How Do We Find Truth?

I have been having a discussion with a kind and passionate friend who has requested to remain anonymous. She said: "I feel like my messages would be like Matthew 7:6 .."neither cast your pearls before swine....best they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you."  In other words she is certain she possesses the truth and if I am not interested in it, then why waste it on a heathen like me?

But the question came up about how we find truth. And how we find the truth is a vitally important question.  Ironically, when I first started my blog over a year ago, I decided to call it, "An Honest Search For Truth."

Here are the two arguments in a nutshell. Skeptics like me find truth by using evidence while religious people find their truth through revelation in their holy books, such as the Christian bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon.

So which is the best way to truth; by revelation, or by evidence? 

Listen to what Thomas Paine had to say about revelation in his excellent little book, “The Age of Reason”.

For those who have forgotten their history, Thomas Paine was a patriot during our Revolutionary War with the British. "These are the times that try men's souls." That Thomas Paine. Without Paine, whose writings inspired passion and spirit in Washington's ragtag army, our revolution might very well have failed. Despite all that, his writing brought the full wrath of Christians down on him. Although he was a deist, Teddy Roosevelt called him "that dirty little atheist." He was the first to suggest social security for the poor and elderly, he was dead set against slavery, and he was one of the first to advocate a world peace organization. What's not to like about that? Yet, Christians detested him. Once a national hero, his views on religion would destroy him financially, and by the end of his life, only a handful of people attended his funeral.

So Thomas Paine wrote a little book called, "The Age of Reason" and here is what he had to say about revelation.

“Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike”. (Note: Joseph Smith and the  revelations he claims to have received from an angel named "Moroni" that gave birth to Mormonism was born nearly 30 years after Paine wrote "The Age of Reason" and was yet to appear on the scene.


Each of these churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say that their word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part I disbelieve them all.


As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation.

Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.


No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is a revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.


It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication….after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me and I have only his word that it was made to him.

Now. If, despite Paine's argument we still insist revelation is a path to the truth, what are we going to do about the revelation that Mahomet received from the angel Gabriel which gave rise to the Islamic religion over 600 years after Jesus supposedly walked the earth. If we say, "Well, that was a revelation made to Mahomet and not to me, and though Mahomet may find himself obliged to believe it, it is not emcumbent on me to believe it, aren't we making exactly the same argument that Paine made?

Do you see the problem with revelation as a way to find the truth?

Three different religions. Three entirely different revelations.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that since all three sets of revelations contradict each other, we can draw only two possible conclusions: (1) Two of them are wrong, or (2) All three are wrong.

So back to how do we find truth.

I suspect few people share my passion for finding the truth. If they did, then a little book by Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, "Why Truth Matters."  would replace the Christian bible as the best selling book of all time. I'll quote a few paragraphs. The book is such a treasure trove of clear thinking and irrefutable ideas it's difficult to choose where to start. The emphasis is mine.

P. 16 "The truth is important to us, but so are our needs and desires and hopes and fears. Without them we wouldn't even recognize ourselves. Without them, we think, we would merely be something like an adding machine. An adding machine can get at the truth, given the right input, but it doesn't care. We want the truth but we also want to care....wanting the truth is indeed inseparable from caring. We want it, we care about it, it matters, and so do various other things we want and care about, some of which are threatened by the truth. So we're stuck, and keep arriving back at the fork in the path again.

P. 18 "If we are going to influence people, it's important we get it right."

P. 21 "So one intrinsic reason for thinking we outht to respect the truth, and try to find out what it is, which entails not fudging it whenever we don't like what we find, which entails deciding firmly in advance that we will put it first and all other considerations second .....one reason for all this is simply that we can, and as far as we know we are the only ones who can. We can, so we ought to. It would be such a waste not to.

No one brief generation has the right to tamper with it for the sake of its own ephemeral satisfactions.

No one generation has a right to tamper with it. What a powerful statement.


Edmund Way Teale who wrote, “Circle of Seasons” said this, “It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have it”.



In my view, leading your children or grandchildren into a church where you know propositions are being put forth which are untrue is also morally wrong. When we fill our young children’s’ heads with unfalsifiable claims it’s very nigh impossible to pry them loose by the time they have reached the age when they can begin to use reason, logic and critical thinking skills on their own.



The minute you convince yourself that any idea is beyond reproach, that its somehow immune to criticism, and you have no right to criticise it, whether it comes from religion or whether it comes from me, then the game is over. The difficult part is to refute wrongheaded thinking without being nasty about it. That is why I will never attack a person....only their ideas. And I would hope they treat me the same way. Enough with the threats of eternal agony in hell already!