Truth: One or many?

Okay, so we had an interesting conversation during our late night out. I’ll start by re-acting the scenario out first (These quotes are as accurate as I can remember, and may be subject to dodgy-ness):

~Warren, Tif and I standing inside the Village Diner. I admire Tif’s newly heated up hot jam donut~

“Wow Tif, that looks really good.”
“Indeed it is. Only 2 for 3 dollars. It’s got hot jam in it.”
“Oh, I’m so getting one.” ~turns to warren~ “Do you want get one?”
”Nah it’s fine.”
”Oh, I won’t bother getting one then.”
”But if you want one, I’ll split the other one with you.”
”Nah it’s okay if you don’t want one.”
”Nah, I’ll have it!”
”Don’t worry about it!”
”I’m getting one, you want one?”
”Nah I’m fine.”
”JEEZ DAVID, JUST SAY YES IF YOU WANT ONE.”
“…okay, I want one.” *whimper*
“If everyone just told the truth, the world would be so much better.”

And hence started the great debate of the truth.

I started thinking, how can everyone speak the ‘truth’. I mean, if there was just a single easy truth, wouldn’t everyone be doing it? And I guess we are up to an extent. Everyone will say, roses are red or the sky is blue. Cause it’s the simple truth. But then, put it into the above scenario. What was the truth in that case? Did I simply just want a jam donut, and was being a loser by trying to dodge it? Or was there something more?

In this context, this is more of an opinion vs truth case. The outcome was that I did want a jam donut, and perhaps that was the truth. But what was I thinking through out that debate? If Warren did not want one, then I did not want him to suffer having to eat the delicious jam donut just because I wanted one. Hence, I declined to have one. Also, perhaps I wasn’t THAT interested in having a jam donut. So when Warren did not desire to have a delicious hot jam donut, maybe I realised, hey I don’t really want one either. So you can see, the truth is not really that simple.

Therefore, I proposed that we couldn’t always just simply speak the truth, because sometimes truth is perceptive, and hence not generally agreed on by everyone. Tif also stated (somewhere along the lines of) that there is one truth in the world, even if we don’t realise it. This not only strengthened my theory, but also led me to think about it in religious terms.

Now we travel onto a more rocky ground, where it comes into faith vs truth. I’ve heard often that when people believe in one religion, it is because they truly believe that it is the ONE true religion…which makes sense I thought. But then how do we know it is the true religion? Each religion has it’s own ‘evidence’ that cause people to solidly believe in their religion, but yet there are so many of them. Again, not a single truth, but a perceptive one.

I guess in the end, I came to see how Tif’s theory could work. In the first scenario, I could’ve stated: No I don’t want one anymore because I don’t want to make Warren have one just because of me. But that would be quite a long conversation, in which probably would’ve led to another argument (No it’s okay, I want one…etc.). But I suppose…

I’m done thinking about this now.

On an ending note, the trip to drive through cinemas was unbelievably fun and uncomfortable. I think I’m liking these late night outings that seem to becoming more and more frequent…thanks for the fun guys.