Darren Bell

George Lippert

Yesterday I introduced a conversation between my friends George and Darren.  I know them from two completely different contexts, but from my recent facebook interactions with them, I noticed that they were very similar in some ways and very different in others.  So I thought I would ask them to answer some questions for me via email, then replay the action here at martyholman.com.  The following is part 2 of that discussion.  You can find part 1 here.

George Lippert (GL):  Intellectually and spiritually stimulating, Darren.

If I understand you correctly (and pardon me if I am boiling down a stew to make a pill), is it a fair summary to say that your perspective is basically that everyone’s truth is true for them but not necessarily true for anyone else? All religions are equal (different paths up the same mountain)? In essence, is it the case that all truths are relative to he/she who believes them, based on the proposition that, to them, those truths order their world, give them clarity, and therefore serve the basic purpose of a belief system?

Darren Bell (DB):  Partly. But mostly I think I’m trying to say something deeper.

To take the mountain analogy and the famous humanist scenario of many people walking up the mountain from different sides all moving towards an ascendancy, the top of the mountain. A friend once told me that that story has the major flaw of all bad philosophy, that it fails to take itself into account and be self-reflective. The story requires a view from the top of the mountain to propose.

When I was thinking about your summary earlier today my first response was “No! I’m claiming there is no mountain at all!” Then I realized that is also claiming a knowledge that I don’t have.

To keep the mountain metaphor going in my view people are walking around in a forest with ~20 yards of visibility. In walking around we meet other people and talk to them about what they have seen walking around. And sometimes you meet people that are walking around that claim that we are all on a mountain, and that some people are going the correct way in the forest and others are going the incorrect way.

I hate the word truth. The sentence “Everyone’s truth is true for them” to me is the whole problem, and it is what most people do. They have experiences, they put those experiences together and then they blanket the world with them and operate like they are true for everyone. I think it is a very subtle difference but it is to me, an important difference in attitude about how you view your ‘own truth’ or ‘own worldview’. And that you DON’T let your personal truth become Truth.

Because Truth is unknowable.

To talk even briefly about the God thing. To know for a fact that God existed using the faculties we have you would have to be able to witness his infinity. Literally, to say God is infinite you have to see his infinity, you have to see or experience his omnipotence everywhere and through all time. Maybe there is a very strong force that operates in my cubicle at work, as far as I know it is omnipotent. But when I go to my co-workers cubicle he is no longer powerful there.

Now I understand that at some point for knowledge to grow you have to extrapolate knowledge from your circle of experiences and make assumptions about the way the rest of the world works. The problem with most of spirituality though is that the experiences people have are GLARINGLY DIFFERENT!! In science when a scientist measures the mass of an electron every other scientist measures the same mass. However when people follow their ‘internal moral compass’ everyone scatters like cats each chasing their own cubicle god and claiming it is God. “Well he is god in my cubicle so he must be God everywhere.” That is bad extrapolation. And the myriad of human experience tells us that is bad extrapolation because there is no consistency of experience between one person and the next.

I don’t have Truth. I have experiences and perspective, and those things can never be wrong, only my interpretations of their meaning can be wrong. Because of that I try to be very careful with my interpretations of there meaning and confine that interpretation into what I believe claims that can be rationally asserted and are also going to be true for the next person that has the same experiences as me. You know . . . more or less.

GL:  Thanks for going into it again, Darren. Obviously I disagree on some major points, but I won’t spend anymore time in this post hashing over it (unless you and Marty wish it). We could go on for volumes, I am sure. I do agree with you vigorously on the futility of seeking Truth through subjective personal cogitations and speculations. I suspect we humans no more contain Truth than lightning bugs contain Lightning (to paraphrase the immortal Twain).

MH:  Actually, I wish it. Would love to hear your answers to his, and maybe another round or two.

GL:  Well, honestly, my answer is just a couple more questions. I really don’t mean for this to be belligerent, so I apologize in advance if this sounds obtuse.  The claim that Truth is unknowable is, in itself, a Truth claim. What is the basis for this Truth claim? Using your previous comments, I’m led to the next few questions.

