Does Truth Always Triumph

The definition of truth varies across the different types of schools dominant today. These schools include the school of science, the school of mathematics the school of jurisprudence and the school of religion. Thus a 'one fits all' definition of truth does not exist. One can therefore say truth is subjective and open to interpretation. With this in mind, in order to answer the question does truth always triumph; one has to hold a stance for which school their definition lies.

John Loeffler in his essay ' What is Truth' states, "Two thousand years ago, a governor in an obscure eastern province of the Roman Empire asked a condemned prisoner what his definition of truth was. At the time it was a sarcastic response to his prisoner's absurd claim that he was the way, the truth and the life. But the governor's simple query, "What is Truth?" spans two thousand years with a challenge that today's Christians are incapable of answering."

Ever since the beginning of Christianity, Christians have had a clear stance of what they view as the truth. The Bible, in the eyes of most Christians, IS the ultimate ' truth'. As with all ultimate stances however there are numerous challenges to this view. Christians believe that Jesus was and is their truth. For them belief in God is to believe in a conscious unknown, one that can never be proven or disproved by humanity. Christians also believed that truth was constant and absolute; it never changed.

However the Christian truth did not triumph in this world, history leads us to believe that Jesus was hung on a cross because of his definition of truth and punished for it. The recent release of the movie the DaVinci Code, although partly fictious and partly factual, has raised controversy about the Christian teaching of truth.

One of the challenges to the Christian view of Jesus being the truth is from the School of Science. It argues that the Universe is not controlled by a divine being, rather "the Universe presents itself as a secluded, self-organizing, and self-regulating system in which all processes taking place have a totally algorithmic character, flowing "by themselves" without any external interference"( Kulakov). Thus science believes that 'truth' can be found through description and measurement. Truth in science is clearly objective and absolute. However even truth in science today has failed to triumph, although scientists have found ways to answer some previously unanswerable questions, numerous other questions are still left unanswered. Leaving the world to question what is the truth? If science cannot explain all the workings of the universe then surely this cannot be the truth.

The School of mathematics claims "that without numbers nothing could exist, because you simply would not be able to express (in terms of information theory) the extant nature of anything."(Slyph, 2004). In considering this there lies a 'multiverse' out there where nothing exists, there is no matter to write a number down for, how then will math account for such areas? Math can then be seen as a tool and nothing more, the universe does not run on mathematics, rather mathematics runs on the universe and thus such dependence cannot be considered as truth, because truth must be objective and stand alone in its theory.

The school of jurisprudence can be seen as to have stemmed from religion, because justice and what is right and wrong is based on morals. Morals are the basis of all societies laws and are a reflection of those societies religious beliefs. Thus what is allowed in an Islamic country might not necessarily be allowed in a Christian country. Thus surely one cannot look to jurisprudence for the truth as it is based on interpretations of each societies belief. If truth has to stand alone in its theory it has to be objective.

There exists a wide range of definitions of truth that claim to be able to explain our human existence and our place on earth, science believes in evolution, yet what caused the Big Bang, is still unexplained. Mathematics believes that numbers tell the truth yet areas of non-existence such as the mutiverse cannot be numerated. Jurisprudence cannot be looked upon as the truth as it is based on the interpretation of societies religious beliefs. All these schools have attempted to explain truth however not one of the schools till today have been able to explain the absolute truth, thus if the answer to the question "What is truth" is yet to be explained, how then can the question 'will truth triumph' be answered?

- Renita George