Apologetics4

On previous pages we looked at the question of relativism – and dismissed it as not being able stand up under scrutiny. But if truth is not merely relative, and we are left with the assumption that there is something called real, objective or absolute ‘truth', how may we determine what it is?

On this page we will think around concepts such as truth , knowledge , facts , meaning and beliefs , which are things we take for granted in everyday talk, but which can result in confused thinking if we are not clear about them.

Now a warning! Philosophers have written and written on this subject so we're going to try and be as basic as possible here. This is not a course in philosophy, but in how to defend your faith, and we need to do that simply! We'll try but you still do need to think quite a lot! This is a page about learning and learning takes effort!

It is important to think about these things because they undergird so many of the discussions about believing and about faith.

There is quite a lot in this section in which we consider and challenge many of the intellectual practices of this period of history. This is all about how we think about truth truthfully!

Warning! This is a page about general principles and so you may find a number of statements that will be backed up by detail in later specialist pages.

1. What is Truth?

Answer:

Truth = what really, actually, is.

Many a young person venturing out in the world of wondering, ponders, “How do I know this is all real? How do I know this is actually happening and not a dream?”

Epistemology is the study of knowing and asks key questions such as:

• whether knowledge of any kind is possible, and if so what kind?

• whether some human knowledge is instinctive or acquired through experience?

• whether knowledge is simply a mental state?

The Matrix trilogy came up with the mind-blowing suggestion that everything we know of as ‘existence' is in fact a mind thing – something fed into us who are linked into a gigantic computer – nothing is ‘real'. In that it simply reflected mystical world religions and the philosophy of Rene Descartes.

2. How does Daily Life affect our Understanding Truth?

Answer:

The reality is that we do not live as the Matrix shows – we do believe in an objective existence – the world exists outside us.

We may speculate about it, but that is how we live !

However much philosophers like to play with ideas, when it comes down to day to day life, we know that :

if we jump off a building and try to fly, we crash to the ground and die,
if we try and walk through a brick wall we badly bruise ourselves.

We distinguish between dreams and reality because in dreams we seem able to do, in our imagination, what we know we cannot do in objective, material day to day reality.

When the apostle Paul went to Athens , we find the writer, Luke, recording:

“ All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas .” (Acts 17:22 )

We live in a world where many are happy to just speculate about possibilities and, as Christians, our role must surely be to say,

“ But how do we live in reality? Put aside your clever ideas. How do you live in the face of the reality you know exists? ”

3. Why do we Need to be Careful with Language when Considering Truth?

Answer:

In assessing what is real, we seek to use common language so that we can communicate these things between us.

We usually agree on specific word uses, and so sometimes may need to challenge the meaning of words being used.

Thus, “The blind man saw the brick wall” is a nonsense sentence because by definition a blind man cannot ‘see'.

Much of assessing truth and reality requires us to define what we are saying and this applies as much in metaphysical issues and theological issues as anywhere else.

In much of what follows, therefore, we will be looking at the language that is used in discussions about knowledge, truth etc. If this is a new area for you, you may have to really work to get your mind round some of these ideas - but do persevere!

4. How do Facts differ from Knowledge and from Beliefs?

Answer:

a) Science and Facts

A ‘ fact ' is an observed and agreed phenomenon in the world,

e.g. the existence of a brick.

Science is all about determining facts of material existence.

When we talk about 'facts' we usually feel we are on firm ground, but as we'll see later, what is often put forward as 'fact' in reality later turns out to have been simply a belief , and a wrong belief at that!

b) Meaning & Beliefs

Increasingly, in recent years, science has been moving into philosophical realms because basic data of what is, (what have been called 'facts) has no ‘ meaning' of itself.

Meaning is about “why” a thing exists and to ascertain meaning we have to make suggestions.

Christians do this, and atheists do this. We both have our ‘ beliefs '.

