Preliminary Questions

Information About the Way Things Are

Self-Evidence

What is information and where does it come from? Your mind is jam-packed with the stuff. Every one of your thirty-trillion cells is jam-packed with the stuff.

How did it get there?

You didn’t always exist. You were born a finite-number of years ago into a world already here to receive you. Meaning did not begin with you. The integrated matter and energy that forms you is borrowed from the cosmos. Your DNA is borrowed from your parents. The meaning inside your mind is borrowed from an intelligent Reality beyond the border of your subjective-self.

You are undeniably full of meaning, but where did it come from?

The search for Truth must first recognize that one thing isn’t equivalent to another. The universe is undeniably meaningful, and you’re the proof. But you aren’t the sum-total of the meaningful universe.

Sit with that fact for a moment—it’s important.

For your life to be meaningful, a relationship must exist in which information is shared between objective-reality and you—the subjective-thinker. If there is no such relationship, then I admit it—there is no such a thing as the objective-truth.

Some pretty important philosophers thought this was the case. Immanuel Kant thought objective facts are unknowable. He thought that since we only have direct access to our subjective-perceptions, we don’t have access to the world as it really is.

Friedrich Nietzsche agreed. But he went much further by insisting that we can channel our subjective perspectives through our “will to power”—and transcend humanity as we construct meaning for ourselves.

Many regard Nietzsche’s thought as groundbreaking. It isn’t. His idea is as old as the Luciferian spirit. Long has it possessed humanity in one form or another. Genesis 3:4-6; Isaiah 14:12-15

While Kant was right to point out a distinction between the “world of our perceptions” and the “world as it really is”—he failed to sufficiently credit the Relationship that unites both in the intelligible world we share. In consequence, Kant’s idea evolved into today’s popular notion that truth is a construct; that we each construct our own truth; and that objective reality is unknowable, and therefore ultimately unimportant.

Is this really the case? If it is, the consequences should startle us.

If truth is an individual construct, then objective meaning does not exist. This means that information cannot be meaningfully shared from one human mind to another. If this is true, it holds for anyone who has ever had something “true” to say. That includes Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche—and even you!

Soberly consider the following statement:

“There is no objective-truth?”

Is this statement true? Did you notice that it’s making an objective truth claim—and a self-cancelling one at that? The last time you said “I love you”—did you mean it? Could you mean it?

Let’s settle this debate once and for all.

Is this sentence meaningless? You know it isn’t because you and I are communicating right now. Indeed, our meaningful relation is self-evident. We are sharing meaning together.

Note this well. You are thinking, and undeniably exist to be doing so. Your thinking equips you to notice my thinking and infer that you’re not the only thinker there is. You can’t be. After all, you aren’t the source of the words on this page—I am.

The propositions represented by this text began outside of your mind, and they are flowing into it as you read these words. Indeed, the symbols on this page are like trucks crossing a cosmic-bridge, carrying meaning from my mind into yours. We are sharing meaning—you and me. We are joined in a communion with the Truth.

Since I’m a thinker like you, I undeniably exist. We share an objective real-world in which meaningful information exists to be thought about together. It is the Unity between information and mutual-thinkers like you and me that permits “true” access to the world as it really is.

Indeed, we can establish the relationship between the world of our perceptions and the world as it really is on the testimony of two or three witnesses—in this case you, me, and Meaning itself. Meaning has never existed on its own. It has always been shared in a Community. John 17:3-5 & 17

Now, I didn’t construct the world’s meaning. It’s been around a lot longer than I have. I’m pretty sure you didn’t construct it either. So where does meaning come from in the first place? What is its Ultimate-Headwaters?

That might be the most important question in all of philosophy.

The Logos

The word “Logos” was coined by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus around the 5th-century BC. Heraclitus used this term in an effort to describe the uniting factor between reality and the thinkers who share it.

Later, the Apostle John would apply this term to Jesus Christ, the creator and sustainer of Heaven and Earth; and the Substance of the life and light given to humanity. John 1:1-10

“Logos” is a term packed with meaning. It is difficult to translate into English that does it justice. Essentially “Logos” denotes the Source and Substance of Meaning itself; what we might call “The Truth.”

This point is crucial. Truth is information that perfectly corresponds to the way things are. Put simply, truth is perfect-information about facts. It is perfect-meaning. The key idea here is “Perfect” which means complete, unchanging, and lacking nothing essential to itself.

