atheist: philosophical question?

No, I don't agree with it. Truth is truth, no matter what your perspective is.

I don't know whether I am a determinist or an anti-determinist, a relativist or a anti-relativist.

The truth is the truth. There is only one truth. There are different views of the truth, but there is only one truth.

To use the fish bowl metaphor, sure the fish's surroundings may appear different to it than our surroundings appear to us. That is because the fish and ourselves are in two different places. The truth in this situation is obvious and simple. The fish is in a fish bowl, the human is not. The human has a different experience to the fish, but this truth is the same for the both of them.

No I do not agree that truth is relative to one's experience. The truth is always the same, no matter what. People's views can be different. They can be flawed. But this doesn't change the truth. The truth is not subject to different people's views.

Maybe we don't know the truth. Maybe we don't know where the universe came from. Maybe we don't fully understand the laws of nature. But the truth is out there. The truth exists. We just don't know what it is.

You over complicate things. If there is not one truth, I might as well stop thinking and stop trying to understand everything, because there is no one truth to understand. I have never read Hawking's book. I'm not sure I want to. It sounds like it has just made you confused.

You have made me confused.

But don't stop thinking. Never stop thinking.

Truth is not relative.

Objective reality exists. What is objectively true is objectively true. That is the very definition of objective truth. It is true regardless of the perception of any individual.

There is either an aluminum can sitting on my desk, or there isn't. Whether there is or isn't is independent of whether anyone thinks there is or not. If every sentient being in the universe were to die this very second, and there was no intelligent being left in the entirety of existence to observe the can on my desk, it would still be there.

Now, if you're talking about *subjective* truth, that's another matter. Subjective truth is dependent upon our own experiences. They're called opinions. If I say that blue is the prettiest colour, but someone else says that green is the prettiest colour, neither one of us are objectively correct, nor is there any objective truth with respect to the prettiest colour. That's why it's called subjective truth.

"if the laws of nature then you are a relativist because the laws of nature are not eternal. They had a beginning (the big bang). this is proven empirically. The hypothesis that says the laws are eternal are only mathematical and you can do a lot of tricks with mathematics."

Okay, now where exactly are you getting *this* from?

*Nothing* is eternal. The universe is finite in all respect, including duration. The timeline extends back only 13.73 billion years, so what "hypothesis" are you talking about that says the laws of nature are eternal? And what does that have to do with anything to begin with?

What is true in one context may be true in another. I think he's saying the statement of truth is relative to context in which the assertion is made.

He brings up a similar analogy in "A brief history of time". If I'm standing in a train car an hit a ping pong ball forward at 30 miles an hour and I'm in a train moving at 30 miles an hour in the same direction, how fast is the ping pong ball traveling?

I'm correct to say from my perspective it's moving at 30 miles an hour.

An observer on the ground is correct to say it's moving at 60 miles an hour.

Some who considers the rotation of the earth will have yet another valid (truthful answer)

The truth is relative to a context.

"Do gods exist?" I could place this in two different contexts:

1. Do gods exist in the minds of theists? Do gods exist in mythology? The answer is yes

2. Do gods exist in the real universe we see? The answer is no.

I just finished the book today and as I understand it that was not Hawkins' point. He was saying that we have no way of reaching an objective understanding of reality because we might be in the equivalent of a fishbowl (something that distorts our understanding of reality or something that hides a part of the inner workings of reality from us).

So while an objective reality exists, we have no way of objectively determining what it is. Therefore model-dependent realism is the best way of looking at the world: Because it is impossible to reach objective truth (since it's impossible to know if one has gotten to it or if there's still something beyond that), instead of reaching for such a thing one should seek to build useful models of our surrounding reality.

"Do you agree that all truth is relative to ones experience?"

By the very definition, of ‘truth’, no. He’s talking about subjective experiences, for which ‘truth’ doesn’t necessarily apply. He might be using the word 'truth' as a tongue-in-cheek idea.

"if in your belief there is none?"

I don't believe that there is no god. I lack belief that there is a god.

As for the Big Bang stuff you asked: I have no idea how that stuff works, to be quite honest.

I stay fairly skeptical about men who get interference from taxis. But he's right, there are very few objective truths that remain unchanged. That isn't to say all truth is subjective, just that we find out new things everyday so the objective truth must change.

There are no absolute truth because space, time and mass are not absolute. Your experience of something is going to depend on your frame of reference. If you are on a space ship traveling close to the speed of light, your experience of something is going to be very different from somebody who is on Earth. There is only one thing that, regardless of reference frame, everybody will agree on and that is the speed of light. That and also the lack of proof of God's existence.

As to the truths, if you are on the space ship going close to the speed of light then all of the truths associated with going at that speed is going to be a heck lot more useful than the truths not going at the speed. Remember back in math with the x-y coordinate and the radial coordinate? They describe the same point but with different coordinates. If you are using the x-y coordinate, it is easier to plot a point in x-y coordinate than if I give you radial coordinates. Then in this case, one truth (x-y coordinate) is better than the other truth (radial). The point, in real life, would be the speed of light and the different coordinate system how fast you are traveling.

You seem to have missed the major problem of your argument;

Atheists do NOT say that theists are wrong. They say that they don't believe that theists are right. This in no way conflicts with the belief that there is no objective truth. You're clearly sharp enough to detect the difference.

This brings the idea of objectivism vs subjectivism.

To the fish the bowl is one wayh. To us the bowl is another. To the bowl it is just a bowl. The fact of the matter is that there are portions of truth in all these. However there is no denying that it IS a bowl. Therein lies the TRUTH.

There is of course, no objective truth or evidence to suggest that God doesn't exist, because you can't prove a negative.

But time and time again, theists themselves attempt to give 'evidence' and reason out God's existence with logically flawed arguments, and that's what I myself argue against most of the time.