Listen to Alister McGrath commenting on Richard Dawkins' objections to faith, by referring to the philosophy of science:

“It is certainly true that the natural sciences aim to offer the best possible explanation of the world, and that they have had considerable successes in doing so. But there are limits to this. The scientist regularly has to propose certain ideas that certainly fit in with experimental evidence, but that cannot be proved, and are thus taken on trust. I notice a firm recognition of this point in Dawkins' hero, Charles Darwin himself. In his Origin of Species (1859), Darwin points out that his theory of natural selection has not been proven, and that all kinds of objections could reasonably be raised against it. But he still believes it was true, and that these difficulties will eventually be resolved.”

c) Knowledge, Truth & Beliefs

Knowledge and truth are not necessarily the same thing, and beliefs are even more different.

Truth , we've said previously, is exactly ‘what is'.

Knowledge is our perception of what is, and this is likely to be less than complete.

Consider this spectrum of knowledge that is often suggested:

Scientific Knowledge Objective Knowledge Subjective Knowledge

| | |

Empirical Agreed Facts Believed Information

e.g. Chemical makeup e.g. " England lost the e.g. “I love you”

of salt. Ashes."

To clarify:

Scientific Knowledge

Scientific knowledge is based on observation and experimentation and is fairly certain.

After testing a hypothesis we conclude that, having repeated it again and again, the same result will always occur in the future.

The ‘grey area' here is in the conclusions. These may be clear for many things but in some areas scientists may be forced to say, “We are fairly certain, that this does this because of that.”

Until further research can confirm or challenge that, a firm conclusion may not be possible, yet the history of science is full of ‘firm conclusions' that had to be replaced.

In such cases ‘truth' proved not to be the same as ‘knowledge' (firm conclusions) and that ‘knowledge' turned out to be mere ‘belief'.

Objective Knowledge

Objective knowledge is knowledge that is about truth outside of our mind (Scientific knowledge is a part of that)

Objective knowledge also includes things we all know to be true and which are agreed upon without testing, e.g. Queen Elizabeth is the Queen of England at the beginning of 2007.

This is true regardless of what I think – everyone else confirms it.

Subjective Knowledge

Subjective knowledge is that which is based upon feelings and beliefs, therefore not universal,

e.g. “England is the best country to live in, in the world.”

This cannot be proved by testing.

d) Errors to Watch For

As we'll see below,

• there is a popular myth that religious belief is only equated with subjective knowledge,

• there is an erroneous belief that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge and therefore the only meaningful knowledge.

5. How do we go about interpreting the ‘facts' of History?

Answer:

When things are in the past, we use historical evidence to determine ‘likelihood'.

This ‘evidence' is documentary or artifacts.

An historian takes that evidence and builds a picture of what was.

In the realm of science, scientists take known present knowledge and interpolate it backwards.

For instance, in the ‘theory of evolution' Darwin made a variety of observations and he and many subsequent scientists concluded that the facts he observed ‘today' point towards a process whereby, in the past, all living creatures developed to what they are now.

Because this came at a point in history where the church and Christianity were under attack, it became readily accepted as a viable substitute from the previous faith position, that a divine Being had created and brought into being all we know as Creation.

The difficulty of decreeing the ways things were in the past, is that we can never be sure. As we started by saying all we can do is determine that "this was likely" to have been how things were.

6. How has 'Intelligent Design' opened up further questions about Scientists?

Answer:

More recently, some scientists have questioned the purely 'mechanical theory' of evolution.

They have suggested that the complexity that is now being revealed in scientific discovery denies the possibility of Darwinian change and strongly supposes an observable ‘intelligent design' factor, i.e. a 'designer' in the background.

The traditional school of evolutionary theory has been fighting this,

• but not so much on the grounds of disagreeing with the theory (which has good foundations that are worth considering)

• but on the fact that much of the research and promulgation of these ideas has been supported by American Christian organisations.

