Tag Archives: religion

Humanist Ad Campaigns, Part III

Posted on February 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

See part I here and II here.

Sorry for not posting for so long.  The wrestling season tends to get crazy.  Anyway (where she says “QUOTE,” she is quoting me in order to give context to her words):

Margaret: QUOTE“…yet those ads treat the Bible like it is a collection of isolated sentences.”

I don’t think that is the intention. As you mentioned, an ad has the problem of limited space. Knowing the people who put the ads up, I think the primary goal is to get people to think about what is really in the Bible. Most self-professed Christians haven’t read the Bible, and so seeing those single lines out of it are likely to be surprised. I would hope that it would spark enough curiosity that they’d crack the book open and find out what it really says.

RB: Perhaps…but to that extent, the ads are misleading. Besides, I’ve seen the same kind of treatment several times in humanist/atheist polemics against the Bible.

Margaret: QUOTE “The Bible would be much less confusing to you if you read it like everything else.”

I am fully aware that different parts of the Bible should be read different ways. I consider the Bible to be a valuable book in-of-itself for several different reasons (some literary, some historical), with some parts much better than others. The problem is with people who claim that the Bible the infallible word of God that they supposedly base their ethics and whole worldview on.

QUOTE “No mention of the mutual submission from Ephesians.”

Funny you mention that letter. The majority of Biblical scholars believe the letter to the Ephesians to be written by someone other than Paul. Regardless, Ephesians does not speak of “mutual submission.” It says that wives should submit to their husbands and husbands should love their wives, and the metaphor used for both is that the husband is like Christ and the wife is like the church. How the heck do you get mutual submission from that? Also, you haven’t explained the the correct interpretation of that passage is. Part of my argument is that the Bible is inconsistent and often contradicts itself. So you pointing out that some passages sound mysoginist while others contradict that doesn’t necessarily prove that the mysoginist-sounding passages are in fact pro-woman. You have to explain how and why they are pro-women in their supposed proper context.

RB: What are their reasons for thinking that it wasn’t written by Paul? By no means do I disregard the voice of scholars…its just that the most important thing isn’t the claim “scholars say,” it’s their argument, the “why” behind their claims.

I got mutual submission from the previous verse: Ephesians 5:21—“submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Your question perfectly demonstrates what I’m talking about: taking the larger context of the passage you had in mind helps hone in on what Paul meant. Submit to one another, then he explains what that means according to gender roles in the home. Wives, respect the husband’s leadership. Husbands, love, protect, and nurture wives like the gems they are. I don’t know why that is so horrible. There are certain things that husbands are suited well for and vice versa. Each is made in the image of God and is therefore equally valuable, and each contributes something to the relationship that the other lacks. By no means are the parts interchangeable. For example, my wife has an 18 inch waist…me, an 18 inch neck (ok, little exaggeration, but you get the point..:) ). If an intruder attacks our home at night, I’m not gonna say, “hey honey, I think it’s your turn to go check out that noise.” Paul isn’t saying that the husband is more valuable than the wife and can do whatever he wants, and he’s not giving the husband carte blanche to order the wife around.

Though some might thrust that meaning upon the text, its just not there…in fact, if you look at it, Paul gives the husbands much more instruction as to what he’s supposed to do than he gives the wife.

as far as the 1 Tim passage goes, let me quote another author’s argument, one that is possible (not a scholar, admittedly, but he makes sense. There are other arguments out there that might suit the passage better. This is just one possible):

“…the word man is aner and the word woman is gune . In the case of the word aner , which occurs something like 150 times in the New Testament, fully 40 times that it occurs, it is translated “husband.” In other words, “husband” is a legitimate translation of the word depending on the context. When you look at the context, virtually every single time that it wasn’t absolutely clear that the woman with the man in the context was his wife, it is almost always translated “husband” and “wife.” So this really is an unusual translation, given the pattern in the rest of the New Testament.

So, I asked myself why would they break with the pattern in this passage? I think they were influenced by tradition, that’s why they translated this passage man and woman and not husband and wife.

What happens if we translate it husband and wife? That strikes me as a legitimate translation. It seems that when you translate it husband and wife, everything falls into place. Let me read it in that way: “Let a wife quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness; but I don’t allow a wife to teach or usurp the authority of her husband, but to remain quiet.”

