Acknowledging that something is true changes our behavior. This statement has two aspects, which I will restate so as to make it plain: The first is the idea of “acknowledging that something is true”, or that Truth needs to be acknowledged at all; The second is the idea of changing our behavior in response to that acknowledgement.
As I seem to enjoy doing, let’s take the second aspect first. Truth changes our behavior. There are some examples that are deceptively simple: If it is raining outside, that truth changes our behavior such that we grab an umbrella on our way out the door. Simple, right? What about other truths? Some involve simply acknowledging what is in front of our faces: There is a car in front of my car so I need to apply the brakes. Others are more abstract: I know how algebra works therefore I can do algebra problems. I think it’s fair to categorize these ideas into “Observation” and “learning”. Let me approach from a different angle: Before other planets were discovered, we lived in a universe that only had Earth. When we discovered Jupiter, our universe grew, and expanded. Jupiter has traits that now we have to acknowledge. We can’t go back to the universe that only had Earth, that is an Observational Truth. If we think Jupiter is not very massive, then when we launch satellites to orbit it we will utilize that understanding, and our calculations will be wrong as a result. When we learn the true mass of Jupiter, we can now make specific calculations to put a satellite into orbit around it. This example is Learning truth. We observed that Jupiter existed, and then we learned attributes about Jupiter. It’s fair to say in each of these cases, each observation and each datapoint we learn changed our universe in the same way as stepping outside and finding it is raining. We make sub-optimal decisions when we do not have the full picture.
The first aspect is that truth requires acknowledgement. The first person to observe Jupiter couldn’t ignore it. There, through his telescope, was the great planet itself! The truth doesn’t have to be acknowledged by everybody–you can believe Jupiter is a hoax and that it’s not actually raining, and go about your day as such. It won’t change that Jupiter is there, and that it is raining, and you will get wet. The pursuit of knowledge is, fundamentally, the pursuit of truth.
This next step might be a bit of a leap: we, all of us, have a duty to acknowledge truth, and a consequence of that is that we have a duty to pursue truth. The duty to acknowledge truth comes first, because we must accept the world as it exists around us (observation), and we must accept the current understanding of attributes about those things we observe (learning). If I get rained on every day, it is because I eschewed my duty to acknowledge truth and that led to me getting sick. I would be negligent if I failed to pursue the root cause of my chronic illness, that it rains frequently in my home and devices exist to keep us mostly dry when it rains.
The font of all truth is God, so the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is fruitless, but the pursuit of knowledge insofar as it is the pursuit of Truth and therefore the pursuit of God, is not fruitless. When we acknowledge that God exists, and that He loves us, then that Truth necessarily expands our universe and must change our behavior.
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 