Love and Truth

[cosmosdan]

@Liberal

Argument by reductio is very simple, and has a long history. You almost certainly do it yourself without realizing it. The technique is to state the opposite of whatever premise you actually accept, and then prove that the restated premise is false. Since a thing cannot be both true and false, proving the opposite to be false proves your original premise to be true.

I see. Thanks.

I agree with you to a point, and I think that Tris (Triskadecamus, not Der Trihs) touched on that as well. But how do you escape the fact that you value children of God (not to mention truth)? It is because of what you value that you act lovingly, certainly not because of what you know or even because of what you believe. The person who values goodness will facilitate it because he treasures goodness. As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”

I think my point is that it is that knowing that allows the love or the value I place to be real and active. Without it I am only attempting to love.

I don’t know what that means. Love is what love is. If a person has been edified, then he has been loved. God can use any instrument to facilitate His goodness, even evil men who lie.

I’m sorry if my explanations are clumsy. We are talking in the spritual sense.
I agree. A bogus preacher may be the catalyst for a real encounter with Christ for someone with a sincere heart. But even though his intent was false his words rang true, and the heart that reached out to God was also true. So the facilitation of goodness that is love has to include the truth.

Truth is a need now? Again, I don’t understand. Definitions are important here, and I wish you would state yours. We can’t just keep responding to each other while “truth” morphs into “everything that is plus everything that isn’t”.

In the same sense that water needs oxygen yes. The facillatation of goodness requires love and truth.
Definition? Truth in the spritual sense is the unchanging quality of reality. The constant. Our perception and understanding changes but spiritual truth does not. That ultimate reality is what the Holy Spirit leads us to and what sets us free.
Now I know in part but then will I know as I am known.

The love is in the edification. That’s what goodness does, the effect it has — it edifies, creates, builds up. Its opposite, evil, demoralizes, destroys, tears down. The opposite of love is not hate, but sin. Love = the facilitation of goodness. Sin = the obstruction of goodness.

Perhaps we might describe truth as the conduit through which love reaches us. Or the vehicle for love. Either way, I maintain that love can only facillatate goodness when partnered with truth. In my example. The living water Christ spoke of is goodbess. Love and truth are hydrogen and oxygen.

At some point, if you give it sufficient thought, you will realize why you defend truth so strongly. And I admire that you do. But you do because you value truth. The driving element is aesthetical, not ethical (and certainly not epistemological).

The driving element may be aesthetical. That doesn’t change my view that both are equally essential. To dumb it down for my own sake. We can easily see love as a noun and a verb. The truth is used as a noun, so it may be hard to see it as something that facilitates, yet I believe in the spiritual sense the noun love and the noun truth as equal elements of the phrase “to love” as in the commandment, “love one another as I have loved you”

[Liberal]

@cosmosdan

I see. Thanks.

You’re welcome. You’re to be commended for asking the questions rather than bristling that someone has used a word you don’t understand. But now that you know what a reductio is, the onus is back upon you. If there is no flaw in my reasoning, and if you value truth as you say, then why do you reject the conclusions?

I think my point is that it is that knowing that allows the love or the value I place to be real and active. Without it I am only attempting to love.

Knowing allows? I strongly disagree. Knowledge is irrelevant. Jesus thanked His Father for revealing Himself to the simple minded and hiding Himself from the learned and wise. The brain is only atoms; it isn’t even real.

I’m sorry if my explanations are clumsy. We are talking in the spritual sense.
I agree. A bogus preacher may be the catalyst for a real encounter with Christ for someone with a sincere heart. But even though his intent was false his words rang true, and the heart that reached out to God was also true. So the facilitation of goodness that is love has to include the truth.

Not only is it sometimes the kindest thing to lie, but often the truth is taken as an insult. For example, I have given Walter indisputable and scholarly citation for my definition of love. If truth moves the hearts of men as you say, why has he not returned to thank me for eradicating his ignorance? If truth is valuable in se (in and of itself), then why is it appropriate to hide or silence it as with the serial rapist, or to sugar coat it as with the ugly woman on the subway?

In the same sense that water needs oxygen yes. The facillatation of goodness requires love and truth.Definition? Truth in the spritual sense is the unchanging quality of reality. The constant. Our perception and understanding changes but spiritual truth does not. That ultimate reality is what the Holy Spirit leads us to and what sets us free.
Now I know in part but then will I know as I am known.

