Criticism of the "Global Truth Project" - The Present (former "Truth Contest")
by Sylvain Poirier
When I first stumbled upon the "Truth contest" site, it all looked like its purpose was highly honorable:
"...contest to find and spread the truth about
life and death, the ultimate truth. People who
enter may represent philosophy, science, religion, or
themselves. Any seers or prophets out there?
Truth Contest is not a competition with a winner. It is just the
best way to find, define and spread the truth. The most clear,
complete and accurate explanation of the truth will be on top
followed by the next best. Everyone wins, because we will
have the best entries together. It doesn't matter who
writes it, what is said is all that matters.
Entries are evaluated using the evidence, critical
reason, logic, common sense, and scientific methods. It has to
make sense and be supported by the evidence. We are looking for
the kind of truth you can check."
But then, when looking further in the list of proposed doctrines, I
noticed it was, to say the least, far from complete, as these
doctrines are all of the traditional sort of spiritualist
worldviews, rather idiot, foolish, and anyway at the antipodes of reason.
I understood he may have been only at the beginning of his project,
he said he did not receive yet any submission for the defense of the
rational, scientific approach to the truth. So, I started a more systematic writing my worldview, which I
developed entirely by rational means, with a long experience (I have been Evangelical
Christian, then discovered the falsity of Christianity and analyzed
its errors in details and had many tries of debates with people of
different views on different topics).
Before this, I had already written about what is wrong with spirituality, a panorama
of the causes of many of the world's problems (the causes of
misunderstandings between people, as well as many other problems)
and how
to solve them. As this is all very long, I finally also wrote
a short
summary of my views.
I wrote to the webmaster of the "Truth Contest", proposing him to
include a link to my writings in his list of candidate truths. I
also debated with him about diverse troubles with his site, the
flaws and ridiculous hubris of his claims of being the world center
of the search for truth, in sharp contrast with the terrible
situation of what his site is actually doing.
This was already a few years ago. I was very patient. I forgot about
it since then. He had all the time to either develop his site to
make it finally become worth something (for example, at least by
including a more diverse list of candidate views of life), and/or
delete whatever ridiculous claims in his site of pretending to be
anything special that it clearly isn't.
But finally, as
- it seems many people are searching the web for criticism of
this "Truth Contest",
- now having one more look, I see that he did not make any
correction of some needed kind,
well, I considered my duty to write down this one :)
Why it is nothing special
He wants to review the different candidate truths, check by
reason which one is best, and then publish the conclusion and hope
all people will be convinced and agree.
The only problem is, who (among the many people in the world who
feel concerned about matters of truth) isn't already doing the
same ?
Isn't it of course everybody's try to do so: whenever
anybody holds some view, it is of course because this view
seemed to be the best (most true) view to this person, in the
context of his experience, over any other view that he happened to
know about.
Is there anyone on Earth that, when expressing a view on anything,
isn't implicitly a person that operated and keeps operating a
Truth Contest in his own mind, comparing his views to any other
view that he happened to hear about, and selecting his own
conclusions as the one view that won his internal Truth Contest
over other views ?
But in this case, how is this web site of "Truth Contest" any
different from any web site presenting any other views, the views
that happened to win each of the internal Truth Contests happening
in the minds of their respective authors ?
Of course this general situation of coexistence of many views in the
world does not seem satisfying, since all these truth contests
happened to lead different people to lead different conclusions, so
that we may legitimately wonder if there would be any means to do
better. But just noticing that the current situation is not
satisfying and declaring that one wishes to do better by operating a
truth contest between the different views, does not suffice to make
one automatically the world center of the search for truth,
because... well of course everybody already noticed that it is a
pity to see many other people failing in their search for truth, so
that we are somehow not living in an ideal world.
So, he took the bold decision to set up a web site where he would
would loudly declare that he is undertaking to do better. Is that
fine ? Of course it would be nice to do better. I would even say
that it is actually possible to do better. But... once again, who
doesn't already wish to do better ?
And how, in practice, would it be possible to do better ? What can
be the methods, the criteria ? Different people may have different
ideas about it.
