The nature of truth

‘The Nature of Truth’: The word ‘Truth’ is used to cover quite a lot of different meanings. these separate into two broad areas; one is the actual truth of things and events unrelated to human opinion or observation. All events, (These words meaning every thing that happens however large or however small, for example a single electron and everything that it does over all time and everything all humans have ever done individually or collectively), possess their own truth. Humans can only hope to glimpse at a tiny fraction of these truths although it is possible to learn something of the general physical and mathematical rules by which such things as atoms and humans behave. It should not be necessary to understand the mathematics of Alan Turing and Kurt Godel to accept that full knowledge of all events is unknowable, no matter how powerful our Gods, this does not mean that we are prevented from looking upon God as the sum of all altruistic thoughts and behaviours through all universes and all times by all sentient beings and the virtual (and thus indestructible) force for good across all times and all universes.

The second broad area of ‘truth’ is the various sets of beliefs, experiences and assumptions which settle into the brains of humanity from time to time under the influence of multiple forces, practical and psychological.

With regard to this second area it is troubling to note that there seems to be a disparity between the intensity of belief and the probability that this belief will turn out to be true. I have performed no valid statistical tests on this problem but my impression is that the two are negatively correlated but with a low degree of certainty with regard to individual samples.
One can meditate upon one’s own beliefs over time and discover that unless one is of a singularly rigid temperament then one’s beliefs change with time and fresh experiences. It would be very sad if they did not. Now there is a problem here; How can one predict which of one’s beliefs one should ditch today on the chance that this belief will change next year? It is plainly impossible and probably harmful to try with excessive zeal. This suggests that the only reasonable option is not to suddenly stop believing everything we believe but to hold these beliefs more lightly, with true intellectual humility. I do not think that this idea is truly original, several ancient philosophers from Lao Tse to Jesus Christ had the same idea. The pity is that we do not apply it often enough.