Truth is commonly thought to be relative, an open arena in which anyone can throw in their hat of opinion. But that denies the fact that absolute truth actually exists.
 
Not only are there day-to-day truths like black not being white and cars on empty not going anywhere, but also truths about the biggest questions we ever face: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?
 
Wishy Washy Truth
 
Some say truth is subjective and dependent upon individual experience, "Your reality is not my reality." Others say it is a collection of perceptions and memories or a cultural artifact. Tolerance and political correctness also make truth wishy-washy. You've heard it, how everyone has a "right to their opinion" and that it's polite to "agree to disagree." All such permissive attitudes lead people to conclude that there can be no absolute truth.
 
Socrates said, thousands of years ago, "All I know is that I know nothing." But that's a contradiction, an oxymoron. Today, some 2,500 years later it's fashionable to assert that it's truth that there is no truth. But that's an oxymoron as well.

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​Truth Exists
 
All such reasons for dismissing absolute truth are defeated by the logical fact that truth must exist. Otherwise there would be no certainty anywhere at any time and our very existence would be impossible.
 
The only question is whether we can come to know it. We can and do. The laws of nature and facts of reality are truths. Reality truths are empirical, verifiable, repeatable, consistent, observable, and supported by reason, experience, and the full array of evidence.
 
Truths we know as a matter of course, include and are determined by:
 
•Nature's laws: 2+2 always equals 4, stones thrown into the air will return to the ground, water turns to ice when it gets really cold, ordered things will get messy unless we intervene . . . and so on. Such truths are common sense and intuitive. If they weren't, we could not function in day-to-day living nor do anything productive.
•Facts: pieces of evidence and phenomena that can be observed or otherwise sensed.
•Reason: white is not black, up is not down, a lie is not the truth, 2+2 = 4 . . .
•Consistency: true things remain the same and apply everywhere to everything.
•Non-contradiction: a truth cannot contradict itself or other truths.
•Justice and ethics: truths are obvious to everyone, predictable, even-handed, and meld with our conscience. They provide a deontology (system of ethics) with no harm resulting unless they are violated.
 
These reality truths are like railroad tracks that mandate the course of a train. Passengers may argue and debate about whether the train is moving, its speed, mechanics, destination, or even its existence. They might pray for divine intervention to make it turn a different way or ignore its movement and step out onto the ground to their peril. But the train moves along inexorably fixed on the truth of the tracks, oblivious to what we may want to believe about it.
 
No beneficial technology would be possible without obedience to these reality truths. All the comforts of modern life are the result of thought and action that obeys them. Since the truths of reality work so well with practical matters, like building bridges, space ships, and parachutes, why stop there? They should also serve as an organon to expose the false beliefs that thwart solving not only govenrmental, health, environmental, economic, and the rest of our social problems, but the big questions of existence as well.
 
Violating the Truths of Reality Has Consequences
 
Reality truths are necessary for survival. Not just for us, but for the world. Write more checks than your balance adds to, step off a cliff, or decide to not eat and this will become quickly apparent. When truth is ignored in industry, science, medicine, politics, education, and commerce, you, society, and even the whole world can suffer.
 
We don't get to ignore reality, truth, make up any cockamamie belief, ossify it in our mind, and go out into the world and act it out without insidious consequences somewhere at some time.
 
For example, religions outrightly laud the virtues of belief and faith without regard to reality truths. The result has been millions maimed and killed in Crusades, Inquisitions, witch trials, jihads, and religiously motivated conflicts.
 
Science is promoted as the cure for religion's failings. But it is not the sober, analytical, and indifferent gatekeeper of truth commonly thought. That's because science, like religion, is done by opinionated people with unmerited beliefs as well as egocentric and financial interests.
 
There is a fantasy that truth is all taken care of in peer-reviewed (conformity policed) scientific journals. But scientific literature abounds with contradictory data and conclusions, even fraud. Moreover, there are 2.5 million new scientific papers each year and 50 million articles in the archives dating back to 1665. Real truth does not change on the first of each month when all the thousands of new journals come out.
 
Just like religious dogmas have resulted in immense human harm, so too have the dogmas held by scientists. The dogma that peer-reviewed literature is like sacred text, leads to flawed conclusions and disastrous effects. For example, hundreds of drugs have been "scientifically proven" safe and effective, but once released on the public have maimed and killed. Modern medicine, buttressed by scientists and peer reviewed literature, has become the number one killer.
 
Millions of people and their pets suffer and die due to scientifically proven and government-approved foods and official scientifically-backed dietary advice. Scientifically proven agriculture poisons and diminishes fertile land and its crops. Almost every modern intrusion into the natural order threatens life on the planet. Yet they are justified by scientific studies and experts.
 
Then there's the money. The scientific community runs on it. Scientific "truth," too often, becomes whatever creates grants, profit, or secures careers. 

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​Underlying modern science are the unproven dogmas of materialism and evolution that now permeate education, media, and politics. These dogmas lead to the conclusion that we are biological robots in a meaningless universe. If we are nothing more than moving mounds of atoms derived spontaneously from a primordial brew and under a survival of the fittest imperative, all ethical bets are off.  
 
Duty to Truth Is a Personal Responsibility
 
We cannot trust others or the consensus view on matters of truth. Nor can we inherit truth by osmosis from family, society, or authoritarian institutions.
 
That leaves us where we should have begun in the first place, with ourselves. Disintermediation, removing the middle men, between us individually and the truth is the key. All that's required is setting aside the unearned beliefs we learned as children or adopted from others during adulthood, and then opening the mind to the obvious truths of reality.

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​Unfortunately, opinions and beliefs are more popular than truth-seeking. That's because they require no effort. They are prepackaged for convenience by countless belief vendors. At no charge—other than our mind--we can pick from a bounteous inventory whatever suits our desired behavior, selfish interests, and placates fears. Once locked in place, a blindness takes over that precludes truth even if it stares us in the face or threatens our very existence.
 
The most important duty in life is to truth. To achieve that end requires that the sleepy givens be disturbed. The best place to begin is to objectively critique the foundational beliefs that have entrapped society. Thus, materialism, evolutionism, atheism, and religion, the predominant assumed answers to the Big Questions of existence and purpose, must be openly scrutinized by measuring them against reality truths.
 
That may seem daunting. But finding truth is quite simple, regardless of a person's circumstance or education. And, surprisingly, real truth won't be a surprise since it will be like coming home to what we knew all along. It was just hidden under the clutter of cherished beliefs and faiths given to us by others.

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