by Jerry Curtis

Created on: March 17, 2010

There is such a thing as “absolute truth” as long as one accepts the definition of “absolute” and “truth.” For the purposes of this discussion, let’s define “absolute” as “something that does not depend on anything else and is beyond human control.”  Likewise, “truth” would be “a fact that has been verified.” Then, of course, we have to stipulate that the world we live in is “real,” and “absolute truth” actually means something.  Let us further stipulate that the physical world, its objects, animate and inanimate, actually exist. (The alternative would make this and any discussion moot to the point of being silly.) Accepting that stipulation, we can arrive at some “absolute truth” in our own finite existence based on our observations and experience as rational and sane human beings:

 * Absolute Truth No. 1: Every living thing must die.

Accepting the definition of “living” as “alive and interacting with the environment,” it is patently and observably true that what was, is or will be alive has or will someday die; death being “the absence of life,” with its resultant decay and return to the environment. It is, therefore, absolutely true that every human being born before about 1880 is no longer alive. (As of this writing there was one woman in the Republic of Georgia who was born in 1880 and has so far survived well past the normal human life span.) We also see life in death in nature’s seasons, the shorter life span of  most animals, etc. It is “absolutely true” that life is temporary, finite and is always replaced by death, regardless of any heroic intervention by us.

 * Absolute Truth No. 2: No one truly knows if there is life after death.

Returning to our definition of “truth” as being “a fact that has been verified,” no one can say for sure whether death is the end of everything or a transition into a new “life.” Using the scientific method of hypothesis, observation and verification through experiment on a dead being will only verify that the being is dead.  Ghost hunting and creepy anecdotes notwithstanding, no one has ever proven the existence of another realm of wandering spirits trying to tell us, the living, something profound. The fact that all the world’s religions have been based on the scientifically

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