notions. 

The point of all of this is that in order for us to come to know the truth, that is genuine reality one must enlarge his frame of reference.  Certainly there are limits to such but overall most people struggle with weak or faulty truth paradigms because they are not willing to enlarge their frame of reference.  

Want to have a look at the puzzle again?  When you saw the first rendition of the puzzle what did you assume?  Did it have anything to do with the box around the dots?  If you are like most people you made the assumption that the lines had to stay within the box which was never in the instructions.  So then what effect did adding a larger box have on your view of the puzzle?

Assumption's Contribution

 

Think then about the contribution which comes of one's assumptions.  Perhaps the greatest contribution is that of leading and guiding one to genuine reality (truth).  Truth, genuine truth is durable and so any testing thereof, inquiry into, challenge, dissecting, etc.of the genuine will leave it unscathed and perfectly intact.

As well valid assumptions provide safety.  It is as one's life experience undergoes scrutiny, that those things then contribute to one's assumptions which then provide a frame of reference for the identification and avoidance of danger.  Such is not always in a physical sense.

Continuing, it is the assumed frame of reference that allow "...an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior."**  So it is as Judeo-Christian Scripture teaches, that which is inside is connected to that which is outside.  So if the inside is filled with faulty assumption that which ends up on the outside (words, attitudes, and actions) will be faulty.

 

Enlarge Your Frame of Reference

 

 The point of all of this is quite simple.  We do well to examine quite carefully what we believe, compare it to other things we know, seek to enlarge our frame of reference, and keep the process going.  Remember this, "Genuine truth is durable and eternal.  It will stand any and all tests." 

However, keep in mind that man in his design and construction was never, ever intended to superintend such processes alone and without regard for the Divine.
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*quoted in part from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/frame+of+reference
**Ibid.