Theology and the Basis of Truth
In browsing the web tonight, I stumbled over a very interesting site. I won't pretend to understand everything it said. It's been so very long since I've read anything intelligent that my comprehension has deteriorated to nearly nothing as well has my vocabulary. But I will gladly lead you to the same place.
Techgnosis - http://techgnosis.com/
Everything I have seen there reflects thoughts of, what my mother would call, the "new age religions." Though I don't hold the same sentimate for the beliefs, I do however lack the depth of vocabulary necessary to find a better term. I read through a couple of the journal entries that can be found here. Specifically "Synthetic Meditations." The comments I have aren't about the journal entry directly, more about what they guided my thoughts to.
My question is simple. What is theology? Dictionary.com defines it as the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to the universe; study of divine things or religious truth; divinity. Christians would say that "theology" is the study of God. However the actual etymology of the word is much more broad. You see that the evolusion of the word started as "discoursing on the gods," then on to "an account of the gods," to "philosophical treatment of Christian doctrine." The word was created with the intent of including all gods; the entirety and essence of divinity.
What else has been lost over the years? What else have we missed? Personally, I don't know what to believe any more. Over the years, I have heard so many people of so many different beliefs pray to whatever god they serve. Without knowing these people, or being at least moderately educated in the different religions and their terminology, you couldn't tell a difference.
My point is simple. If every religion points to a god then how can one belief claim truth over another? Maybe "truth" is forever lost in translation. What if Truth was like a tiny speck of sand? A speck that has been washed and weighed, polished, smoothed and curbed into one shiny point, the Universal Truth. What if we could take this grain of sand and collect it into a book? We would treasure the book like our own life. We would lock it with the purpose of our mind. And when we craved the truth we would open it up and let the grains wash over us. We would soak ourselves in its depth and bask in its radiance.
But the book is flawed. We can take more truth from it than we have earned. And soon we would be turning empty pages.
Thus the search begins. The search for the truth; the truth we crave; the truth that has the only meaningful value in an otherwise meaningless world. The search continues, it goes on and on. In this search for the ultimate truth everything is allowed. We learn to lie and cheat in hope of progress. We see no success, no breakthrough of any kind.
We’re flooded by substitute truth, made up truth, whose only purpose is to sooth us and lull us. Absolute truth loses its meaning. There is no absolute truth, only greater and lesser truth. We’ve lost our standards, we’ve lost our talent to distinguish what is real from what is deception. We no longer know the difference between the right truth and the wrong truth.
All we care for is truth in any form and any guise; corrupted, filthy truth, we want it all, need it all. So this truth can make us free, like any other truth. Maybe this substitute truth suffices? Maybe. But when we’ve become enslaved to this freedom, then it is freedom no longer. It is the worst kind of prison. A prison with no walls and no chains. We cannot break free for we cannot see what binds us.
We talk of freedom like it was something to hope for. I hope real freedom never finds us, because we wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Yet we continue the search, for the searching has become a way of life for us. We know no other. It is what we’ve become.
Let us only hope the search never ends, that the Absolute Truth stays hidden forever. For if the search ends, we end. Then we become nothing more than dust, specks of sand on the shore of a universal lie.
Techgnosis - http://techgnosis.com/
Everything I have seen there reflects thoughts of, what my mother would call, the "new age religions." Though I don't hold the same sentimate for the beliefs, I do however lack the depth of vocabulary necessary to find a better term. I read through a couple of the journal entries that can be found here. Specifically "Synthetic Meditations." The comments I have aren't about the journal entry directly, more about what they guided my thoughts to.
My question is simple. What is theology? Dictionary.com defines it as the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to the universe; study of divine things or religious truth; divinity. Christians would say that "theology" is the study of God. However the actual etymology of the word is much more broad. You see that the evolusion of the word started as "discoursing on the gods," then on to "an account of the gods," to "philosophical treatment of Christian doctrine." The word was created with the intent of including all gods; the entirety and essence of divinity.
What else has been lost over the years? What else have we missed? Personally, I don't know what to believe any more. Over the years, I have heard so many people of so many different beliefs pray to whatever god they serve. Without knowing these people, or being at least moderately educated in the different religions and their terminology, you couldn't tell a difference.
My point is simple. If every religion points to a god then how can one belief claim truth over another? Maybe "truth" is forever lost in translation. What if Truth was like a tiny speck of sand? A speck that has been washed and weighed, polished, smoothed and curbed into one shiny point, the Universal Truth. What if we could take this grain of sand and collect it into a book? We would treasure the book like our own life. We would lock it with the purpose of our mind. And when we craved the truth we would open it up and let the grains wash over us. We would soak ourselves in its depth and bask in its radiance.
But the book is flawed. We can take more truth from it than we have earned. And soon we would be turning empty pages.
Thus the search begins. The search for the truth; the truth we crave; the truth that has the only meaningful value in an otherwise meaningless world. The search continues, it goes on and on. In this search for the ultimate truth everything is allowed. We learn to lie and cheat in hope of progress. We see no success, no breakthrough of any kind.
We’re flooded by substitute truth, made up truth, whose only purpose is to sooth us and lull us. Absolute truth loses its meaning. There is no absolute truth, only greater and lesser truth. We’ve lost our standards, we’ve lost our talent to distinguish what is real from what is deception. We no longer know the difference between the right truth and the wrong truth.
All we care for is truth in any form and any guise; corrupted, filthy truth, we want it all, need it all. So this truth can make us free, like any other truth. Maybe this substitute truth suffices? Maybe. But when we’ve become enslaved to this freedom, then it is freedom no longer. It is the worst kind of prison. A prison with no walls and no chains. We cannot break free for we cannot see what binds us.
We talk of freedom like it was something to hope for. I hope real freedom never finds us, because we wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Yet we continue the search, for the searching has become a way of life for us. We know no other. It is what we’ve become.
Let us only hope the search never ends, that the Absolute Truth stays hidden forever. For if the search ends, we end. Then we become nothing more than dust, specks of sand on the shore of a universal lie.