Correct me if I'm wrong, since it has been a very long time since I read any Kant, but essentially his moral system was: 'it doesn't matter if god exists or not (probably more likely that he doesn't) but we humans should act like he does anyway to provide us with some morals'.
That's exactly right. I was trying to pick my wording carefully here, because Kant was certainly a religious man. That's why a phrased it that it is a system that is manageable without a god. Some contemporary philosophers have provided accounts that are consistent with Kant's theory that don't necessitate a belief in god. Although it does seem upon reflection that my Kant example could count both for and against what I was arguing.
It seems that in order to justify any universally true belief system, we need to hand over accountability to a higher power, with or without faith.
This is actually the line of argumentation I thought you were making, which I why I brought up Kant. For Kant, God doesn't justify these moral imperatives (at least, not how I read him). Rather, God is needed to make up for the suffering caused by doing the right thing on Earth. His thinking was, I assume, that people need some motivation beyond an act's intrinsic worth to perform that act. In fact, Kant held that the only acts that were even up for being considered "moral" were those we were duty-bound (and thus, reluctant) to do. God is supposed to be an evening out of the suffering on Earth. But I think it's fairly uncontentious that Kant wouldn't have said that God justifies these moral imperatives. They are simply necessary conditions for humanity's survival.
Surely, contingent truths are by their very nature, not absolute truths? Again, it's been a long time since I read anything of Leibniz, and even when I did, it was merely small exerpts, but contingent truths are only true in a certain set of conditions no? They may be absolute truths in one set of circumstances, but not in other environments.
It's funny you mention this, because as I was typing that out, I looked at my conclusion there and found it a bit... silly. But I think I'll stand by it for now. But certainly some explanation is in order.
Necessary truths are true in all possible worlds. So math and logic are necessary (although Quine would reject this), as are analytic truths like "All bachelors are unmarried, eligible, adult males."
But if we count absolute truth as only those truths that are necessary, I think we're missing out on a whole lot of "truth" out there. I'm sitting at my computer and looking at a pack of cigarettes right now. Next to that pack is a yellow lighter. I have the belief that the lighter is yellow, and it seems for all the world like my belief is true. But it is certainly contingent (my lighter could have just as easily been red or green or whatever). It's not necessary that my lighter is yellow.
So, these are kinds of truths I was thinking about when I mentioned that contingent truths reach toward the "absolute truth" - whatever that is.
But when I think about a truth (I still don't know what an absolute truth is) I think of it as a statement that describes the world the way it is in fact. Necessary truths, because they are true in all possible worlds, don't tell us about our world specifically. They don't add to our overall picture of this world because they apply to every possible world.
So, my belief that my lighter is yellow will help me differentiate this world from a different possible world in which my lighter is, say, blue. But necessary truths don't have this function. I can't tell the difference between this world and any other possible world because these statements will be true in all of these.
