What is an absolute truth claim?

Question

Also, why is the idea of God a problem in this century with absolute truth claims in a pluralistic society

Answer 1

I believe it's a contradiction in terms.

An absolute truth is true. It doesn't make any difference if you believe it, if you like it, if you know it, or even if you're not aware of it. You can argue against it, kill people for believing it, or kick them out of some church, or burn books containing it. It doesn't make any difference. Truth is still true.

A claim is an unsubstantiated assertion. It may be true. It may not.

The idea of God in recent decades is problematic because people are no longer willing to accept what somebody tells them as fact. People 300 or more years ago were generally illiterate. The only information they got was from people who weren't. They had no choice but to trust what they were told as true. Churches were able to force sometimes ridiculous nonsense down the peoples' throats because the people didn't know enough to question it.

Today most people are not illiterate. They get information from a wide variety of sources. They take the information and upon it, base their own opinions.

Churches have promulgated the idea of a deity of some kind for thousands of years. But churches' assertions haven't stood up well to intellectual investigation.

The Earth was created by God, and was the only place in the creation. Come to find out that there are countless other planets out there and it's a mathematical improbability that none of them support life. Furthermore, planets are forming all the time... and solar systems -- even galaxies -- are in the process of destruction all the time.

We'll skip the religious dogma that had the Earth, at first, the back of a turtle, then flat, the the center of the universe.

Man was supposed to be the only intelligent creature on the planet. And science began to define "intelligence" so as to support that claim. But every time science tried to limit intelligence to man, it found some other critter that met the criteria. Besides, have you ever listened to career politicians -- and you still think humans are intelligent?

God used to be "up there." Well, we've looked quite a ways "up there" and we still haven't run across the guy/gal/whatever. Deity's supposed to be everywhere. So why haven't we found at least a trace of it? Therefore, people question the existence of a deity.

So religion has begun an all-out war on science.  Why? Were religion's claims absolutely true, on day, science should uncover proof of that truth. When people don't want you to check their "facts," doesn't that make you question their validity more?

Answer 2

absolute truth does exsist. there are many. you dont have to understand an absolute truth to just know it.

Answer 3

All truths are but half truths, an absolute truth cannot be understood by the finite mind.

Answer 4

By absolute truth, are you talking about axiomatic concepts, or about "justified true beliefs"?

Justified true beliefs are indefeasable, meaning that they are absolutely the content of your knowledge--until new data comes along which properly causes you to change your justification for believing something else as knowledge.

But axiomatic concepts cannot be argued with, because to do so only contradicts the very meaning of the words with which you try to disprove the concept.

"Axioms are usually considered to be propositions identifying a fundamental, self-evident truth. But explicit propositions as such are not primaries: they are made of concepts. The base of man’s knowledge—of all other concepts, all axioms, propositions and thought—consists of axiomatic concepts.

An axiomatic concept is the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced, which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs and explanations rest."

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 73.Ayn Rand

"Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute."

Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual and Atlas Shrugged; Ayn Rand

Answer 5

an 'absolute truth claim'

is an absolute lie,

...is a great fraud

remember that a proposition to be true,

has to be such for anybody for everywhere for anytime.

That said, much much time has to pass

waiting if something somehow destroys that certainty

Answer 6

An absolute truth claim is a fallacy.

See above for part two of your question as well.