At the most basic level, I think truth describes how a statement relates to reality. This has the basic assumption that reality can be known somehow, as the concept of truth is unnecessary and worthless otherwise. However, it is just as evident that reality is a difficult thing to grasp. Kant noticed that the “thing-in-itself” isn’t accessible to us except through our senses, and I am inclined to agree with him. This makes discerning what is true or not with the preceding definition rather difficult, as we can’t even know if our senses correspond at all to reality. Again, I assume that our senses are at least somewhat accurate, as a concept of truth is meaningless otherwise.
There are different senses of the word “truth”. I am less concerned here with logical truth as that which relates to belief. Asserting “Socrates is a man” may have a truth-value, but likely doesn’t concern anyone’s belief system much. These are related closely, but logical truth concerns epistemology, not my focus here of religion-type belief.
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I would like to propose that these sort of truths can be classified into two categories, depending on whether they can be verified personally or not. For instance, I can verify, to a reasonable degree, “All people die”, even without much effort. If I was a bit more evil, I could make even more certain. However, it is impossible to verify a statement like “there is an afterlife”, and still be able to contribute to the literature.
I would also propose that statements of religious truth come in coherent systems, rather than being scattered all over reality. It is rather useless if I hold, as a fundamental truth, “the sky is blue”, unless I believe other things that pertain, for instance, to the origin or nature of the sky which makes it so; truth isn’t valuable except as part of this sort of system. Such a thing has been called a ‘world-view’.
Because isolated truths aren’t worthwhile, truths are considered together in these world-views. Religions are comprised of coherent world-views containing many co-dependant truth-claims. While it is possible to adopt for oneself only part of one of these, any religion wanting to convince anyone of its truth-claims must show that it is thoroughly true, with both its verifiable and non-verifiable parts.
For instance, I don’t believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Before I would accept the FSM’s truth-claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world, which is non-verifiable, I would need a good reason as to how the Flying Spaghetti Monster predated the invention of spaghetti. Because I am unconvinced when I can verify its truth-claim, I find no reason to believe it about that which I cannot be certain of.
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The most applicable application(!) of this for me is Christianity. Christianity makes a number of truth-claims, often what I feel is too many, and believing that Christian truth is worthwhile and beneficial for everyone, I would like to see a Christian truth-claim that is convincing.
However, I think my own argument needs to be undermined when discussing Christian truth. I would like to argue the (admittedly speculative) point that Christians can’t claim truth in these sense at all.
Claiming that one has ‘the truth’ is incredibly strong, and I firstly don’t think anyone can say this rightfully, and secondly think it more of a claim to superiority. I see it as an assertion my judgment is innately superior than yours, as you have chosen wrongly whereas I have not. Whatever I experienced to arrive at my conclusion is more important than however you got to yours.
I believe such claims can rather only rightfully be made by God himself.
One could object that since we have the Bible, given by God, we have The Truth accessible. However, the vast majority of the Bible is not so suitable as a book for quoting The Truth out of – the Bible is not a list of true statements, rules, or anything of the sort. Rather, it is a narrative, both in content and in overarching themes. This article by N.T. Wright (which deals with the related issue of Biblical authority, and is a very good read), put it nicely:
… How, for instance, can the book of Judges, or the book of Acts, be authoritative? It is one thing to go to your commanding officer first thing in the morning and have a string of commands barked at you. But what would you do if, instead, he began ‘Once upon a time…’?
I think God, by doing this, is rather relating his experience (if God has something of that sort), that of reality, to us. The truth is God’s, he alone can understand it, and he alone can give any comprehension of it. And going even further, I don’t think we can say truth even exists independent of relationship with God.
Therefore, I don’t think we can say to ourselves, or anyone else, that “I have the truth from God”. Rather, I think we ought to point people to relationship with God to find what knowledge of his truth he gives. However, this is not to say that other people can’t help one listen or interpret it.
Tags: rough, speculative, truth
November 3, 2008 at 12:32 am
Well, there seems to be some good, solid thinking here. It’s a pity that you never extrapolated the value of truth in and of itself, but rather just assumed that only God could ever understand it . . .
November 3, 2008 at 8:26 am
Except that is exactly what I was attempting to argue in the last section – that truth-in-itself doesn’t exist. This doesn’t mean it’s content-less or inaccessible, but nobody can claim they “have it”, as it isn’t meaningful without relationship with God. Thus truth doesn’t have value per se, but only as a pointer to God first, and as context for that relationship afterward.