Why Believe in Truth?
According to a recent poll (1), 66% of Americans believe that "there is no such thing as absolute truth." This figure is even higher among the youth (72% for those in the 18-25 age group).
Professor Gene Veith comments:
"To disbelieve truth is, of course, self-contradictory. To believe means to think that something is true; to say, "It's true that nothing is true" is intrinsically meaningless nonsense. The very statement - "There is no absolute truth" - is [alleged to be] an absolute truth." (2)
In other words, to disbelieve in absolute truth is (yet another) self-referential fallacy. (For examples and discussion of other self-referential fallacies, see Nothing is Absolute and Logical Positivism and Scientism - More Self-Referential Fallacies.)
More frightening, perhaps, is the fact that it is not just Americans in general who disbelieve in truth. A sign of just how far this fundamental irrationalism has spread is that even 53% of self-described evangelical Christians in the same poll said they did not believe in absolute truth. And that's despite the fact that 88% of them (and 70% of Americans in general) agreed that "The Bible is the written word of God and is totally accurate in all it teaches"! If that isn't an affirmation of absolute truth being found in the Bible, I don't know what is. How then can at least a third of the population (as drawn from the 70% and 66% figures above) simultaneously believe there is no absolute truth and believe the Bible is "totally accurate" at the same time?
Dr. Veith optimistically states:
"What is going on here? Perhaps those polled did not understand the question or the implications of what they claimed to believe. Some of the evangelical sceptics [sic] in the 53 percent may be solid Christians who were only parroting what they heard on television, oblivious to the theological implications of this pop philosophy. The polls may reflect ignorance or confusion." (3)
As I note in my introduction to Eric's InfoCenter (click the blinking title on the home page to see it) most Christians are led by the nose when it comes to being influenced by secular thinking. We should be disappointed but not surprised when studies show most self-described Christians agreeing with pagans, even when it is patently irrational to do so. But that just raises another question. Why should pagan America be so skeptical about the concept of truth? Is there a method to this madness?
It turns out there is. The title of this section of the InfoCenter is "Reason and Revelation." These terms were not chosen idly. The term "reason" refers to the capability of the human mind to explore reality, to understand and to know it. "Revelation" refers to intelligible communication to the human mind from God. These are our two sources of knowledge - from our own and from other humans minds, and from the mind of God.
When we speak of truth, what are we talking about? We are speaking of statements that are accurate reflections of reality, and/or that accurately convey and transmit information from one mind to another about what really is. But how does one mind ultimately know if information transmitted from another mind is accurate? For that matter, how does anyone know if the information created by one's own mind, such as eyewitness observations, is really true?
Can you prove you are not hallucinating right now? Have you never made an error of logic? Did you obtain perfect scores on every test you ever took in school? Have you never been mistaken about something you thought you saw or heard? The answer to all these questions is of course, NO! Therefore, humanistic philosophers have long since concluded that the human mind is never really capable of obtaining truth. And even if we did have it, we would never be sure of it. Therefore, these philosophers (and the educational institutions they influenced) taught that truth is unobtainable by the human mind. We can never really be sure about anything. (Is this starting to sound familiar?) Since we can never be sure that we have received perfectly accurate information, that we have processed it (i.e., logic) without error, or that there are no other possible alternative interpretations for the data, we can never be certain about our conclusions.
This whole line of reasoning, of course, ignores the possibility of Revelation. Revelation from a omnipotent Mind capable of knowing what is truth creates the possibility of knowing absolute truth. This is exactly what Christians believe the Bible is - a communication from a source capable of knowing and conveying truth to beings incapable of discovering that truth on their own. (This also hints at why the human mind is not really capable of judging the Bible pro or con, the topic of another paper.)
Now we see why non-Christians would say they disbelieve in absolute truth. It is not so much that they don't believe it is possible to make accurate statements about reality. Rather, they can never be sure if any particular statement about reality is true or not. Truth is for them unknowable, and thus might as well not exist. In a strange sort of way, this disbelief in truth is not entirely irrational but rather the "logical" (if self-contradictory) conclusion that follows from a disbelief in Revelation.
Of course, many non-Christians hold a double-standard. They try to have their cake and eat it too. They may disbelieve in truth at one moment, but in the next moment they say they "know" the Bible is not true. You can't have it both ways. If you say Christianity is not true, how do you know? And if you are not in a position to know, how can you be sure I'm wrong? Humanistic attacks on Christianity inevitably falter on this point, making a mockery of the oft-heard claim that someone or some discovery has "disproven" the Bible.
At this point the humanist might object that while Revelation is possible in theory, our finite minds would never be certain whether we had received a communication from an infallible source, or a mysterious but fallible source, or simply a delusion. However, as Christians know (and the Bible explains), knowledge of Divine truth is ascertained through faith(4), which is biblically defined as certain knowledge imbued by the Holy Spirit (not simply a belief in something without firm evidence, as often misdefined). Unfortunately the full import of this is impossible to convey to the unsaved, who is lacking this spiritually empowered faith-based certainty of knowledge.
And so it is only the fairly uneducated humanist today who tries to argue that the Bible has been proved wrong. The more thoughtful ones have long since given it up in recognition of impossibilities involved, save perhaps for public propaganda statements they occasionally deliver. C.S. Lewis wrote about this decades ago, and it is still as valid today:
"The difficulty of converting an uneducated man nowadays lies in his complacency. Popularized science, the conventions or 'unconventions' of his immediate circle, party programmes, etc., enclose him in a tiny windowless universe which he mistakes for the only possible universe. There are no distant horizons, no mysteries. He thinks everything has been settled. A cultured person, on the other hand, is almost compelled to be aware that reality is very odd and that ultimate truth, whatever it may be, must have the characteristics of strangeness - must be something that would seem remote and fantastic to the uncultured. Thus some obstacles to faith have been removed already." (5)
As Christians we need to be aware of why people to whom we witness think the way they do. It will do no good to tell them something is true if they do not believe in truth. We will need to explain how it is possible for truth to be obtained in the first place. Then, and only then, may their heart and mind be open to hearing and believing the one who declared that He is Truth.
REFERENCES
1. Barna, George, The Barna Report: What Americans Believe (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1991), pp. 83-85.
2. Veith, Gene E., Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994), p. 16.
4. For example, when Peter responded to Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am," "Thou art the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the living God," Jesus replied "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 16:17) (See also Luke 10:21-24, John 15:16-20)
5. Lewis, C.S., "Christianity and Culture," in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1967), p. 23.
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