{"id":716,"date":"2019-07-25T20:30:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T20:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/?p=716"},"modified":"2019-09-09T21:04:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T21:04:38","slug":"truth-now-seems-to-be-stranger-than-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/25\/truth-now-seems-to-be-stranger-than-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth now Seems to be Stranger than Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLife is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not (formerly) dare to conceive the things which are (now) really mere commonplaces of existence\u2026 it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.\u201d
\u2015 Arthur Conan Doyle, <\/strong>The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes<\/a><\/p>

In our recent first podcast<\/a>, we detailed a number of options regarding the source of ultimate truth<\/em>, and we said that- where one ends up is really a function of your starting or \u201cjump-off\u201d point.<\/p>

For example (we said) if you believe that Science is the source of ultimate truth, than your view of Reality must be a form of materialism (everything that is \u201creal\u201d is composed of matter and energy) or naturalism (Nature is all that is real).<\/p>

By the way\u2013now that we\u2019re mentioning it\u2013 let\u2019s nail down some of those terms.<\/p>

epistemology = What is<\/strong> True<\/strong><\/em>?\nontology = What is Real<\/em><\/strong>?<\/pre>Your epistemological position will necessarily determine your ontological one.<\/p>
Let\u2019s say that you think that human reason is a good place to start (kind of like Spock on Star Trek). Then everything you choose to accept as real must be reasonable. <\/em><\/p>
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson (the author of  The Declaration of Independence)<\/em> believed that way about the Bible? He took a razor blade and cut out anything that had to do with the miraculous (Moses parting the Red Sea; Jesus\u2019 virgin birth, etc.) He could not fit miracles into his worldview. His ontological<\/em> viewpoint did not include them as part of what he saw as real.<\/p>
Another worldview that some people have had is called Empiricism. <\/em>That means basing your worldview solely upon your own experience. There was a movie some time back, with Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, called Signs.<\/em> In it, one of the characters talks about his and his brother\u2019s experiences, using that as a frame of reference for his belief in God\u2013something like \u201cGod was there for me before, and I therefore have no problem expecting His help now.\u201d His brother\u2019s experience, however, had led him to believe the opposite.<\/p>
What is your epistemological viewpoint? What is your ontological one? Are you a materialist? A naturalist? A rationalist (like Spock)? An empiricist? Or are you something else? The point is that you have to go from point A to point B to point C, like the Long Island railroad. Not all of the lines lead to Shirley. To get there, you can\u2019t take the line to Stonybrook or Yaphank. You\u2019ve got to take the line to Montauk.<\/p>
What do you think is the source of what is ultimately true? What do you think is real? The two things are connected, and they are connected to our third question as well: How did everything get here? Where did it come from? How did it start?<\/em><\/p><\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cLife is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not (formerly) dare to conceive the things which are (now) really mere commonplaces of existence\u2026 it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.\u201d \u2015 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes … Continue reading “Truth now Seems to be Stranger than Fiction”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,31],"tags":[33,32],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-worldview","tag-education","tag-worldview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkingaccuratelyeducation.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}