In other words, the challenge for the veracity of these arguments has not been scientific method, but religious bias. Watch for more of this as we proceed.

7. Is it Legitimate to Question the Characters of Scientific Commentators?

Answer:

By ‘Commentators' in the question above, we mean any who seek to suggest meaning behind cold facts revealed by scientific investigation.

It is unfortunate that we have to ask some of the questions in this section, but it is an indication of the undermining of morals and ethics in the 20th century.

We will look at this more deeply in later pages on science, but for now simply ask, is the rejection of the ‘intelligent design' concept because of the atheistic presuppositions that some scientists and others have?

There seem few other alternatives to this conclusion, and as with so many of these sorts of issues, the background and quality of life of a particular person – scientist or otherwise – does need looking at.

Sadly scientific integrity has become an issue that is now being widely debated.

The Press have, in recent years, pulled up a number of instances of scientists who have falsified their data to conform to their presuppositions.

One report in 2006 noted: “a recent survey by Nature found that a third of post-doctorates in the US admitted to research misconduct.”

Character, sadly, IS a factor to be considered. Check it out! Watch for this.

Do you think this is overstatement? Read the following:

Quotes from an article in The Times by Anjana Ahuja - 14th May 2007

"I have been wondering at Jon Sudbo, a Norwegian scientist who published a paper in The Lancet in 2005 showing that a certain class of painkillers cut the risk of oral cancer. Sudbo, it turned out, made the whole lot up."

"As I learnt at a terrific conference in London last week, hosted by the charity Fraud Advisory Panel, there are many more Sudbos out there but scant means of spotting them. The handful who are found must be a tiny minority, said Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature."

"The conference brought a provocative contribution from Nicholas Steneck, a scientific fraudbuster from the University of Michigan , who pointed out that while plagiarism is undesirable, it may do less harm than the commoner practice of altering data analysis methods to achieve a desired result."

8. Why is all this Important when Considering the Existence of the Bible?

Answer:

The fact of the existence of the Bible is no different from any other historical documentation – except there is incredibly more documentation than any other ancient manuscript that historians are happy to accept as proving the existence of original documents two thousand years ago.

We will deal with the detail of this on a separate page, but for now we want to ensure you agree that the ground rules for accepting the Bible as an ancient document should be NO different from any other historical confirmation.

Imagine historians collating all the available documents that refer to say, Queen Elizabeth the first.

If they said, from their expertise, that these documents were of her period of history and they uniformly spoke of her life and times in such a way that they, the experts, were quite happy that they were a reliable and a genuine record of what took place then, I'm sure you agree that it would be a foolish person who would challenge the expert historians.

Why therefore do we tolerate so many foolish people challenging the experts over the Biblical documents? (As we said above we will deal with this in detail on a separate page – here we're simply wanting to check your integrity!)

This is nothing to do with scholarship, rather to do with people's inherent bias in order to find reasons not to believe in God.

9. Why is all this Important when Considering the Content of the Bible?

Answer:

Again, to use the same parallel as above, why are we happy to assume that historical documents recording the life and times of, say, Queen Elizabeth I, are genuine records of what happened in her lifetime, but that the historical accounts within the Bible are fictional?

Surely this is evidence of a similar bias as we suggested above?

There have been numerous archaeologists and historians working on this subject down through history and concluding the Bible is highly accurate (and that's all you're going to get in this general discussion here - more later!).

It might be worthwhile asking why should anyone in a period of history when it is not easy to write as it is today, spend all their time recording things that were fiction – in fact 40 different authors writing 66 ‘books' that all have the same theme and all harmonise incredibly?

If you have never done it before, read the whole Bible and then deny its integrity. Start with the New Testament, then pick up the historical books of the Old (see later guidelines.)

Please don't talk about its lack of credibility until you have at least examined it.

Please don't talk about its lack of credibility until you have at least checked the experts and what they say.

