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In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. Or the big bang was the beginning of both time and space, the world of relativity came from the absolute unconditioned by time and space. We have a dual nature of relativity and absolute. As we approach God we move towards the absolute, which is Truth. Maybe our earthly minds will grow to be able to express the Kingdom of God here on earth. There is real meaning to be found.
There is absolute Truth (singular). There are in religion often certain codified beliefs or religious prescription each of these can be closer or further away from Truth, they aren't simply all just relative. I think in pretty much all human thought or at least it's expression in language there is a fair dose of relativity, in Pre Modern thought the Earth was seen as the sub lunar realm a realm of mutability and change. Our consciousness is like various wattage light bulbs through which differing amounts of the divine current can flow through.
God is Being (Omnipresent), Consciousness (Omniscient) and Bliss (All Loving) and can be experienced but not fully expressed in earthly language. Our everyday mind is a partial mind, we can be rational but our everyday thoughts are not sufficient to climb the ladder of Truth. Truth like the physical world can be experienced and that experience can be expressed cogently (but not fully) in rational discourse. A Commonality across those who have near death experiences is the greater sense of reality and consciousness of the experiences, they directly experience a greater mindfulness than they had in their earthly experiences. These experiences remain crystal clear to them over spans of decades, when memories and dreams become dim.
I don't think there is a fundamental conflict between religion and science, Truth is one, too often the debate has been falsely framed as between reason and faith. Science is a method of enquiry, mainly into the external world, so far it has had little to nothing that it can say regarding the essential and fundamental invisibilities of human existence Consciousness and Love. All science rests on a base of Consciousness, how can there be scientific enquiry or any kind of inquiry without consciousness? if a scientific philosophy then tries to undermine that and argue consciousness is an illusion, as it sometimes does, it is cutting off its own base.
That there is such a thing as absolute truth is not the same thing as saying there is certainty.
There are two basic paradigms Material and Divine. I find the later more cogent in explaining experience, I've mentioned problems with consciousness, also Materialism is based on upwards causality yet our experience is that our actions are ruled by our consciousness (downward causality) and every sane person acts as though they are responsible for their decisions. So materialists in one sense believe in upward causality but they can’t live by it, the Divine view is consistent and doesn’t hold this contradiction.
Materialism posits that matter through a mindless process builds life, meaning is like some kind of accidental secretion, from such a world view where there is no objective basis for meaning, reason and truth. A society that holds such views will have meaning, reason and justice seep out of social discourse.
Materialism is overtly a philosophy of nihilism. If further it posits that human beings developed from the underlying principle of "survival of the fittest" then no matter what gloss you try to put on it you're saying fundamentally 'might is right”.
Life does seem to have evolved on earth, with simple life forms being followed by more complex forms, I see this as a mindful unfolding of consciousness over time.
We find in modern physics that the observer (consciousness) is intertwined with matter and effects the outcome of subatomic experiments.
If at the sub atomic level matter intersects with mind, then Consciousness exists in some level throughout matter. At the mineral level it's very latent, in plants and micro organisms it shows a greater expression and is capable of showing pain responses (and most likely pleasure). Then you move up the animal kingdom with greater levels of consciousness, human beings have the greatest level of consciousness in the animal kingdom. All of this Consciousness is sparks of the divine consciousness. I think consciousness is going to continue emerging in this world and that it extends beyond it, as has been experienced by people in Near Death and Mystical Experiences. I don't think Consciousness is static in any of us, there are times when we seem to see with a wider view and we experience a feeling of "all being well" in such states the things we do all seem to go right and we feel a great sense of identity with everything around us.
