1 – Natural Law = Objective Truth
2 – God’s Law = Absolute Truth
3 – Civil Law = Relative/Subjective Truth
This is the correct order because religion also uses the Scientific Method (Objective Truth), just not very well.
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Yes, you are right. I have struggled with this before too, and this is why I say the need for Absolute Truth to be placed highest, may actually be important to human nature beyond even the scope of whether that truth is “true.”
I have come into this from the scope of what Karl Marx is “trying to do.”
Well, one thing Marx says he wants to do is to “Dethrone God and Destroy Capitalism.”
In other words – he wants to destroy the Absolute Truth.
How come? Because it prevents him from manipulating the subjective truth into overcoming the objective truth. (The world of Orwell’s 1984).
Humans have “the ability” to be blind to the “objective truth” because of how they allow their brains to process “subjective truth.” In other words, humans often get so confused with the subjective/relative truth that they manage to convince themselves that the objective truth does not matter… that’s why there has to be an Absolute Truth above the objective truth.
Take the way constitutions of free countries peg themselves to an Absolute Truth, whereas countries without freedom have no Absolute Truth, but only subjective truth – with the subjective truth creating objective truth.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men…” — United States Declaration of Independence
versus the United Nations “constitution” (a knock off of all totalitarian governments):
“The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State… the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law.” — Article Four of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The “reason” why the Founding Fathers place “rights” in the hands of the Creator is because what God gives only God can take away! In other words, the tendency of mankind to trick himself with the subjective truth into not believing in the objective truth is completely curtailed by placing “rights” out of reach of mankind.
If we ever end up re-writing our constitutions to remove "God" from them, please, oh please, let me get my rights from Santa or the Easter Bunny rather than the state and its subjective laws. I have much more faith that Santa won't come like a thief in the night to take back my rights than I do in the government refraining from curtailing my rights in the future - especially in a democracy.
Whether “God is real” matters not so much as that “God ‘pins’ down the Truth” so that we don’t convince ourselves that what is all about us is not true… the same way we have convinced ourselves of such nonsense as feminism has produced. As far as anyone “objectively” looking at the situation, they would declare we are nuts and should just open ours eyes… and yet, what is happening in society? We are choosing to place the subjective above the objective.
And that is very dangerous!
Now, think about how looooooooooong it takes to create “civilization.” It does not happen overnight. We have been “following the Bible” for approximately 3,300 years. (The Pentateuch was written by Moses, and Moses is thought to be contemporary of 1300BC or so).
During that time-frame, “the Truth” has more or less stayed the same. Humans are prevented, by the existence of an unchanging absolute that trumps all others, from convincing themselves that the subjective truth is higher than the objective truth.
Sooner or later, humans will convince themselves to overlook some sort of “objective truth” in favour of the “subjective truth” and then the “Absolute Truth” will wipe them from the face of the earth… just like Sodom & Gomorrah.
Perhaps it will be that we convince ourselves that refraining from sexual monogamy is silly - that this religion thingy telling us not to hump like monkeys is just that – religious trappings. (Using the subjective truth to convince ourselves of what we wish to be true, rather than what is actually true). And so, everyone throws away their sexual restraint because they believe they are seeing objective truth, and perhaps 40 years later, STD’s start becoming so rampant throughout the population that the fertility rates begin to decline… or perhaps, the “unordering” of the male –> female –> child hierarchy, while it looks to be “objectively smart” in our heads, turns out to be something which repels men and women from eachother, and our birthrates decline below replacement… until we are wiped from the face of the earth.
“SMACK!” says the Absolute Truth.
Start over and don’t make that same mistake again!
How would a civilization manage to “stay on the right path” for thousands of years while always having to battle this human tendency? I suspect that it could not, unless it somehow managed to contain this human tendency… and the best way to do that is to place an Absolute Truth above all others – for those things we know “we need to do” in order to sustain ourselves, but have a tendency to wish weren’t true.
Whether that truth is real or not, is less significant in this purpose, than the need for Truth to exist.
I think it was Voltaire who quipped “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.” (Although, I don’t know if he was referring to my argument… but you get the point).
What Karl Marx believes he can do is change the world into a Utopia by manipulating truth.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways. The point, however, is to change it.” — Karl Marx
He means he is going to take philosophy, and use it to manipulate reality in order that he might change the world. And this is what he does, by using the Relative Truth uber-alles which his predecessor Hegel identified with the Hegelian Dialectic.