If truth is stagnant, then by definition it has nothing to do with goodness, because goodness edifies. It seems to me that you have too many contradictions to reconcile in order to hold your position while at the same time have pointed out no flaw in mine. That is objectively true, so let me ask you — if it is true, then why do you not change your mind? If truth is so important, why are you maintaining your position?

Perhaps we might describe truth as the conduit through which love reaches us. Or the vehicle for love. Either way, I maintain that love can only facillatate goodness when partnered with truth. In my example. The living water Christ spoke of is goodbess. Love and truth are hydrogen and oxygen.

Maybe love and truth are noble gasses that do not combine! I appreciate your analogy, but we could just as well say that love is itself the conduit through which goodness reaches us by facilitating its flow.

The driving element may be aesthetical. That doesn’t change my view that both are equally essential. To dumb it down for my own sake. We can easily see love as a noun and a verb. The truth is used as a noun, so it may be hard to see it as something that facilitates, yet I believe in the spiritual sense the noun love and the noun truth as equal elements of the phrase “to love” as in the commandment, “love one another as I have loved you”

True is also a verb. You can true a beam to make it level, or true an instrument to calibrate it. But let’s not make the debate into something besides what it is. I do not mean to say that truth is insignificant, but only that without love, it is at best worthless.

[Liberal]

@Der Trihs

1 : I already did. Love is simply an emotion.
2 : It is purely aesthetic; that’s where the phrase “love is blind” comes from.
3 : It is characterized by feeling the emotion of love, and nothing else.

Okay. Then suppose you were hosting a discussion on the emotion love, and I came into it ripping at you for using a term that people might confuse with a tennis score, and accusing you of arguing by intentional deception. Would it be kosher?

[cosmosdan]

@Liberal

You’re welcome. You’re to be commended for asking the questions rather than bristling that someone has used a word you don’t understand. But now that you know what a reductio is, the onus is back upon you. If there is no flaw in my reasoning, and if you value truth as you say, then why do you reject the conclusions?

Um…what’s onus? OKay I’m kidding. I believe I’ve already addressed this. I simply don’t agree that truth, when speaking in the spiritual sense, is simply something known or not known. The known or not known is how we try to express spiritual truth, but it fails to contain it.

Knowing allows? I strongly disagree. Knowledge is irrelevant. Jesus thanked His Father for revealing Himself to the simple minded and hiding Himself from the learned and wise. The brain is only atoms; it isn’t even real.

Again, we’re speaking in the spiritual sense not the intellectual or academic one. I can say I believe that all people are one, but knowing in the spiritual sense is deeper than that. In that way, spiritual knowing is available to all. Illiterate people in Jesus time could be in the presence of Christ and know something about him. A compelling awareness touching their soul that didn’t contain any academic or intellectual weight.

Not only is it sometimes the kindest thing to lie, but often the truth is taken as an insult. For example, I have given Walter indisputable and scholarly citation for my definition of love. If truth moves the hearts of men as you say, why has he not returned to thank me for eradicating his ignorance? If truth is valuable in se (in and of itself), then why is it appropriate to hide or silence it as with the serial rapist, or to sugar coat it as with the ugly woman on the subway?

I strongly disagree here. We have burdened ourselves with social mores and values that have little to do with what we’re talking about. You keep coming back to truth in a factual sense. The goal of spiritual truth is not to honestly tell the physically ugly person that we think they’re ugly, but to see beyond the physical.
I think being truthful is the ultimate act of respect and love. Love and compassion tempers how and when we deliver our perception of the truth.
Jesus told several of the people he healed not to tell who had healed them. Was he telling them to lie? I believe it is spiritual discipline to seek to refine truth and love within ourselves. We learn to be truthful and compassionate with the truth by denying the urge to excuse our dishonesty with social mores and under the guise of love or kindness.
I decline to guess at Walter’s motives.

If truth is stagnant, then by definition it has nothing to do with goodness, because goodness edifies. It seems to me that you have too many contradictions to reconcile in order to hold your position while at the same time have pointed out no flaw in mine. That is objectively true, so let me ask you — if it is true, then why do you not change your mind? If truth is so important, why are you maintaining your position?

