I like that last statement:
Dave brought something to my attention - in another thread. It appears that the AMC show, the Walking Dead…will feature a totally nude zombie. Would this qualify, to make that statement true? 
What concerns me with the matter of truth is that in order to think and philosophize, a belief in absolute truth is absolutely necessary. However, when it comes to goodness and beauty, these are optional. In order to think or speak, truth statements are absolutely necessary. For example, saying that truth does not exist is a contradiction, as the statement as such is a truth statement. However, saying morality is relative or beauty is in the eye of the beholder are not contradictions, as no statements affirming goodness or beauty are made. So essentially it is completely possible to think and talk without making some goodness or beauty statements. Now I do believe that motivations in saying morality is relative is often for moralistic motivations, which is a whole other topic.
Richard Rohr has an interesting video on the matter of language and its relation to Dualistic thinking.
vimeo.com/161953466
However, in normal thinking, the mind has divided truth, goodness and beauty into three different entities. However, Christian tradition reveals that truth, goodness and beauty are absolute and unchanging. I find that we know right and wrong from natural law, but does not always seem realistic, and mere ideals. This reminds me of the idea that “Might makes right”, which is more profound of a problem than just some rant against tyrants. Considering that what we observe is a world where what can and be done should not be done, and what should be done cannot always be done. So in this way, goodness can seem like unrealistic ideals.
I had an insight on an old explanation of evil as absence of being. So this inherently would mean that being is both true and good. Yet evil seems like a something than nothing. From the Aesthetic point of view, we definitely see ugliness as something. For example, physical pain is repressed through use of anesthetics, which inherently causes a lack of feeling as opposed to pain. Plus, from an aesthetic pov, more is often ugly and less can be more. I remember in a book on death by Peter Kreeft, he explained that death is a friend in that death gives our life form, and without death, we risk becoming everything in general and nothing in particular. Most storytellers know well that for a story to be good, there has to be limitations. Like in most fantasy, there is no infinitely powerful magic where you can snap things into existence at will.
Sorry this went a little off topic. This was just meant to address the problem of the seeming conflicts between truth, goodness and beauty.
Good stuff Joe.
The story of Adam and Eve is true. It does not matter whether or not the account of the story is factual. Mere facts are not the same as Truth.
Chris
It does matter. If the account is not factual, then the story is not true.
Thanks for response. My own view is that a story can be true whether the facts are or not. For example, it does not matter if the factual details of a parable such as ‘The prodigal son’ actually occurred or not. Either way, the story is true. For me, it seems possible that the story of Adam and Eve was intended as a story to account for basic truths. God made all people and all people rebel against him. This seems to me to be True. The facts in the story may or may not be true, but the message is. Hope this makes my position clearer.
God bless
Chris
Perhaps you are using the word “true” in an unusual way. The story probably did not occur, and is therefore not true. But the MEANING of the parable is true. If the details of the story are not factual, it seems to that it is false to affirm that the story is true. Rather it portrays how a loving father would behave.
Here is a modern parable that does the same. If the story is not factual, then the story is not true. But the story illustrates a truth—namely that losing one’s temper can cause permanent damage to others:
There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.
The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence…
Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.
The day passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one."
Hello Paidion
I wasn’t aware that I was using ‘true’ in an unusual way. I guess another discussion could arise where we would attempt to differentiate between meaning, facts and truth.
As a person with an ‘arty’ kind of mind (I spent most of my working life as a pro musician), I often feel that, in the sense I mean it, art comes closer to real Truth than do facts. In the ‘Prodigal son’ story therefore, the ‘meaning’ is the underlying truth and the facts are less important (i.e., the meaning could be arrived at using different words and different stories), but the ultimate Truth we are to take from the story is that God loves us more than we can ever know, and all that we have to do is turn around and come back to him.
Conversely, even if the story’s independent ‘facts’ (e.g., the son really did eat pig-food!) could be proved to be true, it wouldn’t affect the truth of the meaning of the story. Maybe he could’ve sunk so low that he rummaged through other people’s dustbins for stale bread instead for example. In other words, the ultimate meaning is ‘Truth’ in the sense I was using it. I think there’s a distinction between this kind of Truth and truth which can be attached to individual data and facts.
In a musical sense, I could point to the development of notation, the physics of sound…vibrating strings, columns of air etc., etc; the fact that our ears detect certain combinations of frequencies as being more ‘pleasing’ than others, and so on, but at the end of my endless analysis, I would have said nothing whatsoever about the pieces of music we may be listening to!
Blessings
Chris
Thank you for your thoughtful and considerate reply, I respect and appreciate artsy minds, for mine is more mathematical and scientific. Yet I do understand the way in which you are using “truth.”
I had just read a book by Rabbi Jonathan Sachs called the Great Partnership. The book describes the left and right brain ways of thinking, and why there is such a divide between religion and science. From what I have understood, anytime religion tries to become scientific or science makes religious claims, both lose the importance of meaning and value. Now both Scientism and Fundamentalism run into the same problems, as they both reduce truth to left brain modes of thinking in terms of valueless facts.