Re: Get Offended

[Jo Francis Byrd <jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com>]

That could start a new new thread...what is truth.

From what I have observed, truth is what we perceive. Have ten people witness the
EXACT same event, ask them about it, and you will get ten different accounts, some
of them VERY different. We see and hear though our sometimes preconceived notions.
Ever hear the saying, "None so blind as those who will not see?"

Years ago, right after she retired from a company where she'd spent 20 years as the
receptionist/telephone operator, my mother began doing volunteer work. One day
while doing her volunteer stint, she answered the phone and her tongue went into
automatic pilot mode: "Good afternoon, <name of company where she'd worked those
20-odd years>." The person on the other end of the phone expected to hear the name
of the charity and heard exactly that. Never noticed the phone had been answered
wrong.

Jo Byrd

"Alan D. Miller" wrote:

> <<First, truth is sometimes inappropriate, because "truth" isn't objective, but
> subjective. Truth is, like all other conclusions, a statement based on
> perception.>>
>
> Parmenedes of Ela (circa 500 BCE) argued exactly the opposite. It was his
> contention that what we perceive is not truth, but truth filtered through our
> perceptions. We can only perceive reality, but there exists an ideal (truth)
> behind reality that we cannot perceive directly; we can only think of it. Some
> 2500 years later modern physics bears this out. We cannot directly perceive the
> structure of the atom, for example; but we can do some experimenting, think about
> it, and figure out the underlying truth of it. (Or at least a truth that explains
> the observed behavior of atoms in our reality.) I conclude from this (your
> conclusions are your own, and may not be truth <G>) that truth _is_ objective.
> Our perceptions of it are subjective and flawed. This does not mean that we
> cannot know truth. It only means that we have to recognize our biases and try to
> think through them to the underlying truth. After all, we did figure out the
> Second Law of Thermodynamics, didn't we?