Is that strained? Not at all. Is that difficult? Not at all. The “quiet” there is in the context of receiving instruction. I think the point is not that she never speaks, but that she is the one who is in the position of being taught as opposed to being in the position of the teacher. The word “teach” here is not in the aorist tense. In other words, an aorist tense means a single point in time action rather than a continuous action. So, it isn’t saying that a woman cannot have a moment where she can tell something to her husband, it’s that the woman should not be the teacher over her husband, but that the woman is actually under the teaching authority of her husband. He is the head of the household, spiritually speaking. That’s really what it amounts to.

Verses 1-8 is in one grouping, verses 9-15 is another. Verse 11 and following is directed at women in the context of their relationship with a man to whom they are supposed to be entirely submissive. That is a marriage relationship.

Finally, no other place in Scripture teaches that all women should be under the authority of all men in the church. If this passage is to be interpreted the traditional way, this makes a new and unusual pattern of submission. However, the New Testament consistently teaches that a wife should be under the authority of her husband. That fits the larger context of the New Testament much better.”

Margaret: QUOTE “If I treated a humanist’s writing like that, I’d probably get skewered as being irrational.”

Again, I invite you to do the same to us as an example. Take a passage from, say, the Humanist Manifesto (or some other Humanist declaration), put it alongside a passage from the Bible, in a manner that makes Humanism look as bad as the Bible is made to look in those ads.

RB: Well, meeting that challenge wasn’t my main point, and I think I’ve given examples enough (Darwin, Einstein) to substantiate my point…but, here you go:

“Human babies are not born self-aware or capable of grasping their lives over time. They are not persons. Hence their lives would seem to be no more worthy of protection that the life of a fetus.”

And

“The life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”

And

“If we can put aside these emotionally moving but strictly irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants.”

And

“If the killing of the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others it would . . . be right to kill him.”

–all by Peter Singer, 2004 Australian Humanist of the Year

Now for the Bible quotes:

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 18:10

“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.”—Psalm 127: 3

Here’s another one:

‘The universe we observe has … no evil and no good….DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”

Richard Dawkins

“Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of evildoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.” Psalm 37: 1-3.

Margaret: QUOTE “Same for the one about trusting in the Lord…the suggestion is that the Bible is obviously against using the mind to rationally think with logic and evidence. Again, no effort to understand what the proverb might actually be suggesting. If it really did say that and that was the Bible’s message (“logic/evidence/intellect=baaad. Feeelings=goood!”), the history of Christendom most likely wouldn’t include guys like Augustine, Lewis, Aquinas, and Plantinga, and passageas like Romans 12 wouldn’t be in the Bible.”

Again, I argue that the Bible, being written by many different humans (not God-inspired) over a long period of time, it contradicts itself. Can you explain how and why the passage quoted in the ad isn’t actually discouraging rational/logical thinking?

RB: The proverb recommends humility about one’s finitude. Being human, we oftentimes get out of our ken. I find that principle at work frequently in my job. I am a young, inexperienced coach. Oftentimes I get angry at my wrestlers/parents/referees, etc for not responding as I’d like. In times like that, if I operate according to my feelings and what I think is good to do in the moment (aka, “my own understanding”), I often rush into things and make mistakes.

So I’ve gotten in the habit of conferring with one of my assistants, who is much older, wiser, and has “seen it all,” or I confer with other older coaches I know who have a much more circumspect perspective. They often calm me down and give me stuff to think about that I miss. The same is true on a cosmic plane. We are pretty finite, but God has “seen it all” so to speak. Consulting His wisdom through prayer, Scriptures, and the body of believers often yields understanding that is much more solid than our own feelings.

This is pretty far away from eschewing logic, reason, and evidence. In fact, if you were to keep in mind what I’ve been saying about context, you’ll see that there are a great many proverbs Solomon wrote that deal with the value of wisdom and knowledge.

You don’t have to believe that the Bible is the word of God to attribute minimal intelligence to Solomon, and that he probably wouldn’t contradict himself so many times in one book.

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Humanist Ad Campaigns, Part II

Posted on January 16, 2011 | 2 Comments

Read part one here.

After a humanist friend of mine posted a comment on the ads, I responded:

“I found the ads ironic.”