It is possible to technically develop rather good practices of
reason. For example, in mathematics and other scientific fields,
there was the development of the peer-review system, where the works
of some authors were reviewed and validated by other experts in the
field before publication. Which can only work well, however, if
there is already some kind of well-established pre-selection of who
is qualified to operate such reviews. Which wasn't always the case,
for example with the journal "Social
Text" during the Sokal affair.
So, how to do better ? The problem is, while it can be actually
possible to do better, is it anyhow technically possible to have any
connection with the loud declaration that one is trying to
do better ? Precisely, the possible meaningful tries of "ways to do
better" can roughly be classified in 2 categories (do you see any
other one ?).
- By being a better skilled truth seeker oneself, may it be in
intelligence, in rational examination, in experience, in
learning about many views and arguments, etc.
- By developing some sort of bureaucracy, or collective
organization, any ways by which the views of different people
can interact and try to refute each other, that aims to be a
better logical structure of interaction more likely to lead
people to correctly select the truth, than the natural
anarchical ways in which the different views are already
interacting in the world. (Actually, I think that among many
other purposes, my software
project can effectively bring that kind of progress.)
The author of the "Truth Contest" site, seems to have chosen the
first way. The problems are:
- This is in direct total contradiction with his loud
methodological declaration that only ideas should matter but
people and authors shouldn't matter
- Even if it was true that someone is the best truth seeker of
the world, such a reality would be technically
incompatible with the technical act of declaring that one is
organizing a Truth Contest. Because, technically, even if is
true that someone is the best truth seeker of the world, the act
of declaring this cannot bring anything to the debate.
Indeed, the act of declaring to make a Truth Contest web
site, in order to be technically meaningful (informative, worth
saying), requires on a logical, technical level, exploring
the second kind of try to do better, that is the
bureaucratic kind.
My point here is not to argue which of both ways is best. Just that
one must be aware that :
Whenever someone tries to do better than the average people, and
especially when one is bold enough to declare to the world one's try
to do better, as far as to make this declaration of try the main
title of one's Web site presenting itself as the world-center of the
search for Absolute Truth,
Then it is at least necessary to be at clear that this declaration
of intent cannot be taken seriously unless the author subjects
himself to some high level of duty of some sort. And in particular,
to clarify in which way does he think his action differ from anyone
else's.
Which, I think, for this declaration to mean something, it requires
to explicitly choose at least one of both above options how it is
conceivable to consider a truth seeking project as something better
than what millions of other people already did. And to remain
coherent with this choice.
An obligation, to which this site utterly failed, it seems.
His excuse to dismiss my arguments
To my tries to explain him things, his main reply was
"You are losing me in complicated intellectual
jargon, please be more specific in what you are trying to
say. We are looking for truth that can be checked, by
anyone who wants to seek and check it out for themselves."
"You say things in such confusing and
overly-intellectual ways that would be very hard for people to
understand or even read. The majority of people are not
intellectuals. Keep that in mind. How will an
explanation of the ultimate truth of life and death unite people
if they can't even read or comprehend the words in it?"
Sorry but I don't agree with his accusations. I don't see any
special jargon in my writings. Precisely I care to explain all my
findings in common language, the same language as anyone. Except
that I use the common language to explain things that may be too
subtle concepts for the ordinary dumb people. I do a lot of efforts
of explanations and clarifications, but I cannot completely and
faithfully turn some deep understandings into some obvious slogan
that anyone can understand without any effort of getting out of
their usual stupidity. I speak the language of intelligent truth, of
how things actually are. But it's not my fault if many people don't
have the brain to understand any non-trivial truths.
He does not have a clue about what it really means to "evaluate
something using the evidence, critical reason, logic, common
sense, and scientific methods"
Seriously. What scientific abilities does he have ? He has no word
about it, under the excuse that the truth is not a matter of people,
but of content.
Actually, the practice of reason and science, is an activity for
those who have the ability to do it. Just taking the decision that
"I'm going to examine this scientifically", as a mere intention, and
even more especially when wanting to do this about an expected
"Ultimate Truth of Life" that was'nt yet "of course" known to the
many scientists and other truth seekers of the past, does not
suffice to give oneself the qualification to effectively, correctly,
successfully do so.
If science is a profession that not everybody can practice, if the
many humans that were on Earth since many millenia had not succeeded
to develop science earlier than they did, and it takes many years of
study and a very hard selection to make a community of people able
to practice science and reason in any difficult field of science (as
most scientific fields are at least somehow difficult, to discover
things that, well, were not yet known in previous millenia), well,
it is not just for the pleasure of segregating the rest of people.
