Soren wrote on Jul 20
th, 2010 at 8:21pm:
aussiefree2ride wrote on Jul 20
th, 2010 at 10:59am:
Truth is an honest representation of facts.
What is 'honest'?
(just kidding. this is a silly a question as 'what is truth'.)
Not quite true... but anyway... It's asking demonstrates that, like the search for the definition of a Socratic virtue (What is courage), we can't say what it is because it seems we can't know what it is and every attempt to define it will result in a Socratic wild goose chase (because maybe without context, 'truth', (like Socratic virtue), is a meaningless concept)... And yet we would all claim to recognise it - to know it - when we experience it... In context.
Yet despite this generally self-accepted agnosis, in a theistic context, the term is necessarily applied to god, as either a synonym or, more commonly, as an attribute. Despite almost universal self-confessed ignorance as to what truth is in itself, all theisms nevertheless necessarily dictate its definition, which must by necessity be less than what it is or not what it is at all.
If we cannot know what truth is, (nor for that matter what any virtue is in itself) then we cannot know what god is in itself much less ‘know’ what it thinks, feels or desires and the concept of this kind of gnosis is as asinine as knowing what truth is and wants of us.
Yet we could hardly live as if truth (or virtue) does not exist (as for most of us we at least expect to know what truth is when we experience it). We can however, live without a concept of or belief in the existence of god. In that context, the concept of truth/virtue (insofar as we can know it when we see it) is greater than that of ‘god’.