O Say, What is Truth?

During the most acute phase of my faith crisis, I read every book I could get my hands on from Henry Eyreing’s “Mormon Scientist” to Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion”. I think I probably read seven or eight books cover to cover and partially read a couple more in the space of about two months. I think the book that influenced me the most during that time was a book called the “Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell. He was a professor who studied and taught comparative mythology. If I were to put the book’s message into a single sentence, it would be this:

A story doesn’t have to be true in order to be “true”

What do I mean by that? Let’s take the story of the Good Samaritan for example. Did it actually happen? Probably not, but would the message of the story be any more true if it actually did? Most of us are ok with that. We are used to fables, fairy tales, and other stories which are entirely fictional but serve a useful purpose. However, when it comes to the Bible or another sacred book, it is more difficult for us to see things that way. In many religious traditions, inerrancy of scripture is a pillar of faith, and many believers take this to mean not only the principles are without error but also the historical accounts and stories are as well. Some feel that to challenge the historical accuracy of scripture is to commit blasphemy. But regardless of your personal feelings on the subject, step back and think about this:

• Would the 10 commandments be invalid if Moses didn’t actually write Exodus?

• Should we disregard the Bible as a source of moral guidance because it uses language that suggests the world is flat?

• Would the discourse on faith in Alma 32 lose its meaning if the weights and measures of Nephite coinage given two chapters earlier were incorrect?

What I’m getting at here, is that there are different kinds of truth. However, in our modern society, we tend to focus on semantic, or factual truth almost exclusively. There are other approaches to truth, but we don’t really hear about them much. One such approach is a philosophy called pragmatism. While semantic truth asks, “Is it accurate?” pragmatism asks “Does it work?” Take for example, Newton’s theory of gravity. It suggests that all objects attract one another, and that objects with greater mass have more of this attractive force. However, our current understanding of science is that this is not accurate. We now believe that rather than drawing each other in like magnets, objects instead bend the time and space which they occupy. It is somewhat like standing in the middle of a trampoline and seeing the fabric sink where you are standing; if someone were to place a ball at the edge of the trampoline, it would roll towards you. So while Newton’s theory of gravity doesn’t describe reality with 100% accuracy, physicists still use his math. Why? Because it works. Yes, when you start going close to the speed of light or start looking at really small things like electrons it breaks down, but for pretty much anything else that happens on this planet it works perfectly well, and the math is a lot simpler.

If we look at history, I think it is safe to say that a practical knowledge of something always comes first. People figured out pretty quick that eating uncooked or spoiled food would make you sick, but it has only been relatively recently that we knew about bacteria. People have been selectively breeding horses, dogs, and other animals for thousands of years to obtain certain characteristics, but we have only known about DNA and genetics for the last 100 years or so. People used to believe that mice spontaneously generated out of hay, because whenever they left it lying around the creatures always seemed to show up. Here is something to think about though: while people were wrong to think that mice magically generated from haystacks, the effect of that belief was that they wouldn’t leave it lying around near the house. If you believed that, you were wrong, but you also didn’t have mice in your house. Sometimes there are more important things than being right.

(to be continued)