What is Truth? - Part One

 What is truth? When asked, by Pilate, Jesus ducked that question, which should give you some clue. Well, I do not believe in ducking anything, so here goes. Short answer. No one, none of us, has any idea. Or rather, we have many ideas, but that is all they are, ideas.                                                                                 

Not very satisfying, I suppose, so here goes the long answer. Throughout history, men have tried, with mixed success, to figure things out. Here we sit, on this lovely blue, spinning marble, zooming through, the Universe in orbit around a hot ball of gas, which in turn is zipping around the edges of a system of an unthinkably large number of other hot balls of gas, which is but one of many such systems. All of this motion seems to be governed by a system of laws that describe the action, sort of.                                                                                                              

For years, humans looked out at this ridiculously vast space and wondered, then tried to figure how they related to the whole thing. No wonder we are all, really, quite mad. This, we decided was the realm of the gods and we read tremendous import into the motion in the skies. We observed spectacular events, flares, eclipses, comets, meteors, and believed we were witnessing the rages and battles of those gods, and fearful, for damn good reason, we performed rites and rituals to appease them, and rites and rituals to feed them, for surely all of their effort left them weak, and we could not let them cease their activity and allow the Universe to fail.                                                                                                                     

We were children and saw with the eyes of children. Now, there is a wonderful aspect to children, their openness and thrill as they discover their world but, like it or not, children grow up. Yes, it is easy to lose that excitement and energy of youth, but, when we look back at those days, it is all too easy to forget the anxiety and fear that are present in then. Children are terrified by ordinary experiences such as thunderstorms and have no way of protecting themselves from sudden disasters and no way of caring for themselves. Mommy and Daddy cannot, and should not be there forever, feeding and nursing them.                     

In Part Two, some alternatives to conventional history will be discussed (don't worry, this won't be too academic)