Is there such a thing as objective truth?

[An African Ape]

Greetings, fellow homo sapiens!

I have found that this comes up a lot when talking about the supernatural and the real world. People often say things, like 'there is no one reality', 'there can never be one truth', or 'everything is just a theory'. I find this incredibly frustrating, especially when such claims come from my fellow biology students, which are scientist-to-be - at least some of them. I mean, it might be true that the closest we get to reality are scientific theories, but it is absolutely unpractical to go around and claim that everything is just a 'hypothesis' - at least that's seemingly how they think of the word theory. The principle that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own reality, seems alien to them. I usually try to point out what kind of ridiculous things this would imply, like that the planet you live on is round, but the one I live on is flat, because I, apparently, get to choose my reality. This is rarely helpful, though, because people then accuse me of trying to twist things in my favor, or what not.
Also especially frustrating, when such claims come out of the mouth of apparently non-religious, non-believing people. I mean - why? Are they just trying to bend over backwards just to never offend anyone? What's the point in saying these things?

I'm sure you guys made your own experiences with similar discussions. What do you usually do? Anything successful you can share? Or am I just being to caught up in it and should drop the ball on some individuals entirely?

[Insert name here]

Well objective truth may not even be true in scientific theories, have you ever heard of the phlogiston theory? If not, the theory was that a substance known as phlogiston was lost during chemical reactions such as fire. Scientists drew this conclusion because everything about fire made them think that something was being lost, however contrary to what our sense say, mass is not created or destroyed, so what was considered to be an objective truth was in fact hopelessly wrong. But in regards to what you are saying, yes, it is annoying to encounter people like this. There is an objective way that the universe works, it's just a question of whether or not we will ever figure it out. My responses would be similar to yours, the idea that there is no objective reality outside of human perception and subjective opinion is an extremely human centric way of thinking.

[bobo0100]

Its often used as an attempt to "move the goal posts." Quite often I find myself in conversations with people who are probably listening to, too much Sye Ten Bruggencate, assert things along the line of how do you know there's a wall behind you. As if making reality seem ridiculous made God seem reasonable.

[miniboes]

Its often used as an attempt to "move the goal posts." Quite often I find myself in conversations with people who are probably listening to, too much Sye Ten Bruggencate, assert things along the line of how do you know there's a wall behind you. As if making reality seem ridiculous made God seem reasonable.

I like to think of it like this:
Let's say you're playing a video game. In that video game physics may be way different than in our world, but you can still reason within that world due to the internal consistency. It simply doesn't matter that it is not the 'ultimate' reality; you can still use reason. Our world is internally consistent; science has predictive power, therefore it doesn't really matter for us whether or not we are a brain in a vat.

The argument might have some flaws, but I like it as a way to demonstrate we don't need to be in the ultimate reality to make sense of reality.

[bobo0100]

I agree with you mini, its still annoying.

[brimstoneSalad]

The argument might have some flaws, but I like it as a way to demonstrate we don't need to be in the ultimate reality to make sense of reality.

It's a weak argument, because you can only demonstrate that science is consistent using science, so it becomes circular if somebody doesn't already accept that science is true.

See my decision theory table here for an understanding of the moral argument to accept the objectivity of reality:

https://theveganatheist.com/forum/viewt ... 71&#p11271

[Mateo3112]

I had to do an essay about this excact same topic like a year ago. Interestingly enough, when doing a poll to other students in my classroom, most of them said thruth was subjective, which, to me, sounded like an incredibly stupid idea. But i did consider their hypotesis and i like to think of it like Schroddinger's cat. I'm not gonna get much into it now, if you don't know what Schroddinger's cat is, i suggest you to Google it, it's bascicly a scenario where 2 opposing possibilities happen at the same time (A cat is both dead and alive at the same time). Anyway, i did contemplate their hypotesis, i obviously thougth they were wrong, but still i brought it up on my essay, the point i used against it is that what they were suggesting is that by their logic God exists and doesn't exists at the same time, which is impossible. It was a fairly simple argument i used, and it should have been obvious to everybody, it kinda makes you wonder "Did they really think their point was valid?". For you see: Thruth is always objective, our perception of thruth however, is a whole another story.
Another point i brought up is that an objective thruth HAS to exist in order for us to exist, but whether or not that objective thruth will ever be obtained by us, humans, we might never know.