For the Truth Quest document vs. the below page by page web version, click on the searcher.  Links to any references are located at the end of Truth Quest.   

There are facts, and there are Real Truths.  Some facts are interesting like termites chew wood faster while listening to rock-n-roll, other facts are important like your phone number; but Real Truths are the true foundations that should shape your outlook on life and guide your behavior in everything you do.  It is important to realize that everyone has a worldview whether or not he or she can recognize or state it.  You may not think about your worldview when you make decisions or express opinions, but it influences your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Consider for a moment, life as a race.  You look left, right, and no one will ever find out; what are you willing to do to win?  These are telling situations that illuminate your core beliefs.  “It depends”, you say.  Yes, but how will your decisions be judged, and who will do the judging: your parents, your boss, friends, religious leaders, governmental officials, or just yourself?  Flipped around, what about all those decisions others make that affect your life; are the principles others use consistent with yours?  A universal disdain is of hypocrites.  Are the principles you base your life decisions on, consistent?  Are you sure?

Enough ramblings on abstract concepts.  Let’s get on with your Truth Quest by starting with few basic principles all can hopefully understand and agree to:

Basic Principles

1.      Overall, our physical universe is one that behaves rationally.  Scientific laws and order apply to our universe; more specifically, the following.

2.      Out of nothing comes nothing.  You need something to create something else.

3.      Without purposeful intervention by an intelligent being, everything proceeds towards increasing disorder; for example:

A.    A farmed field will return back into a meadow or forest, unless a farmer purposely maintains the crops.

B.      Sand castles are never reformed by wind and waves. 

4.      The flip side of the same concept is that if you ever see highly structured order where you would expect disorder, like a garden in the middle of a forest, someone intelligent had to create that order.

5.      Another related Real Truth is that “Chance” can not cause anything.  Chance only shows our limited ability to understand and measure inputs to a set of outcomes; e.g., a common expression is to say that Chance determines the result of a coin flip; however, the outcome is certain if all variables, (like spin speed, air resistance, coin surface features, ……), are correlated and known precisely enough.

6.      Hypothesis – A theory that explains a set of facts and can be tested by further investigation.

Now let us apply these basic principles to our existence; starting with our universe ........