“truth is what the community ultimately settles down.” (Charles Peirce, US)
----In my opinion, truth is NOT what the community ultimately settles down to.
History provides enough evidence to prove my stand.
Many years before the Age of Thinking and the Renaissance, the entire Western world believed that the world was flat. The events that followed in the years to come proved that the world is in fact spherical.
Copernicus… before his time, everyone believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe… this was again proved wrong by Copernicus..
There are countless other examples of generally accepted facts being proved false.
The ultimate truth… AN IMPOSSIBLE GOAL?????
In many cases, it is not possible to find out the actual truth.. for eg, the actual structure of the atom can never be found out… all we can do is make theories that correspond to other established, observable facts… such theories are assumed to be true as they are able to explain the various behaviors of atoms and correspond with other explanations of matters.
An example of this the extremely contentious issue about the existence of God. Although many people have claimed that they have seen God, there is no way we can provide empirical evidence about God’s existence. Some people say that God exists because it is impossible to prove that He does not exist. This is an argument ad-ignorantium.
Herd mentality
To a great extent, what the community collectively believes in is regarded as the truth. No human can exist in isolation, and we generally have the tendency to accept what is generally accepted. We are always influenced by the thoughts of others, especially if a large number of people support the argument. This ‘herd mentality’ often prevents the actual truth from being discovered.
Religion affects millions of people worldwide.. blind beliefs are characteristic of many religions… many religious beliefs are totally devoid of reason…. All the myths are not true.. in the Mahabharata for example, there are stories of people flying during fights etc…
1 comment:
Very interesting attempt. I enjoyed reading your arguments very much.
"Copernicus… before his time, everyone believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe…"
- Everyone? How do you know?
"All the myths are not true.. in the Mahabharata for example, there are stories of people flying during fights etc…"
"the actual structure of the atom can never be found out…'
- Who knows, really? Maybe in another dinmension, another life...
- Well, for WWII, too, there are stories of people flying during fights... ;-)
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