But it is because the genuine practice of reason and truth
discernment on any issue is not just a matter of desire to
discern the truth (as billions of people did desire but failed to
acheive, should't this at least suggest that there is some
difficulty to do it properly beyond mere desires), but also a matter
of skill (intelligence), experience of research and criticism of
different views, knowledge of many things...
But more precisely, the views he defends as the "absolute truth" are
exactly among the most stupid, untrue, anti-rational views that can
be found. That is roughly just one more version of the traditional
views of spiritualities and religions, which (together with the
natural dumbness of many humans) were one of the main obstacles to
any earlier discovery of science.
This sort of traditional religious and "spiritualist" view, are the
very views that consist in praising stupidity and ignorance.
Because, well, as all people were dumb and ignorant in the past, the
only way they could find to feel well with themselves and not be
ashamed of "feeling lost" in their ignorance, was to redefine
"knowledge" and "ignorance" in a way that actually consists in
making a dialectic inversion between them, to willingly practice the
deepest and most absolute dumbness and ignorance and self-persuade
this would be the very definition of knowledge, in order to no more
be able to figure out how dumb and ignorant they are, and thus get a
feeling that they are above the ignorant other people who are at
least aware of their ignorance...
His expectations are absurd
He has many requirements on the Truth he is seeking for: he wants it
to combine many advantages
- To be indeed true
- Among all possibly existing truths, he expects one that
should more precisely the Ultimate and Universal one (assuming
such a truth to exist better than any set of all sets
which is ruled out by Russell's paradox)
- To be simply understandable and "rationally" verifiable so as
to easily convince a large majority of the currently present
human specimens on the Earth planet at this precise time of its
many-million-years-long history of concious life, disregarding
how dumb and irrational most of these specimens may be
- To unite all people
- To resolve the world's problems
and I'm not sure what more requirements he may be having. Should
it also be able make coffee ?
But, as long as he doesn't have it yet, how can he predict that
these many requirements are compatible, and that something
fulfilling all them together would be possible ?
In the name of what can he dare to assume that, first of all and
prior to any kind of search or examination, we miserable humans
should give ourselves a legitimate right to submit The Real Truth of
the Universe to the obligation of passing all the above selection
criteria for being possibly qualified as a candidate worth
examination and debate for a Truth Contest ?
A solution satisfying his main effective requirements already
existed, but...
You want a Universal Truth that all people can understand, agree and
join, and with which the world can change ? Okay, no problem, you
can find.
Such a thing already happened 1 century ago.
There was a truth that convinced and united "all people" (well,
expect of course some mentally ill people that needed to be
reeducated in gulags), and by which they changed the world. Many
philosophers accepted it, and even had a high consideration towards
it, they saw it as a model of philosophy, reason, scientific method
and understanding of the world.
The only problem with this Universal Truth, was that it was, hmm...
just not truly true.
Many scientists and some philosophers knew it was total bullshit and
completely irrational, but still large numbers of other people would
never have cared to hear their warnings. Instead, they dismissed
these criticism, as things too.... intellectual, not well
understandable, and therefore awfully elitist and undemocratic.
I'm speaking of course about Marxism.
Wonderfully unifying doctrine, isn't it ?
And still now again many people are repeating
this experience.
And, well, there was already nothing new there anyway. Most
religions claimed each one to be the Ultimate truth and the way to
unify all humans, didn't they ? So... what's new ????
I have a candidate Truth of this kind to offer
Seriously ! and I'm not asking for any donation to spread it !
While nothing in the universe has the duty to please the
miserable humans on the Earth planet, to such a point as to let
anything combining the above criteria to be even possible, I
incidentally happened to have discovered and expressed a really true, short, amazing,
clear and self-evident view of a rather specific but essential and
widely ignored aspect of the Ultimate Truth on the sense of life,
with which I challenge anyone to coherently express any significant
disagreement once read. I'd say, if you want a Ultimate Truth on the
sense of life that is not only easily understandable, but also that
is actually true and able to unify (many) people, and where you
actually learn a lot on the sense of life just by reading it, with
no need of any external source of evidence, this is indeed a
proposition worth reviewing !
