Friday, December 11, 2009

thought of the day.352

“The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.”

~ Max Born

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Are there multiple truths, then?

john evans said...

No, not multiple truths.

His point is that when one believes they know without a doubt what is right/true they are more capable of evil than the person who holds all truth tentatively.

This is seen in the evil of the Crusades, Inquisition, witch burning, 9/11, etc.

Unknown said...

I see your point.

But then if there aren't multiple truths, that means that there is only one truth, and how are we supposed to figure out what that is if we never believe that we have it?

john evans said...

I would define truth as that which most closely aligns with reality. Reality itself is the ultimate truth but we can only process information taken in by our senses about reality. So there is always room for better information, always room to get closer to truth, to get a better grasp, a fuller grasp.

But the one that says I have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is a dangerous person for one because they are deluded and two because they are not open to any other alternative ideas. If they are convinced that the truth is some god hates homosexuals or this kind of person or that then there is no way to convince him otherwise.

You can have “confidence” that what you believe is true but that is different from a fundamentalist certainty. The best tool I have found is my imaginary scale of probability. I can simply place ideas/propositions along that line from extremely likely true to extremely likely false but I always allow for a tiny bit of wiggle room on each end which keeps me from being 100% certain of anything (though I may be 99.9% sure.) :)