The Time of Truth

Compare a tree and a house. The tree begins as a single small item, and the house begins as many small items. Both, over time, grow larger. The one tree expands into many branches. But the many bricks become one house. These are two images of the ways that I imagine a person can seek to understand the universe we live in.

A man could say that we currently have lots of bits of knowledge, but we do not understand enough. He would say that we need to add more knowledge, and when we have enough knowledge, we will be able to bring it all together to build one big picture that explains life. This is like a man building a house. He starts with some materials, like bricks and cement, but he is not happy with what he starts with, and needs to find more. This might be described as the way of philosophy and science.

Another man could say that we have enough knowledge about the origins of the world, and from that, we understand enough. He could say that all truth can be worked out from the foundation. The foundation gives us the simple picture that life fits into. This is like the tree. The seed that the tree came from contained all the information the tree would need. If you understand the seed, you would have no problem understanding the tree. This might be described as the way of religion and history.

One group believes ultimate truth will be found in the future, the other thinks that truth is found in the past.

Problems for the Future View

An obstacle for philosophy and science is that they do not know how big their house will be. Because by my definition they do not know the big picture, they do not know how much they have yet to uncover. Might it one day be announced that everything is solved, only for a new mystery to be found the next day? Probably. Will it even be possible for a mortal man to say that everything is known? How do you count the things you don't know about? The house might never be finished due to size.

Also, though I believe we are far from this point right now, it might even be the case that the house might never be finished because the workers run out of materials. Maybe the last explorable bits of the universe will be explored, and nothing conclusive will present itself? Maybe all that we will harvest will be meaningless data?

Problems for the Past View

But there are obstacles for religion and history too. Applying a simple past to a complex present problem can be tricky. For a start, a relevant section of the past must be found. Despite the infamous butterfly effect, we would probably not understand anything new about the sport of ice hockey by studying the history of the Aztec nation. The right branch of the tree must be used. But then, even if a relevant past is found, conclusions about exactly how it affects the present must still largely be based on guess work. There is a lot of data to pick from, but a lot of it is shallow material that only gives us one part of the bigger picture.

Which leads onto another obstacle for finding the truth in the distant past- We were not there. Zooming out to the biggest possible origin you could think of, we could note that the entire human race, to our knowledge, was absent from the creation of the world. However it happened, we do not have a mortal eye-witness account. Religion, however, usually points to a God who was an eye-witness, and has for whatever reason decided to reveal parts of the scene to us. This might be to satisfy a bit of our curiosity, or to glorify the creator, or for other reasons that the God has. But as mentioned above, the details revealed are only one part of the picture as it actually must have happened. The Jewish Scriptures do not tell us, for example, why God made wasps. We are only informed that he made all animal groups, and was initially pleased to do so.

In Reality...

I should state the obvious and say that these two approaches, or labels, are so black and white that they do not fit perfectly into a real person. Most people have a mixture of both views.

If you had to guess, which do you think you do more- take answers from the past, or assume we will have better answers in the future?

I myself, for example, know that I understand my origins from the view of my religion, but I am driven by my interest in science to explore the fine details of this created world. I believe I have a small amount of knowledge about the past, and therefore am free to look ahead to discovering more in the future.

A key point, I suppose, is whether a person feels they know enough about the past to be satisfied in the present. Understanding your origins can provide a measure of security, and a hint at possible purpose in life. If you did not think that your origins were a good enough definition of your existence, you would have to spend your whole life looking ahead to a future revelation that might never come.



See another post about Knowledge...

Image source: http://majorityoftwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/is-time-travel-possible.html