1 – Relative Truth
2 – Relative Truth
3 – Relative Truth
(And, as I have pointed out elsewhere, this is the Feminine Principle, and it is also the “animal principle.” Animals live completely from moment to moment – everything is subjective to them – their instincts lead, not their reason).
Karl Marx believes, through use of evolution, that he can “bend the truth” and by “bending reality” he can “evolve mankind into a new form of human” – one that has never existed before.
He believes if he can manipulate reality, he can remove man’s greed and desire to put self first etc. etc. and then a completely new form of mankind will emerge, unencumbered by mankind’s worst traits, and therefore, he will have defeated God because he will have created Heaven on Earth. (Marx wants to make the Lion lie down with the Lamb).
One of the reasons why the Bible is so damaging to Marx’s plans is because it places Truth out of his reach and therefore Marx is severely handicapped in manipulating the truth for his own designs.
And, like I pointed out before, it appears that Marxism and Animal-ness are very closely related in how they process “Truth,” and in fact, Marxism is as old as the Garden of Eden itself.
So, I guess what I mean is, there are two roads here:
One can look at Truth for the purpose of “seeking Truth.”
and
There is also a human need for A truth to exist, in order to “temper” man’s mind, so that he doesn’t behave like a lemming and kill himself with his brain – which sometimes can create realities inside of our heads that don’t really exist (or will unwittingly kill us).
QUOTE: "As long as those above are supporting a specific Absolute Truth, those below (who are willing to accept truth that is independent of evidence) will be prevented from mucking things up, in a specific way.
But when those in charge wish to move in a different direction, all that they have to do is make a few minor modifications, like a farmer changing the fence lines..."
Yes, I know. This is why I quite often look at books like the Bible, and, realizing how incredibly wise it is in regard to understanding human nature, I have concluded that regardless of whether God exists or not, that book knows more about human nature than I, or anyone else around me does… so the Bible ought not to be dismissed lightly.
Also, keep in mind that this is how cultures “grow.”
They start off small, with perhaps a few hundred people hanging around on an internet forum, within a larger culture that perhaps might not even acknowledge they exist. But eventually, if their formula is correct, they will out-succeed the rest by following their form of “Truth” until they overtake the culture.
It appears that all cultures start out small, adhering to one form of truth (Cultural Hegemony), and because they have got “the right kind of formula in their truth” they grow and grow over time, until they overtake the culture.
That seems to be the way it works… rather than a small group of people convincing a large group of people of the error of their ways. Without “one truth,” no Cultural Hegemony can occur, and thus, neither will civilization appear.
QUOTE: "For something to be an actual Absolute Truth, it would need to be pinned to objective reality, in order to be truly “out of reach of mankind” while being directly accessible to all."
I think the exact same thing. Sometimes I say, when we identify a Truth, we have to “pin it to the wall.” (So that some asshole doesn’t come along and try to alter it with subjective truth). But how you can you pin an objective truth to anything unless there is an Absolute to pin it to?
By the way, I have sometimes philosophized if an Absolute Truth can be created outside of the religious realm – with mathematics, for instance. Could mathematics be used as a replacement “pin”?
For example:
If we know that divorce/feminism causes ever falling birth rates, and yet we also know we need X number of babies to move forward… then the maximum tolerance of divorce that society can handle without destructing is X% of marriages ending in divorce.
Can that create a “morality” which humans can follow?
But, then you also start getting into the law of unintended consequences – as in, is it also then “morally proper” to say “this is the maximum amount of old people we can tolerate in society, while still sustaining ourselves… therefore…”
Scary business, when we think we are God.
The Bible knows a lot more than people give it credit for. I suspect it might still surprise us and show us that it still knows more than we do… like how STD’s due to promiscuousness are causing our fertility rates to fall. (It is not just that we are choosing NOT to have children, but also, we are physically having more problems having them… in many cases due to STD’s).
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"People have always spoken of the absolutely necessary [absolutnotwendigen] being, and have taken pains, not so much to understand whether and how a thing of this kind can even be thought, but rather to prove its existence.... if by means of the word unconditioned I dismiss all the conditions that the understanding always requires in order to regard something as necessary, this does not come close to enabling me to understand whether I then still think something through a concept of an unconditionally necessary being, or perhaps think nothing at all through it." -- Immanuel Kant, Critic of Pure Reason
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Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth. ... Thus it is, today, after Kant, an audacious ignorance if here and there, especially among badly informed theologians who like to play philosopher, the task of philosophy is represented as being quite certainly "comprehending the Absolute with the consciousness," somewhat completely in the form "the Absolute is already present, how could it be sought somewhere else?" as Hegel has expressed it. -- Friedrich Nietzche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
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