Going back to the root meaning of the Hebrew word, what we're asked to undertake is in fact a conversion – a turning – towards the truth: towards the God who is eternally active and giving in ways beyond our concepts, towards the hidden depths of who we ourselves are – and thus towards the face of the earth, seeing it freshly in its unfathomable interrelatedness.
But if your project is to convince people that religion is evil and should be wiped from the face of the earth, and that rational, enlightened atheism is the beacon of truth towards which we must steer the storm-battered ship of the human race – or whatever – is directly assaulting religion, or one particular religion, over and over the best tactic?
What is it?In his book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, observes that most of the moral reasoning people do is oriented not towards discovering the truth, but towards justifying their beliefs to others in their social group.
The truth steers towards the latter.
Is this not, in truth, aspiring towards the condition of poetry and almost getting there?
That is all too inconvenient to highlight today.So official versions of history tend to veer away from the truth, not towards it.
Before Kuhn, in other words, we had what amounted to the Whig interpretation of scientific history, in which past researchers, theorists and experimenters had engaged in a long march, if not towards "truth", then at least towards greater and greater understanding of the natural world.
There is no reason to 'doubt that man progresses fairly steadily towards moral truth as he does towards scientific' (FE 20).
Our job was to encourage children ("every child matters") to reach inwards towards their truth, and then outwards towards meaningful study and personal growth.
What new chapter are we willing to invent together, all differences of color, race, religion, language aside, in order that we, as a humanity begin moving in one direction toward peace, towards compassion, towards resolution, towards that Truth that sets us free?
In other words, I remember the people who were brave enough to try and live life speaking their truths, pushing towards freedom through their adherence to tenants of self-definition.
