In the movie A Few Good Men, Colonel Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson, is on the witness stand and being questioned by Lt. Kaffee, played by Tom Cruse. After a probative lead up, Kaffee asks the question of Jessep, point blank, "Colonel Jessep, did you order the Code Red?" Before Jessep can answer, the officer presiding over the tribunal, Colonel Julius Randall cautions him, "You don't have to answer that question!" Jessep replies to the judge, "I'll answer the question!" then turns to Kaffee and with intensity and poses the question to him "You want answers?" Kaffee interjects, "I think I am entitled." The tension of the moment escalating, Jessep repeats the question, "You want answers?" Kaffee responds, "I want the truth!" The two men are locked in visual embrace, both now making their contempt for each other perspicuously clear as Jessep replies with an utter sense of indignant disdain, "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
When it comes to truth we humans are fickle creatures. We spend a good part of our life's energy trying to evade truth, trying to paint reality to be what we want it to be, rather than what it is. Indeed, we begin life with an infusion of deceptions and misrepresentations, mythical yarns spun for us by our parents and other mentors of our cultural domain. In the earliest years of our formative enlightenment, we are spoon fed fairy-tales and enticed to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and so on. Ironically, most of these stories and fictional characters have some factual basis, but more often than not such basis includes concepts considered inappropriate and even psychologically devastating for young minds to entertain. A prime example would be the fable of Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm, a cute anecdote masking the more horrific chronicling of acts of human cannibalism taking place during the Great Famine in 14th century Europe .
The whole saga of Hansel and Gretel, is a metaphorical way to deal with the subject of human cannibalism. There is likely no more gruesome spectacle in the human repertoire of gruesome thoughts, than that of being devoured by beast, except perhaps that of being consumed by beast of our own species. But the story of Hansel and Gretel, in fact, is a bit of lore that attempts to deal with this otherwise untenable notion through analogous fiction. The story stems from the realities of the Great Famine of Europe in 1314-1317 when cannibalism became an unspeakable tactic of human survival, and parents left their children to fend for themselves in an effort to preserve their own existence.
And so it is, during our formative years our little heads are filled with a bounty of fictional depictions designed to protect our impressionable minds from realities, those charged with our indoctrination might feel are detrimental to our developing persona. The fact is, we don't always like the truth, and yes, some times we can't handle it either. And so we construct metaphors which offer up a kind of quasi-truth instead, analogous representations which make truth a little bit more intellectually and perhaps emotionally digestible. It is this status of quasi-truths which erodes our ability to recognize and comprehend real truths and leads to the quandary in our minds, Is there such a thing as absolute truth?
About 27 centuries ago, some intellectually astute and aspiring Ionian Greeks, began exploring notions of truth and methods of distinguishing quasi-truths from absolute truths. They found there were, in fact, some absolute truths and that such were validated through instances of proof. They found that proof, once established with respect to one instance of immutable absolute truth, could then be applied to ascertain additional instances of absolute truth. We find example of such in the mathematics of geometry established by the same Ionian thinkers.
Geometry is a kind of language based on certain absolute truths, or proofs as they are referred to, which can be used to arrive at additional absolute truths. For instance, the simplest geometric shape is the triangle, the area of a bidimensional plane enclosed by three intersecting line segments. Each intersection, or vertex as referred to in geometric terminology, represents an angular dimension between the two line segments forming the vertex. The first proof of any triangle is that the angular dimensions of all three vertices must add up to 180 degrees. Spend the rest of your life, try as hard as you will, but you will never draw a triangle consisting of 3 straight lines in the same plane, who's vertices add up to more or less than 180 degrees. It's not magic, it's a fact, an immutable absolute truth. Interestingly, it is also a proof that we can use to find some other facts about triangles. Consider for instance, in a triangle where all the vertices are equal to 60 degrees, we can ascertain the fact that all three lines of the triangle must be the same length. It's a mathematical representation of an absolute truth.
Okay, enough of the geometry lesson, but it makes the point that there are such things as absolute truths and that these truths once realized can be used to establish other truths. We have only talked about triangles here, but there are other geometric shapes, and enough proofs and absolute truths to fill volumes. What is amazing, is most of the absolute truths humans have accumulated over the past two and a half millenniums, can be traced back to the fundamental proofs associated with the discipline of geometry.
Up until the fifteenth century, it was an agreed upon fact, however erroneous it may have been, that the Earth was flat and positioned at the center of the universe. While human visual perceptions seemed to support this notion, there were some obvious inconsistencies with it a young Nicolas Copernicus found bothersome when studying astronomy at the University de Ferra. But Copernicus had also studied geometry, and using geometric proofs he developed a new notion of a heliocentric (Sun centered) universe. Although no human to date has had the vantage point to observe the aggregate solar orbital concentricity, Copernicus' geometric proofs of it have withstood all test and scrutiny and have been verified through intrinsic evidence. That the earth is in orbit of the Sun and not the other way around, is a fact; an absolute truth.
It is presumable, that there are some folks who view truth with some degree of approximation and ambiguity, but such perspectives of truth are likely motivated to tend to some emotional need rather than any realization attainable through rational induction. The simplest absolute truth, is that absolute truths are usually simple. Complexity is more often the tool of choice to instill confusion and deception. Absolute truth is self evident, meaning that any person having sufficient cognitive resource, and given the same criteria to consider, will come to the same conclusion. Furthermore, truth becomes absolute only once it has stood the test of scrutiny and all questions posed against it. Absolute truths can neither be created nor destroyed, they are permanent; not the result of human invention, but the product of discovery and realization.
In this day and age, the question, "Is there such a thing as absolute truth?" is an absurdity which could only have been formulated in an inept mind, one essentially deprived of sufficient sagacious enlightenment. It is a paradox which stands as the strongest evidence for a secular education heavily influenced with the disciplines of mathematics and rich in study of the sciences. But it is a question, and questions are the first step to enlightenment, so it is a good question. And it is a question to which there is an absolute affirmative answer, yes, there are such things as absolute truths.