However I'm afraid the author of the Truth Contest website still
won't like it. Go figure why.
Apart from this, since some people wrote me to ask, I also have
answers on other issues. But it all depends on what is your
question :
- On the nature of
consciousness and the mind/matter interaction (on fqxi with additional comments).
More here
and there.
But this says nothing about how man should live.
- If you wonder, not how man should live (everyone lives the way one likes and/or
one can according to their different needs and abilities, and even the best things that
can be done for the world depends on who does them, according to their abilities,
since.... some of the best things to do for the world are to bring innovation, and not
everyone is able to bring the same innovation, which would be useless anyway), but,
how the world works and what may its main problems and solutions depend on, you
can have a look here and there, among many more of my
pages... while these so important issues are unrelated with metaphysics.
But I stumbled (in 2017) on a quite interesting source of information on ultimate truths
: the Seth
material from Jane Roberts,
though I still find it far from perfect as I explain in my review.
What's wrong with the content of his "truth" anyway ?
Many things might be said. Here are just a few:
- His fallacies are just another repetition of that same
stupidity contest that is widespread in religions and
spiritualites.
- In particular, he accuses the usual practice of existing
religions of being too intellectual, which they are'nt.
- He has no bit of evidence that his "method" towards the truth
can ever reveal any effective truth to anyone. He just puts
forward his dream that getting rid of all rational knowledge
will once suddenly provide a magic path to a divine, universal
knowledge. Dreams and speculations can be nice but need to be
checked against experience in order to be acceptable as the
truth. So, I would have no a priori against it, any more than
against the Bible or anything. However, away from nice a priori
guesses and speculations, I happened to discern from logic and
experience that such nice hypothesis just happen to be
incompatible with the reality that we can observe. Because, if there
existed anyone on Earth with a divine knowledge, it would have
consequences. And, since there is none, while so many
millions of people tried their best already (from diverse
religions), thus all in vain, isn't it foolish to pretend that
we must just keep trying, pretending that the magic effects are
close to reach ? Remember the saying : insanity is trying the
same thing over and over again and expecting different result.
Just like playing Lotto, or pretending oneself to be much better
than others to be able to succeed what everyone else failed,
maybe. So, not that I would dislike such claims to be true, I
just know that they (unfortunately) do not fit with the reality
of human life and possibilities.
- Another author (with whom I don't always agree, but...) wrote
a criticism
of almost the same doctrine by Joseph Waligore.
Other people's questions and remarks
Someone
wrote a very long
and interesting list of questions to the authors of the Truth
contest site.
Another message I received: Stumbled across your page criticizing the
truth contest after stupidly clicking on a youtube link out of sheer curiosity and boredom.
I'm not exactly a philosopher, rather just a student, but a couple years of religion classes
have made me quite proficient at finding fault with other people twisting their reasoning to
stuff their perceptions into the unsuspecting. I didn't get through very much of "the present
(with religion)" because, to be blatantly honest, I lost attention due to the level of stupidity
and lack of any organized thought process, or argument for that matter. From what I did
get through, though, I noticed these things:
1) "Just the truth: The truth about life and death can be explained without any reference
to religion, and some people may prefer that, but more than half of the human race is involved
in a religion. Thus, to be the ultimate explanation of the truth, it must include religion, all religions.
This is the only way to unite us all."
- Unity = excluding the couple of billion people who happen to not be involved in a religion?
- "it must include all religions"- Yet, for the first 8 pages, the only religion truly referenced
(back-asswardly, might I add) is Christianity
2) "The truth and the life has to be God, so people that ignore the truth or give other things
priority are saying by their actions and their desires that they do not want to know God."
- This simply reeks of Catholicism. But of course, we're including "all religions" here, per say?
3) "Most of the Bible and other old religious books are the interpretations, opinions, and the bias
of many different uninspired people, and not what Jesus and other inspired prophets actually said
or meant... the official Bible... was created by the enemies of Christianity... Most of what Jesus
said was never even written down in the language he spoke.
The early interpreters did not know the truth. To interpret what a prophet says, you have to know the truth."
