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Truth doesn't matter?

God's Law is the foundation of Truth — and also of morality and justice. The well-being of our immortal souls depends on it, as even the classical Greek philosophers knew very well.

Socrates, in the Phaedo, reasoned that "man, made for justice [Dike, which is eternal, immortal], which he could and should love, must be immortal because he was made and ordained for something immortal. He tries to show that the body is a kind of veil separating the understanding from the glorious vision of justice to which it is naturally united. This means feeling and confessing a holy God, the unknown God of the Athenians" [cf: Acts 17:23]. (A. Rosmini, Psychology)

Rosmini adds a most interesting footnote to this passage:

The intimate sense of moral good as something eternal for which human beings are made has great influence on the spirit of upright men and women. Whether real or imaginary, the discourses of the dying Socrates inserted in Phaedo demonstrate this truth. If they are invented, Plato would never have expressed them so wonderfully unless he had believed them to be highly likely and totally in conformity with the noble character of a person whom he wishes to show as a type of the just man.... 'The very integrity of life, which is contrary to bodily nature, gives the soul ... confidence as it reflects on itself and notices, at one and the same time, the separation of body and soul, together with [the soul's] manifest immortality'.... If this feeling of the immortality of the soul is so strong in upright, virtuous people, how does the notion of mortality originate? It springs from vice, from wickedness, which makes flesh [i.e., materiality] the object of our thought. The light of decency, and consequently our feeling for what is immortal, is thus extinguished in thought.

"The intimate sense of moral good" has been universal among humankind going back millennia. Whether it be the civilization of ancient Egypt, of the ancient Middle East, Judaism, the classical Greeks, Christianity, the themes of immortal souls, an afterlife, and divine justice are so universal, cross-culturally, that one is led to surmise that there is something "in-built" in human nature that everywhere and at all times recognizes and acknowledges what constitutes moral good and justice (oftentimes if not always found out "the hard way"). In all cases so far known, such ideas are predicated on divine law; i.e., they are founded in divine nature, in God's Logos — His Truth.

The Christian understanding is that man is made in God's likeness, or image. By this we understand that man is a spiritual being, ensouled, possessing reason and free will. (Plato himself evidently thought that man was the image of the Cosmos, itself a divine creation; man, thus, is "microcosmos," i.e., at a twice-remove from the God of the Beyond from which all existent things derive their being.)

The problem for the atheist is, by denying God, one is placed into the position of having to deny the soul which God made (e.g., our own soul, thus the possibility of all subjective experience, the ability to think, etc.). By denying God, the world of creation is denied any objective truth; reason itself has no objective guide; the very laws of nature, of science, become inexplicable "mysteries."

Moreoever, in rejecting God, and thereby the soul, you must deny the immortality of loved ones lost to physical death....

Of course, you may be thinking, "all this spiritual stuff is just nonsense. If it ain't physical or material, then it simply ain't."

But here, by "spiritual," we need to understand "immaterial." Immaterial things are of course not directly observable by means of the five senses. But jeepers, there are even "physical" things you can't see: You can't "see" the wind, for instance — not directly; but you know it's there from its effects; i.e., a dust storm, swirling fallen leaves, etc. Spiritual entities are like that, too.

You indicate that truth matters to you. But what do you mean by "truth?" What you can see or detect with five senses? Such objects must be "physical" or "material" in order to be so detected. But is pi worthless because we can't "see" it? How about the first and second laws of thermodynamics?

In effect, you are asking Pilate's question just as HE asked it: What is truth?

Evidently he, like you, did not see that Truth with a capital "T" must have a divine Source; for Truth itself is eternal, universal. Without its root in God, "truth" slides into the mere opinions of men. Thus morality and justice have no defense in the world of disordered men; the Good becomes a meaningless word....

Hope you'll come back soon, Soliton!