A Relative God...?
Ultimate/absolute truth. This seems to be becoming a rarity today.
Let me give an example: In physics, everything seems ok & simple enough: you are able to state how tall you are, how long you have been alive for & where you are in the world:
I am about 5 foot 10 inches, 19 years of age, in Manchester.
But when you “go fast”, you find that distances between things, and the time taken for things to happen changes completely. And when you look at things through a microscope (on an atomic scale) things aren’t where you expect them to be… at all!
I cannot say that something I thought was 1m long stays 1m long when it travels above a certain speed! I cannot say that something I thought took 47minutes to happen takes 47mins when it travels above the a certain speed. I cannot even say that I know where a particular object is.
In short, I don’t know anything. In actual fact, we don’t know anything for certain. Everything is relative… things change length if you measure them in different situations, things move backwards in time, things disappear depending on when you look at it. You aren’t looking at an object in the same state as it was before you looked at it… the tree doesn’t necessarily make a noise when it falls, if you aren’t there to listen to it!
Sound weird…? It is weird!
This is a bit more of a common feature in “non-scientific” subjects… As an example, different peoples accounts of a war will differ depending on their political stance.
Nothing seems set in stone any more. Everything depends on which way you look at it. Everything depends on what mood you are in when you look at something. Things change if you look at them today and 2weeks in the past. Nothing is constant, everything is changes. Everything is relative.
Or is it?
Is God relative? Does God change if you look at Him in the past as opposed to now? Is it easy to reject something on the basis that its “relative like everything else is”?
Our understanding is relative, and changeable; but that doesn’t mean that the entity we are trying to understand is changeable.
Its quite comforting to have a single object, being, entity… that isn’t relative. Infact, Hes the only one I know of!
(music: get hold of a copy of Cherry Ghost: Thirst for Romance... great great album, and regularly on... good & chilled, yet not lacking in rockyness)
Relative/absolute God
Interesting blog. I think our very notions and definitions of 'absolute' and 'relative' are a little naive when it comes to describing reality. They needn't necessarily be mutually exclusive, and the reality of things is most likely far beyond what we could possibly imagine.
My personal feeling is that, if one must use those words, that absolute truth can arrise out of relative truth. Free will in the Christian sense can only arrise out of such a situation, as if the truth of Christ was completely absolute, then there would be no 'choice' in the matter. I believe His truth becomes an absolute only once you accept that choice to have faith. We are truly free to chose whether we live a life for God, or to see a Godless world in front of us.
I've enjoyed your blog. Please have a gander at mine, which is basically about this sort of subject. (I find physics and philosophy are beautiful areas of human understanding to explore and discuss the nature of God). It can be found at http://blog.myspace.com/benjaminoutram
BEN
What about the laws/axioms
What about the laws/axioms of thermodynamics eg the 1st law which is basically:
Energy can't be created or destroyed; rather, the amount of energy lost in a steady state process cannot be greater than the amount of energy gained.
Or the 2nd law which summerised is:
Energy systems will either remain at rest or increase in entrapy.
Are these relative truths? A really interesting post though Jon.
Chris
i would say that they are
i would say that they are universal truths. facts. statements.
however, there is scope in which they can be relative... they hold true for the entire universe as a whole, but "as a whole" isn't necessarily the chunk of space we call "the universe", they may be more to it that we cant see (put simply). basically, we may observe a loss of energy, but that may be accounted for by invoking the idea that the energy "travelled" to a bit of the universe "we cant see" (or ever will be able to).
dont get me wrong though, im not saying nothing is absolute except for god, my point was more to say "we are so used to things being relative that we forget that god isnt"
if that makes sense!