How do we find the Truth among so many paths?

• Thesis: Truth is coherent, consistent, and accurate to human experience
  • An assertion is valid if it is coherent, consistent, and accurate
  • People must be able to defend their assertions on these three grounds
  • Mythological language conveys meaning beyond the level of discursive reason, but the underlying meaning still can be judged according to these three criteria
    
    
• How is Truth Conveyed via Myth and Metaphor?
  
  
• Religious Belief v. Truth
  • Hall, et al. define religious belief as "the varied symbolic assertion of alleged fact, the unrestricted value of which is so perceived and positively affirmed as to shape the attitude, understanding, and intentional behavior of a subject's life." (p. 97)
  • Explanation:
    • varied -- content of belief systems differ
    • symbolic -- verbal expressions are analogical
    • alleged -- belief statements cannot be proven, strictly speaking; they are professed as true because they make sense out of human experience within a particular world view
    • fact -- an empirical datum
    • unrestricted value -- importance/significance which cannot be measured or limited. It is not the "belief" that has unrestricted value for the subject, but rather, the referent of the belief. It is the Reality beyond the belief which is the ultimate value, and the belief is the best attempt at approximating a rational expression of/about the Reality The belief itself is an analogical statement which, by virtue of being an analogy, simply cannot exhaust the reality to which it refers.
    • positively affirmed -- the "fact" is both believed and claimed to be valued more than anything else
    • so as to shape ... -- this positive valuation of the "fact" has such an impact on the evaluator's "attitude, understanding, and intentional behavior" that it becomes clear to the outside observer that the evaluator's entire conscious life is driven by this one "fact" of ultimate significance
      
      
• Belief and Ethics/Praxis
  • Otto's idea of the holy as a category of value means that the Holy is that which is of utmost importance, of inestimable significance; everything else pales in comparison to this one Reality; all decisions and behaviors reflect the absolute importance of the Holy.