- ...yet he quotes these works, which he just claimed invalid and untrue, throughout his
"book", in proof of the "absolute truth" (strange, this is also a term I first encountered
strictly regarding CATHOLIC beliefs).... So a book of true truth is being supported by
what the author himself already recognized as mere stories falsely portrayed as truth. Solid.
4) "In the past, almost no one could know the truth. Now, almost everyone can." Simply false.
The entire purpose of the website is a SEARCH for the truth, whatever it may be, indicating
that insofar NOBODY KNOWS what "truth" really is (or at least they haven't convinced the
rest of the world of their revelations yet)
5) "Repetition: If something is repeated, it makes a bigger impression and changes
your brain more, changes your inner environment more. Thus, the more repetition, the better.
That is why I repeat some things many times and say the same thing many different ways.
TV advertisers repeat commercials for this reason."
- Is he implying that his book has about the same amount of validity and worth as a
commercial? Because that's how it seems
- By admitting that he is simply using repetition to change people's brain more, he is
basically conceding to forcing this "truth" onto others, whether they want it or not, by
imprinting his own ideas in their heads.
6) "I am giving it to you the same way it was given to me. The ultimate truth is
like a combination to a lock; it has to be in a certain order, and you need all of it to open
the gate to true life."
- Tell me now, who gave him this ultimate truth? Who was the source of ultimate truth as he understands it?
7) None of this so far has used any science, reasoning, or even rational thinking in its justification.
It is mere statements, repeated in various ways, and separated by unrelated and unincorporated quotes.
8) Why bother with a "truth contest" open to "all ideas" anyways if some group of college
students is going to censor what they deem "worthy". I understand that they obviously
can't have a million submissions, but judging by the quality and content of the site, they don't anyways.
This is as far as I got. Like I said before, boredom caught up to me before the "truth" did.
I'm sure there are plenty more inconsistent and contradictory statements to poke fun at,
but I don't particularly feel up to trudging through an entire "book" of this bullshit.
I'm sure most of these have already been realized, but felt a need to translate to "plain english",
although this level is probably still too sophisticated for the "average human" to understand according
to the author of a book who encourages ignorance and lack of thought.
If you have more comments to add, either as a text or as a link
to a page elsewhere, sorry that this page does not work as a blog
but you may still write me (trustforum at gmail.com) and I can add
it here.
I might add more
The email conversation I had with him was quite long. I may someday
review it, and quote and comment more of it, to complete the present
page.
Their line of defense in reply to this criticism
Here is a message I got.
From : King Chuch <kingchuch@gmail.com>
Date: March 26, 2014 23:43
Subject : regarding: antispirituality.net/truthcontest.htm
You should take down this page: antispirituality.net/truthcontest.htm - It is flat out dumb,
wrong, and is deterring people from one of the most truthful and promising websites on the internet.
Your site is an exercise of schizophrenic ramblings from an ego-maniac. If you are a
diagnosed schizophrenic, I apologize for that statement, but I do not revoke it. I was
actually encouraged to find a criticism of Truth Contest in my Google search, but your
site as a whole contains absolutely NOTHING useful, and the criticism itself is unfounded and ridiculous.
"You are losing me in complicated intellectual jargon, please be more specific in what
you are trying to say...You say things in such confusing and overly-intellectual ways
that would be very hard for people to understand or even read."
Normally, as a retired professor of physics, I would scowl at such a response, but the
"webmaster" is right on this time. Your site is full of run-on sentences stuffed with big
words that lead absolutely fucking nowhere, and trust me, I tried to get through most of it,
as a neutral, rational reader.
You are doing the truth seekers of the world a MAJOR disservice by putting out such
an incredibly stupid "criticism" of Truth Contest. Please consider removing the page
from the internet, for the sake of humanity and our quest for truth.
Sincerely,
Alan
(I previously got another message from someone else but it was rather a draft of message and the author never replied after I replied something and asked him if he meant to be serious and to have the discussion public)
Other sites with criticism
Reddit page
Some links of interest for any Truth Contest worthy of this
name
Religious tolerance
website (by a team of different authors holding different views)
with a list
of links
Project Worldview
Forums of religious
debates:
A large list of Atheism vs.
Theism Debates
Another (not as big)
list
of atheism vs. theism debates.
Archive of other links of debating
God (http://atheism.about.com/od/debatinggod/)
Back to main page : Anti-spirituality website