Eternal, and stagnant are not the same. Is God stagnant? is Jesus? What I reject from the OP is that when speaking of the spiritual, truth and love can be seperated as you have done. The evidence to me is that whenever you give examples of truth you revert to the nonspiritual, where the truth is merely dry facts or worse yet opinions. The truth may be that your opinion is X {that person is ugly, or whatever} but that opinion is not the truth.

Maybe love and truth are noble gasses that do not combine! I appreciate your analogy, but we could just as well say that love is itself the conduit through which goodness reaches us by facilitating its flow.

We could, but then we wouldn’t be expressing my point of view, which is why I offered those analogies. I didn’t intend them as evidence, since there is none for this discussion.

True is also a verb. You can true a beam to make it level, or true an instrument to calibrate it. But let’s not make the debate into something besides what it is. I do not mean to say that truth is insignificant, but only that without love, it is at best worthless.

I repeat, not when you are speaking in the spiritual sense. In our language we can know facts and we can love hamburgers or certain music. That’s not what we’re talking about. In the spiritual sense love and truth are bound beyond any seperating. Neither will find real spiritual expression without the other.
Obviously you disagree and thats fine. Perhaps we have reached an impasse but first I’d like to ask a question or two.

Since you said earlier Jesus is truth, then how can you justify any love that facillitates goodness without the truth?

Do you believe under certain circumstances the Holy Spirit might move us to lie?
Does the Holy Spirit edify us? Why is it refered to as the Spirit of truth rather than love? Why is it that the truth will set us free rather than love? It appears to me that the truth has a little edifying capability. Does it not?

[Der_Trihs]

@Liberal

Okay. Then suppose you were hosting a discussion on the emotion love, and I came into it ripping at you for using a term that people might confuse with a tennis score, and accusing you of arguing by intentional deception. Would it be kosher?

I’d point out that there is no way the two uses could be confused, and there’d be no point in trying. Tennis isn’t much of an emotional handle. Nice try.

[Liberal]

@Der Trihs

I’d point out that there is no way the two uses could be confused, and there’d be no point in trying. Tennis isn’t much of an emotional handle. Nice try.

I would have thought that there was no way to confuse Christian theology with biological physiology. Yet you found one all the same.

[Liberal]

Cosmosdan

I greatly respect you, my friend. But regretably, we’ve come to the point where I can’t made heads or tails of what you’re saying about truth. What began as a discussion about love and truth, each having a cogent definition, has become a read-and-fire contest about something that is static but not stagnant, something that is real but not known, and something that is not an action but is the ultimate act of love — and it is to be called “truth”. I’m afraid that I lack the mental capacity to keep up. A topic all about truth would no doubt be interesting, since myriad theories of truth abound. But even then, I don’t know whether I could deal with a cameleonic truth that is redefined every time it is used.

I realize that you didn’t intend to do that, and quite likely will protest that you haven’t, and yet that is exactly what you have done. Look back over the discussion, and you will see that truth has changed meanings, by my count, seven times. And some of the meanings contradict. Also, some of the responses are off-point. For example, the protest that the woman is ugly is an opinion and not truth misses the point that the truth is that I hold the opinion that she is ugly. It is that truth that I do not share with her, not because it is or isn’t correct, but because it is not necessary in the conveyance of my love for her. In fact, it is an obstacle.

Now, I understand that you want to separate truth into something spiritual rather than something factual, and I understand why you want to do it based on Jesus being the truth. But it is not helpful for this discussion because — as I’ve explained in some detail — I’m not interested in comparing two metaphysics, but rather I’m interesting in comparing aesthetics with epistemology. I’m interested in whether Monavis was right when he found it necessary to add what he said to what I had said. He defined truth the way he saw fit, and for us to define it some other way and address the question is to argue a straw man. In order to be fair to everyone concerned, the question must remain one of whether an epistemic claim (a basis for knowledge) is essential to an aesthetic claim (a basis for value).

And besides that, you aren’t answering my questions. You have yet to say where the error you perceive in my logic is exactly. You have declined to answer why truth failed to facilitate goodness by changing it into a question about Walter’s motivations. And you have not explained how it is that you value truth while rejecting a sound argument, other than to say that truth is something spiritual — apparently the spirit can be wrong with impunity. And you have failed to explain why love is a commandment, but tell the truth is not. But most of all, you have failed to deal with the glaring irony that if truth did not have value, it would be worthless. That alone means that an aesthetic is necessary for truth to have any significance.

