Letter 1: The Journey

Hi. I am Joshua, and these are my letters. They are a summary of findings from my journey to discover and comprehend the truth about the nature of our existence and life’s great questions. In them I will present a theory that, to my knowledge, has never been published before and that I hope you will find can unify what science and religion have to offer. With that in mind, I hope you will follow me on this journey through my letters as I explain.

 

Before diving in, I want to spend some time covering a few important concepts regarding the truth, because my experience is that many people don’t really know what the truth is, so I’d like to start by defining it.

 

The dictionary defines truth as “Reality. Things that are fact.” This is direct, but what does it mean? What is reality? What is fact? The dictionary defines these as “Reality: The world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them”; “Fact: A thing that is indisputably the case.” Combining these definitions yields: “Truth: The world or the state of things as they actually, indisputably exist, not the way that they are perceived to be.” This is straightforward, but I find it is missing something.

 

Many years back, I stumbled across a book that is from Mormon culture that contains a very interesting definition of truth. The book is called Doctrine and Covenants, and in it, God is portrayed to be the one speaking. In the 93rd chapter, he gives his definition of truth as follows: “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.”

 

Notice that this definition makes a critical distinction, that truth is the knowledge of things…” rather than the state of things. Truth on any topic exists whether anyone knows it or not, but is there value in an unknown truth or only in its potential to be known? According to this definition purported to be given by God himself, truth must be known in order to be truth and thus, unknown truth exists in the realm of existence but needs to be discovered and known. Those are interesting thoughts and they lead us to the next topic - discovery.

 

Discovery is defined in the dictionary as “The action or process of discovering or being discovered.” In other words, discovery is the process of learning something new and it happens to every person continually in one way or the other. The problem is that there is an overload of things to be discovered, more than anyone can possibly cover in a lifetime. Thus, if one hopes to discover the truth about our existence and life’s great questions, they have to be a seeker of such and a determined one at that. This is because truth by its very nature is a needle in a haystack, for it is singular while falsehood has infinite possibilities. To find truth, a process of identifying it is needed so that the seeker knows when they have found it and when they have not. This process I call the Circle of Truth.

 

One of the beautiful things about truth is that it is like a close-knit family where members stand with arms interwoven, forming an unbreakable circle of support for each other. Although each individual truth is singular, it is connected to other truths that are in turn connected to more. If the process of discovery is used to find a single truth and then continued to discover the surrounding truths, eventually the full circle is complete and the whole truth is revealed. This is why something that is true can stand against all tests and challenges because no matter how deep you dig; all of the surrounding truths will support it. An example of this is gravity. So far, mankind’s discoveries have all supported that it exists.

 

This leads to an obvious question however: How does one complete the Circle of Truth? Well, unfortunately, you don’t. Doing so requires the knowledge of all things, for anything less leaves the possibility that something undiscovered will arise and disprove what was thought to be true. This is why we have only theories in this life and why what I will reveal in these letters will be just that… a theory. 

 

The final facet of truth I want to cover is that truth cannot change. A truth that changes was never a truth in the first place, but rather truth as experienced and/or understood. If these two things were the same, then there would be no way to ever arrive at the truth as it would be a moving target, and no truth could ever be relied upon to remain true. Thus, it is our knowledge and understanding of the truth that changes, not the truth itself.

 

Hopefully you will find that what I will present in these letters - though not the entire truth about our existence - is unique and I will show it to be well supported in the Circle of Truth.

 

Much more to come.

 

Until next time,

 

Joshua

Reviews

[futurepast.]

I am very pleased to read this. I am a Truth seeker as well, as I love educating myself about Man, Life, Death, the Universe, and God. Though I have not written on these topics (yet), my quest continues and this helps me to grow spiritually. I don't know what truths you are referring to here, but going through this chapter, I have a feeling that we are on the same track. It feels really great that there are people who have the same interests as me, the thirst for Truth, the thirst for knowledge and growth. I am really looking forward to read your upcoming chapters.