I appreciate that you use analogies. You describe us as people wandering aimlessly in a foggy wood. We are unable to know the full Truth about this wood because none of us can see the whole of it. I’ll call this the Holistic Quotient.
On the other hand, you compare Truth about spiritual matters (vague and disparate) to the Truth about the mass of an electron (measurable and uniform). I’ll call this the Disparity Quotient, and I think it is a very fair question, one that I consider myself at length.

The Holistic Quotient is one you already addressed by acknowledging that, eventually, one has to make logical assumptions based on the available evidence. Thus, you do not need to measure every electron on earth to determine a logical assumption of its mass. And yet you say that since we cannot experience the absolute totality of God’s alleged omnipotence, said omnipotence cannot be assumed. Why?

The Disparity Quotient is admittedly trickier, methinks. Still, how does disparity of beliefs about spiritual matters deny that there might be one absolute Truth? Many people might disagree about the contents of a mysterious box (think of the classic thought experiment of Schrodinger’s Cat), but that does not imply that there is not one constant truth regarding what actually IS in the box.

To claim that disparity of beliefs means there is no such thing as Truth seems to me like saying that in a world of second graders there would be no such thing as algebra. Mathematical Truths exist even if the second graders have no concept of them (although they themselves may deny it vehemently).

So. All that to say, how do you back up your Truth claim that there is no way of knowing Truth? I believe I know Truth (albeit in a limited form, revealed by God’s revelation through the Bible, and through NO act of wisdom, wit, or worth on my part). Your worldview denies mine. Therefore, I would be curious to know what your basis is for it. Why, in short, am I wrong?

MH:  Feel free to comment your thoughts and opinions.

Last week we had a fascinating discussion that led to a few rabbit trails and intense debating via the comment section of Martyholman.com.  After I posted the blog in question, the guest blogger and I had a great and equally fervent conversation via instant messenger about the topic and worked some things out that needed to be cleared up.

One of the things our guest blogger was a bit annoyed about was the amount of people who took my side of the debate.  This didn’t surprise him however, nor did it surprise me.

You see, people side with who they connect with and are influenced by the most.  If someone pours into their life, and they connect with them, then why should anyone listen to the guy or gal who has done nothing for them, even to the point of ignoring good advice.

About a year ago, my friend Jeff responded to a hilarious blog post by Stuff Christians like.  The author had written a piece that made everyone laugh connecting some of the famous pastors of our day and age with super hero characters.  One of those connections was linking TD Jakes with the Incredible Hulk.

Jeff responded with a light and loving rebuke of this hilarity by finding it interesting that the author would use the only African American pastor in the bunch with the only not white super hero mentioned.  Jeff made it clear that he was not calling the author a racist, but simply said he found it interesting.

You would have thought Jeff was the antichrist as tons of people responded to jeffs thoughts with harsh rebuke after harsh rebuke, including the author himself.

A few things were at work here:  Stuff Christians like has a point, and its rarely to be serious.  It is always a funny blog, and I would encourage you to check it out.  Jeff decided to “hijack” the blog with a comment changing the original purpose of the said post, and the people who read the blog didn’t like that very much.  If you know Jeff, you know he’s a great guy, but not even he could change the purpose of this blog.

Also, this was (if not the first), one of the first times Jeff had commented on this blog, so no one who reads this blog (relatively speaking) has a relationship with Jeff or knows what a great guy he is.

This was the case with last week’s “Hate makes waste”.  The guest blogger changed the whole point of my blog, inferring that it was all about me propogating my philosophy (as if  this is not the case with every blog) rather than it being about conversation.  Now, beautifully and ironically, a lot of conversation came from his thoughts.

Then, many of the people he was addressing through my blog didn’t have a clue who he was, and the ones that did, with only a few exceptions, didn’t consider him any kind of expert in being able to critique me.  (which, by the way, is accurate – he is not)

In the end, the only good thing that came out of it from my end is the conversation we were able to have apart from the blog, and the amount of people who understand what it is my blog is attempting to accomplish.  It is not for the purpose of propogating philosophy, though I wonder if it is possible to write without your influence leaking out of your work?  Even our guest bloggers writings and chatter “shrugged of Atlas” – a philosophy bent on propogating the value of rational selfishness.

I say all this to reiterate the purpose of my blog – to create conversation for the purpose of growing – preferably in love.  And to ask you whose thoughts you are trying to propogate as you comment on my blog?

Basically, who is influencing you right now?