But since you’ve raised the point, Jesus is the truth in a metaphorical sense — just as He is not made of wood with hinges at the hip, He is still the door. And just as He has not been gravelled and paved, He is still the way. And just as He has no yeast infection, He is still the bread of life. But love is not a metaphor. Love is something living. It is the essence of God. It is the vein through which goodness flows to nourish and edify the body of Christ. It is something we are commanded to do.

Before you respond to this post, I ask that you allow it to sink in for a day or two. I have to break off anyway to catch up on some work. But if you feel that you must have the final word, I would ask that you use it either to say something about the OP as it is framed, or else address the unanswered questions enumerated herein. At any rate, thanks for the give and take. I’ve enjoyed our discussion despite my frustration with following it.

[monavis]

I still conclude that if Love is not true, it is not love, but a sham. So love must contain truth in it’s fullest meaning.

Monavis

[Liberal]

@monavis

I still conclude that if Love is not true, it is not love, but a sham. So love must contain truth in it’s fullest meaning.

Monavis

Cool, back to the OP it is!

The logical flaw is in your wiff. You have merely stated a tautology. Let love be X. Then ~X -> ~X. But the moral flaw is even more severe: you have lied. You said that knowing or not knowing the truth does not matter, and yet here you are saying that love must be true to have meaning. If you cannot know the truth, and yet depend on truth for validity, then you don’t know whether anything is true or not including the statement you have made about love and truth.

[Zeriel]

@Der Trihs

1 : I already did. Love is simply an emotion.
2 : It is purely aesthetic; that’s where the phrase “love is blind” comes from.
3 : It is characterized by feeling the emotion of love, and nothing else.

So in this case, what word would you use to define the actions caused by or motivated by love?

So you’re not entirely disagreeing with the definition proposed by the OP–you both agree love is purely aesthetic, the difference is merely in the classification of that aestheic. You seem to be cruising between the horns of the dilemma, so lemme follow up firstly by asking this: is an “emotion” primarily characterized by actions, or by knowledge, or by something else? For example–you say “feeling”, which is more or less a knowledge–it’s something that is in your brain as a data point, not something you DO with that data. If so, there’s the exact starting point of your disagreement with the OP–you don’t consider “love” to require actions, just knowledge.

Now, the next question I have is this–if you go through the OP and replace “love” with “facilitation of goodness, removal of obstacles” as he defined it, do you still have a problem with the argument as given? Then we’ve just hit a terminology problem, which is a regrettably unavoidable feature of language.

[monavis]

@Liberal

Cool, back to the OP it is!

The logical flaw is in your wiff. You have merely stated a tautology. Let love be X. Then ~X -> ~X. But the moral flaw is even more severe: you have lied. You said that knowing or not knowing the truth does not matter, and yet here you are saying that love must be true to have meaning. If you cannot know the truth, and yet depend on truth for validity, then you don’t know whether anything is true or not including the statement you have made about love and truth.

The entire Truth will never be known by any one being and I do not claim to know all truth, but I do know that if something is not true it is false, and and there is nothing that exists outside of truth, it must be true to be real.A lie is a non existent fact.

I did not lie,and you do not know all truth either,so You could be said(In your interpetation) to be telling a lie.

Monavis

[cosmosdan]

@Liberal

Cosmosdan

I greatly respect you, my friend. But regretably, we’ve come to the point where I can’t made heads or tails of what you’re saying about truth.

No harm no foul my freind. I agree we’ve reached the end.

Look back over the discussion, and you will see that truth has changed meanings, by my count, seven times. And some of the meanings contradict.

Not in my view. I simply tried several approaches to explain something intangible. For the sake of language we can accurately describe truth as something known or not known. but since we are talking about truth in theology I don’t think it’s limited to that.

Also, some of the responses are off-point. For example, the protest that the woman is ugly is an opinion and not truth misses the point that the truth is that I hold the opinion that she is ugly. It is that truth that I do not share with her, not because it is or isn’t correct, but because it is not necessary in the conveyance of my love for her. In fact, it is an obstacle.

