From the sociological point of view I cannot imagine a world without compulsory, god declared, laws for basic behaviors, such as sex-related, murder-related, and god-worship related behaviors. My outlook comes from my certainty that some minds are susceptible to the seeking of such compulsions, and my certainty that some other minds are susceptible to a need to supply such compulsions, sometimes as themselves as the authority, and sometimes as representatives of higher authority. The latter group always seems to produce some very successful iterations, from Moses to Jim Jones. . . As it is said in commerce, if there is demand, there will always be folks who will make it a life quest to supply that demand.
If what I'm saying has bases in fact, and if the atheistic challenge is to disenfranchise, dis-empower, organized religion, and other publicists of drivel, then how can mere logical, rational, rhetoric be looked to in order to bring about this goal? It seems evident to me that such rhetoric does not have the needed determinants to effect the goal. Rationality cannot seem to supply the needed compulsions. Thus, rationality goes unheeded.
I have an idea for a possible solution. What if we successfully substituted a new word for truth. What if it became common to say VERIPOOP in place of VERITAS? From that small acorn might grow reexamination of the human faculty for knowing, and claiming truth. It should be obvious to all, that we humans do not have a truth-knowing faculty. We can only know human level truth, which is always temporary and finitely circumscribed. Grass was known to be green for a long time in history, but, as we all know, green is not a property of grass any more. Nature supplies color only to those who are not color blind. Greenness is a human thing, not a grass thing. Reflecting white light at a certain wavelength is intrinsic to grass, but not color. We humans can know only truth that is bound to change in time, but "real" truth cannot change. It is already truth. Where else could it go?
Yes, there are mathematical proofs that would present themselves as truth forever. But it's easy to overlook the fact that all scientific and mathematical pronouncements are abstracts of reality. They may be correct within the confines of the postulates that undergird them, but reality is greater than any finite number of postulates. Further, postulates are arbitrarily chosen. Parallel lines may never meet, or always meet, or meet just under specified specified conditions. Therefore, that which is correct is not necessarily truth.This is a fact about the human knowledge horizon, the human condition. The horizon, wherever one draws it, however far we might advance in knowledge, is inexorably there. Yet the wild eyed compulsion addicts are willing to die for what? Why it's their "truth," of course. So, I say that the very word needs to be expunged, because, amazingly, every time it is uttered, it presents a lie. It claims that someone has corralled truth.
VERIPOOP would put us in our place. A new appreciation may develop of the human knowability horizon. How can one be an extremist when one knows that what one proclaims with vehemence is VERIPOOP? It seems to have a calming effect. Scientific veripoops are wonderful. The fact that presently the scientific method doesn't allow truth to be considered truth forever, as it did when science was in the hands of the compulsive knowers of Europe, (e.g. the Galileo problem), is also wonderful. But there is no other word available currently. Science must call its temporary findings truth, especially on true or false tests. Yet the facts show that they are a step down from truth. They are VERIPOOP!
I have downvoted this.
First, as I understand, in the beginning you state the problem P: rationality isn't attractive enough to become everybody's substitute for religion. Then you propose the solution S: replace "truth" by "veripoop". I fail to see how S solves P. According to your following arguments, S avoids some conflicts between theists and rationalists, but that's a different problem from P. We already have tools to avoid the conflicts which work similarly to your proposal (although people are generally too snobbish to say "veripoop" and rather prefer the phrase "separate magisteria"), but many rationalists oppose such policies because they are detrimental to solving S. The goal isn't to be free to pursue science without much harassment by religious fanatics - this we already have, at least in the developed countries. The goal is to spread true beliefs, and by forgoing the use of "truth", you strip science of the powerful persuasive connotations of this word.
Second, beginning your argument by "I cannot imagine" doesn't seem to be a good idea. Most targeted readers probably can imagine a more rational world, and an argument is worth having only if both parties share the premises. You should have gone deeper and provide a justification for your stated certainty, such that the whole structure doesn't stand on lack of imagination. (The point was already made by other commenters.)
Third point is that you assume that some people need religious beliefs and then act as if that implied no space for further improvement ("how can mere logical, rational, rhetoric be looked to in order to bring about [disempowering organised religion]?") . But rationality was historically succesful in disempowerig organised religion and you have not shown that today all people who could be deconverted by logic already have been.
Fourth, although we can never be absolutely certain, I suspect that talking about imperfections of human knowledge the way you do it hardly clarifies anything. It is even not clear what you mean by "truth" and what is your point here. "Truth" is only a word and we use it in certain situations. Do you object to that? For example, do you think that the utterance "I think this proposition is true" is somehow inherently wrong and should have "true" substituted by "human-level true" or "veripoop" or whatever, in everyday language? If so, what uses would there remain for "true"?
Fifth, your example with greenness of grass is a fairly typical instance of a definition dispute (in this case the equivocation is in "green") and has little to do with limits of human knowledge, which you seem to be discussing there.
And of course there are formatting issues. You have probably copied the text from some more advanced editor, which is responsible for the non-standard font and paragraph separation. It makes the text more difficult to read. I would also prefer emphasis realised by italics to ALL CAPS. I suggest you should change the formatting (perhaps by copying the text to some plain text editor, like Windows's Notepad or Linux's gedit, and then back). Non-standard formatting can slightly bias people against the article even if its content were perfect.
I give up, because if I have to keep on explaining, then that is proof that I have failed in communication. I never claimed that S solves P. You have to read more carefully and derive a better understanding of the spirit of the thing. I said "I have a possible solution." I said "what if we successfully substituted. . ." I never proposed to rid our selves of the "truth" word. It should be clear, but obviously it's not, which is the writer's fault, that when I said that science is one step down from truth, then the truth word, a... (read more)