We noticed above that your thinking equipped you to detect my thinking and infer that you aren’t the only thinker there is. An even bigger inference follows, and it’s quite unavoidable. Since we share meaning, it has to come from somewhere external to both of us. Indeed, genuine-meaning must come from a Perfect-Thinker with direct access to the world as it really is—to the facts.

Since neither of us are Him, we must share a basic access to this Perfect-Thinker.

The Logos is the Cosmic-Bridge that unites Reality to Meaning in perfect stability so that thinkers like you and me can share a bit of reality together. The Logos is both the Thinking-Truth and the Ultimate-Fact from which all other facts are derived.

“HE IS” the very Unity of Reality and Meaning.

Exodus 3:14; John 8:58; John 14:6; Colossians 1:16-17

Even though this consequence is unavoidable, most of us spend our whole lives trying to avoid it. Why?

Because the Luciferian spirit beckons us to join Nietzsche in saying: “God is dead.” Then we can “transcend” our humanity, climb onto God’s vacant chair, and speak a new-world into being where we can comfortably “live our truth.” You see, we want to become the Logos.

Can we? Is it even possible?

Let’s be honest. Are you a perfect-thinker? I’m certainly not. Will you ever be? I’m pretty sure I won’t. But Someone has to be!

Who is He? Matthew 16:15-16

That’s the big-question, isn’t it? You can ignore it, or honestly wrestle with it. In either case, the Logos won’t stop pestering you with it—not ever. Psalm 139

Sauce For the Goose

It’s tempting to appeal to relativism or pluralism to justify our perspectives as we attempt to live our own truth(s). Even so, we all appeal to the objective-truth when another person’s false-perspective harms us.

Imagine you are suffering from acute appendicitis and rush to the hospital for emergency treatment. Can you honestly say that your celebration of diverse perspectives extends even to the medical-doctor about to cut you open?

What if your doctor has applied his will to power; constructed his own truth about human anatomy; and subjectively declared your brain to be functionally equivalent to your appendix? If this doctor lives his-truth and lobotomizes you instead of treating your appendicitis, will you celebrate his radically authentic freedom?

Nope—because you’ll be dead. Why?

Because your doctor jumped into Nietzsche’s abyss, and he took you with him.

Did this doctor authentically transcend the project of human-medicine? Or did he merely disintegrate himself from it—and you from your life in the process?

Let’s raise the stakes. What if the patient were your child? Will you celebrate the doctor’s transcendence then? Should society block the streets and hold a ticker-tape parade for the “Uberdakter” who found the courage to live an “authentic” and groundbreaking perspective on human-anatomy?

No.

You won’t celebrate this doctor’s “truth.” Instead, you’re going to hire a lawyer and sue him for being an incompetent quack. In doing so, you will appeal to an objective Standard of Truth and Justice that you might verbally deny when you are warm, fed, healthy, and sufficiently stimulated by your favorite dopamine habit.

The board that certified this doctor will appeal to the same Standard when they strip him of his privileges in an effort to prevent him from harming others. Indeed, this anti-doctor will most likely be charged and convicted of a serious crime.

But why?

Because it’s an objective-fact that your brain isn’t your appendix. Every competent doctor knows the difference because they have spent a decade or more learning and sharing objective-truth about human anatomy in the community setting called a university.

The big diploma and the white coat aren’t just for show. They are a public witness that your doctor is an authentic servant of the Good; that they have given the necessary sacrifices of time and effort upon the altar of Truth in exchange for their expertise. They let you know that your doctor is accountable to their professional community, and responsible for the safety and well-being of the patients under their care—at least to the degree that they are able (Hippocrates).

That’s why you really should trust the advice of your doctor. Because a good-doctor isn’t going to treat you according to their-truth, or according to yours. Your safety rests on the solemn trust that your doctor will only treat you according to The-Truth.

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If meaning is objective for your doctor, then it’s objective full-stop.

Facts are the way things really are. Truth is perfect-information about the way things are. The Truth makes facts knowable to thinkers like you and me.

“He” makes the world a meaningful place. John 14:6

Why?

Because of God’s loving-hope that we might meaningfully choose to share Life together. It’s why there’s something rather than nothing.

Matthew 22:36-40; John 17:20-23; 1 Corinthians 13; 1 Peter 2:1-5