Honest, I didn’t miss that point but it appears you dismissed, or didn’t get mine.

Now, I understand that you want to separate truth into something spiritual rather than something factual, and I understand why you want to do it based on Jesus being the truth. But it is not helpful for this discussion because — as I’ve explained in some detail — I’m not interested in comparing two metaphysics, but rather I’m interesting in comparing aesthetics with epistemology.

Here’s my biggest objection to your approach. You seem to want to talk of love from the spiritual sense but not truth. It seems an unfair comparison to me and something I’m not interested in.

I’m interested in whether Monavis was right when he found it necessary to add what he said to what I had said. He defined truth the way he saw fit, and for us to define it some other way and address the question is to argue a straw man. In order to be fair to everyone concerned, the question must remain one of whether an epistemic claim (a basis for knowledge) is essential to an aesthetic claim (a basis for value).

That’s your platform but not Monavis. He’s speaking of truth in the spiritual sense as well. You say love facilitates goodness. I completely agree. I’m saying truth is nessecary in that facilitation. Because of that neither is more essential.

And besides that, you aren’t answering my questions. You have yet to say where the error you perceive in my logic is exactly.

Since I don’t agree with your starting point I don’t see any need to examine the logic that follows.

You have declined to answer why truth failed to facilitate goodness by changing it into a question about Walter’s motivations. And you have not explained how it is that you value truth while rejecting a sound argument, other than to say that truth is something spiritual — apparently the spirit can be wrong with impunity.

In both examples here you assume your position to be the truth. I obviously don’t agree. In the same way you said my analogy was empty, your assertion that you must be right doesn’t have much weight with me.

And you have failed to explain why love is a commandment, but tell the truth is not. But most of all, you have failed to deal with the glaring irony that if truth did not have value, it would be worthless. That alone means that an aesthetic is necessary for truth to have any significance.

I gave you the scriptures and you quickly passed over them.
“God is a spirit and those that worship him must do so in spirit and in truth.”
Sounds like a commandment to me. I can say love as an aesthetic is nessecary. I don’t agree it’s more nessecary.

But since you’ve raised the point, Jesus is the truth in a metaphorical sense — just as He is not made of wood with hinges at the hip, He is still the door. And just as He has not been gravelled and paved, He is still the way. And just as He has no yeast infection, He is still the bread of life. But love is not a metaphor. Love is something living. It is the essence of God. It is the vein through which goodness flows to nourish and edify the body of Christ. It is something we are commanded to do.

I get it. But that same Jesus said the truth will set us free. And that the Spirit of truth would lead us into all truth {freedom} You haven’t shown me where Jesus thought love was more important than truth. You’ve said several times there was no commandment ti be truthful. I believe I showed you one and several passages that stress that truth is essential.

Before you respond to this post, I ask that you allow it to sink in for a day or two. I have to break off anyway to catch up on some work. But if you feel that you must have the final word, I would ask that you use it either to say something about the OP as it is framed, or else address the unanswered questions enumerated herein. At any rate, thanks for the give and take. I’ve enjoyed our discussion despite my frustration with following it.

I’ve tried to answer your questions and address the OP. You aren’t satisfied with my answers and seem to think that to honestly address the OP I have to first accept your starting point. I don’t, so I am content to let it drop. Thanks for trhe exchange.

Dan

[Liberal]

@monavis

The entire Truth will never be known by any one being and I do not claim to know all truth, but I do know that if something is not true it is false, and and there is nothing that exists outside of truth, it must be true to be real.A lie is a non existent fact.

Now you’ve waffled back the other way. You know something to be true: “if something is not true it is false” etc… Plus, I disagree with your definition of real. To be real, something must be eternal, necessary, and essential.

I did not lie,and you do not know all truth either,so You could be said(In your interpetation) to be telling a lie.

Yes, but that’s the difference between us. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter whether I’m lying or not. All that matters is your or my edification.

[Liberal]

@Cosmosdan

No harm no foul my freind. I agree we’ve reached the end.

We will go forward without agreement, but certainly not without respect and friendship. For what it may be worth, you have edified me by your example.

[cosmosdan]

@Liberal

We will go forward without agreement, but certainly not without respect and friendship. For what it may be worth, you have edified me by your example.

