CD Reading #2 "Multiple Truths"

March 8, 2022

Multiple Truths

Reading #2 for Online Course for Facilitators

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he intrinsic worth of every human being means every idea has some sort of claim on the truth. To some, this may seem like a radical statement, but to Rabbi Irwin Kula, a 2:00 lecturer for the Department of Religion in 2007, it is not radical, it is essential if we are going to give every person the right to be heard. Rabbi Kula, in his book Yearnings, explores the concept of multiple truths. In it he tells a creation 3” ID story that is particularly important to

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the concept of civil discourse. The story imagines that God, who possesses Truth, sees value in creating a humankind that will search for the Truth. Therefore,Truth on Earth cannot be what it is in heaven. When God casts Truth down to Earth, Truth shattered into pieces and from the dust he created Adam, the rst human. But Adam possessed only particles of truth. And so, the story goes, God created no human on earth who possesses all of the Truth but left humankind to search endlessly for answers.

The Chapel of the Good Shepherd also known as the Chapel in the Woods at Chautauqua.

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mbracing this particular creation narrative makes the free and responsible search for truth and meaning come alive with possibilities, and becomes foundational and supportive to understanding how someone possesses a very di erent truth from our own. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning, cannot be perceived if one assumes that any human possesses an absolute truth.

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If one accords another person the same right to possess a personal understanding of truth as one accords ones self, then no one can diminish another person’s beliefs, dismiss their perspectives or opinions or deny their inherent worth and dignity.

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oreover, the Talmud says about both the teachings of Hillel and Shammai, these and these are

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The Miller Bell Tower

he central text of Rabbinic Judaism, the Talmud, provides another way to understand the concept of truth. The Talmud contains centuries of recorded debates between two schools of thought: Hillel and Shammai. Both schools considered questions concerning the lived experience and created answers (decisions), almost always in opposition to one another.

However, as Rabbi Kula reminds us, more expansive and profound truths can be found within every con ict; they are just waiting to be discovered.

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“the words of the living God.” Although Hillel’s opinions usually prevailed, it was not because of a claim of greater truth, quite the contrary, it was because Hillel understood and also valued the truth of Shammai.

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he idea that there is no such thing as certain knowledge or ultimate truth makes for an uncertainty that empowers us to engage in a free and responsible search for our own personal truth. It also provides the basis for reasoning, the weighing of alternative ideas, and personal choices that make sense to us, leading to a community where, “we each have our own truths and our own knowledge, according to our circumstances.” The particulars of our own experiences as perceptions of truth undermines any idea of xed knowledge. Therefore, in and through dialogue we have the opportunity to hear and to value the truth of others.

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ynn Stahl and I are both products of a high school debate team. We both attribute our world view based on the experience of being charged with preparing arguments in both pro and con narratives, never knowing until we walked into a debate which side we would be required to take. We learned that we could assemble a set of “facts” to support almost any argument and state them as the truth. The experience made us nd the strengths and weaknesses of opposing viewpoints. We learned, as Rabbi Kula observes, “When two ideas con ict, it isn’t because one in necessarily true and the other false. It’s that each represents a di erent perspective on reality. As physicist Niels Bohr taught: The opposite of a fact is a falsehood but the opposite of a profound truth is very often another profound truth.”

Engaging in dialogue with each other expands our exposure to di erent “truths”, to di erent perceptions, that allows us to understand and incorporate the “truth” of others into our own thinking and world view. We just have to be open to listening.

“Multiple Truths” Adapted from "Transformation Through Dialogue" by Roger Doebke

The second in a series of readings designed to start you thinking about various issues that press directly on how we can facilitate civil discourse.

Much of this text is taken directly from Yearnings without speci c attribution.

Roger Doebke

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