10. Why is all this Important when Considering the Beliefs of the Bible?

Answer:

There is a popular myth that needs dispelling. It is that Christianity is based on blind faith, superstition and myth.

It is not. Christianity is founded as much in valid history as any other belief about anything in the past!

As you will see in later pages there are an immense number of very capable scholars and historians who have examined and verified the evidence. You can believe it!

Knowledge, we have said, when it is to do with the Christian faith, is based entirely on the Bible, which is actually based upon:

a) facts – the existence of the documents and

b) the reasonable conclusions drawn from those facts.

exactly the same as any other historian would formulate beliefs about any other part of history

Question: Scientists and secular historians can do it, why not expert Christian historians?

Answer: Because the end conclusions are to do with an Almighty Being and that raises a whole load of emotional baggage that has nothing, as we said, to do with scholarship, for that is not lacking.

This leads us on to the beliefs that come out of the Bible - beliefs about God, beliefs about mankind etc.

We will suggest in these pages that even the beliefs are subject to the same intellectual scrutiny that anything else in history or even anything else in life should be subject to.

But watch out! This is a two way street! If we must examine the beliefs of the Bible, we must also subject beliefs that run counter to it, to the same scrutiny.

11. Conclusions

In the early part of this page we considered how we often consider such ideas as knowledge, truth and beliefs

We noted how this changes when we are looking at 'history', i.e. the past, and asked that the same rules be applied to assessing the existence, content etc. of the Bible, as are used in assessing any other historical documents.

In the latter parts of the page we asked for personal biases to be put aside and an open-mindedness be adopted to assess those historical documents, and suggested that the apologist checks the integrity of those who are not always strictly honest in their approaches to evidence.

12. Questions

The purpose of these questions is to help you go back over the material and take it in. We suggest you highlight, copy and paste these questions and put them into your own word processing package and then alternate between them and the text and put your answers in your word processed page under each question.

QUESTIONS:

1. About truth

1.1 What are some of the key questions of Epistemology?

2. Daily reality

2.1 Why do we know the Matrix answer isn't the answer?

2.2 How do dreams and reality differ?

2.3 How, therefore, do we need to confront people with their strange ideas

of reality?

3. Understanding language being used

3.1 What has been suggested here about use of language in debate?

4. Facts, truth, knowledge, meaning & beliefs

4.1 What preparatory warning is given about ‘facts' and ‘beliefs'?

4.2 What is the link between ‘meaning' and ‘belief'?

4.3 How do you think ‘knowledge' and ‘truth' can be different?

4.4 Give one example each, of your own – not from the text – of

a) Scientific knowledge, b) Objective Knowledge, c) Subjective

Knowledge.

4.5 Why isn't even ‘Scientific Knowledge' concrete knowledge?

4.6 Say how you think we are all very happy to live our lives with lots of

‘Subjective Knowledge'.

5. Dealing with things that are in history

5.1 What is the tricky think, do you think, about historical knowledge?

5.2 How do we go about finding out the truth (as far as it is possible) about

the past?

5.3 How is it false by practice?

6. New scientific considerations about origins

6.1 What has been a recent area of consideration in scientific circles?

6.2 How have some scientists attacked the latest ideas?

7. An integrity check

7.1 What attitude does it suggest that the modern apologist needs to

adopt, and why?

8. Considering approaches to the existence of the Bible

8.1 What, does it suggest, should be the approach for assessing Biblical

reliability as far as its existence is concerned?

8.2 What, does it suggest, is the only reason that some people challenge

Biblical ‘experts'?

9. Considering approaches to the content of the Bible

9.1 What, does it suggest, should be the approach for assessing Biblical

reliability as far as its content is concerned?

9.2 What preliminary thought about the Bible writers is suggested?

10. Considering approaches to the beliefs of the Bible

10.1 What myth is strongly denied here in respect of beliefs ?

10.2 What is being said about beliefs about the Bible?

10.3 What is being said about beliefs in the Bible?

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