Thanks for your gracious response.

Just to try and clarify my position further {for myself as well} let me borrow some of your words.

To be real, something must be eternal, necessary, and essential.

IMHO the truth I’m speaking of is eternal, nessecary and essential. When all perception has passed away, every illusion has fallen and we know as we are known, the we experience the truth I’m speaking off.

Peace , may the spirit guide both of us. Dan

[monavis]

@Liberal

Now you’ve waffled back the other way. You know something to be true: “if something is not true it is false” etc… Plus, I disagree with your definition of real. To be real, something must be eternal, necessary, and essential.

Yes, but that’s the difference between us. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter whether I’m lying or not. All that matters is your or my edification.

You have not caught my meaning of Truth, it doesn’t matter if you ,I or anyone knows, believes or excepts the truth it is ever constant and what is not true does not exist in the fullest sense of truth.

There are many things that could be said are not eternal,essential or necessary such as a lot of material things but they exist so it is the truth that they are in existence. A bubble exists for a few seconds, then becomes something else, it is not eternal,nevessary or essential. The reality and truth of the matter are the same. Reality must be what is true.

Monavis

[Liberal]

@monavis

You have not caught my meaning of Truth, it doesn’t matter if you ,I or anyone knows, believes or excepts the truth it is ever constant and what is not true does not exist in the fullest sense of truth.

I think you meant “accepts”, but in any case, I gave exactly that definition of truth, and in fact, I quoted you verbatim. Check the OP. But I’m not sure why you’re stuck on existence. Existence is trivial, and is merely one aspect of essence.

There are many things that could be said are not eternal,essential or necessary such as a lot of material things but they exist so it is the truth that they are in existence. A bubble exists for a few seconds, then becomes something else, it is not eternal,nevessary or essential. The reality and truth of the matter are the same. Reality must be what is true.

But existence and reality are not the same. I think you’ve confused existence as a copula with existence as a state. (And in retrospect, that’s possibly the same thing Cosmosdan did.) The only meaningful interpretation of “God exists” is as a copula that identifies the ontological necessity of God. Whether “God exists” in the same sense that the universe exists — i.e., as a statistical illusion — is not only a trivial question, but a moot one. Existence is an insufficient standard for reality.

[monavis]

@Liberal

I think you meant “accepts”, but in any case, I gave exactly that definition of truth, and in fact, I quoted you verbatim. Check the OP. But I’m not sure why you’re stuck on existence. Existence is trivial, and is merely one aspect of essence.

But existence and reality are not the same. I think you’ve confused existence as a copula with existence as a state. (And in retrospect, that’s possibly the same thing Cosmosdan did.) The only meaningful interpretation of “God exists” is as a copula that identifies the ontological necessity of God. Whether “God exists” in the same sense that the universe exists — i.e., as a statistical illusion — is not only a trivial question, but a moot one. Existence is an insufficient standard for reality.

If reality doesn’t exist; where is it? To be real means to be in existence and is in truth. You seem to like to have a essence of a thing or being without existence and to me if it is the essence of nothing then it couldn’t exist. Your essence of What?

Monavis

[Liberal]

@monavis

If reality doesn’t exist; where is it?

Why does there have to be a where? Are you saying that if the universe did not exist, then neither could God?

To be real means to be in existence and is in truth. You seem to like to have a essence of a thing or being without existence and to me if it is the essence of nothing then it couldn’t exist. Your essence of What?

Nonexistence and nothing are not the same. Existence is merely spatial temporality — space and time — and God is bounded by neither. The only reason we have existence at all is that the essence of goodness (edification) demands it.

[monavis]

@Liberal

Why does there have to be a where? Are you saying that if the universe did not exist, then neither could God?

Nonexistence and nothing are not the same. Existence is merely spatial temporality — space and time — and God is bounded by neither. The only reason we have existence at all is that the essence of goodness (edification) demands it.

It depends on your defination of God, God is not the universe but to me the word God just means what exists.

The dictionary defines real :as being True,not merely ostensible or nominal,actual rather than imaginary etc.

One can believe God is a being there fore in need of a place to exist,If everthing failed to exist then there would be nothing that exised and it is impossible for nothing to exist, because at that point it would become something.

What is non existence,are you saying it is something?

Monavis

I