What is the truth?

"The truth is what I say it is". You've heard that quote before, the most recent from the movie 'The Shooter'. But, that's not the only thing said about the truth.

"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matter". - Albert Einstein.

"There are three sides to every story: yours, theirs and the truth".

"Everyone wants the truth but no one wants to be honest".

"Half the truth is a lie".

"The truth hurts for a while but a lie hurts forever".

These quotes are from CoolNsmart.com.

What then is the truth? One definition is: Truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality. This is from Wikipedia. The word 'truth' can be traced back to Old English and Saxon and Old German to mean faithful or steadfast as an oak.

There is an entire psychological and etymological science connected with the idea of truth. I find that to be completely unexpected. Most people consider the truth to be something that is not false or misleading. In other words, truth is diametrically opposed to falsehood.
The experts define truth as something that's consensual or agreed upon. I suppose you could use that concept in a trial in which the jury decides if the defendant is guilty or innocent. It's based on consensuses of the jury, which in turn is based on the testimony and evidence. But, in some cases this could lead to injustice because the conviction is not necessarily based on the truthful evidence or lack thereof.

This sounds more like theories in science. Truth in science is based on the concept of verification of experimental results or observations. However, the theory that is conjured up out of this evidence may not be true. A science truth (theory) will change when new evidence is found that is not consistent with the theory. So, a theory is not truth in the absolute sense.

It may be that all truth is like this. As long as there is a consensus of acceptance of a truth, it's maintained. If something doesn't fit the truth, it's gets changed. In other words, there is no absolute truth. Much of what we believe in is based on what someone tells us. We accept it without verifying that it's true ourselves.

I am convinced of this because we don't really know what we are or what is out there. We only have our senses to tell us what is in our environment, and it's proven concept that our senses are not always reliable. We can easily be tricked, as with magicians and card sharks. We only see a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. We all have trouble sensing things that are not natural. What we know is only a tiny fraction of what's out there. Much of what we call truth is what we were taught or what is fed to us through the media. We have no easy way to verify what we see and hear.

So, how could we know the truth? We're deluding ourselves when we think we know everything. In many cases what we do know is not always true. My thought on this is to be open to new ideas. Always be ready to change your opinion about things. Never judge from emotion. It's better to consider yourself ignorant than to act on impulses that are not based on fact. No one is all knowing. Only God can claim that.

Thanks for reading.