To which she replied:

“You gotta explain the irony, Rich. You want to quote something from a philosophically Humanist publication that is as bad as any of those Biblical quotes? Notice I said “Humanist”, not just “atheist”.”

And we were off.  I’m going to call her “Margaret.”

RB:

A few things…first, humanists I’ve known are often pretty quick to cry foul when Christians engage in black and white thinking. Secondly, they also typically cry foul, often for good reason, when Christians handle opposing beliefs without academic responsibility…anyone can take something out of its context, without regard to the whole system, and make that worldview sound pretty silly.

I could do that to lots of things you say, most likely, and you’d consider yourself ill abused…in fact, I could probably take the very techniques inherent in the ads and make you sound like a crazed fundamentalist Christian.

Bottom line: it is very easy to take some quote, assert its stupid, and therefore assert the whole worldview is stupid.  That kind of treatment of opposing beliefs often gets Christians accused of irrationality (most of the time secular humanists are doing the accusing), and rightly so. But that is what is going on here. 

It is far more difficult to level a critique after taking pains to show what the passage (as opposed to just quoting a one liner and asserting what you think it means as self evident) actually means, understanding historical background, etc.

This is the very thing I try so hard to teach my seniors in the research methods class I have. Some of those ads on the website are laughable in the way they treat the verses.

To be fair, they are ads, not graduate research papers, so perhaps I’m expecting too much. A certain amount of leeway comes w/ the territory I guess. They won’t persuade many who are in the know, however.

Margaret:

Given the details, I disagree. You say “in fact, I could probably take the very techniques inherent in the ads and make you sound like a crazed fundamentalist Christian.” Please do so. And when I say do so, I mean take quotes from Humanist declarations, resolutions, and manifestos (such as the ones quoted in the ads) and put them alongside Biblical quotes in a manner that makes Humanism ethics sound monterous and Biblical ethics sound much more in line with today’s ethical standards. I do not think this can be achieved.

Also, Rich, born again Christians typically claim to follow the Bible to the letter. Having read the Bible and read about the Bible by Biblical scholars, I find such a thing to be impossible because the Bible isn’t internally consistent. However, my point is this: there is not a wide range of interpretation that can be made of Humanist declarations and manifestos. Their meanings are intended to be as clear as possible and they are written in modern language because they are in fact modern.

The Bible is an ancient and highly confusing book. It requires all sorts of apologetics and interpretations by clergy from various sects, theologians, and Biblical scholars often disagree widely about the meaning and context of many passages. This is what has allowed the Bible to be used to both advocate for both the abolition of and defense of slavery in the United States. While Humanist manifestos and declarations specifically apply to modern day issues and say what they mean clearly, the Bible is useless as a foundation for morality.

It’s greatest use in history seems to be by power-hungry charismatic individuals who use its supposed divine authority to push their own agendas.

RB:

People do it with Einstein and Darwin all the time. They take quotes from Einstein out of context (“God doesn’t play dice with the universe” and other quotes) to make him seem like a devoted theist, when most likely he wasn’t expressing devotion to a personal God at all, and given everything else he said/believed, probably wasn’t even a theist.  Dawkins might be right on that one.

 Likewise with Darwin: people isolate things he said to make it seem like he had these grand doubts about his theories.  I doubt it, though.

Martha, what I was talking about is a commonsense approach to understanding anything, written or spoken: communication happens from the whole to the part, yet those ads treat the Bible like it is a collection of isolated sentences.

That, actually, is the locus of much of the confusion you mentioned. The Bible would be much less confusing to you if you read it like everything else. Don’t read poetry like historical narrative. Don’t read historical narrative like doctrinal instruction. Take each type of genre as it was meant to be taken–this is what is meant by “literal,” not “interpret everything the exact same way.” Don’t isolate sentences out of their context, and so forth–if you do any of that, you’ll most likely miss the boat.

Here’s an example: the ad that uses the 1 Tim passage to suggest Paul was an obvious mysogynist and that he oppressed women. If Paul was really arguing what the ad suggests, do you think he would have had women as ministry partners (as is evident in his other letters and from the book of Acts)?

There is no attempt to understand the intent of the passage as a whole and nor is there any attempt to take into account all Paul’s other statements regarding husbands loving, protecting, and providing for their wives. No mention of the mutual submission from Ephesians. It’s all as if he never said any of that. If I treated a humanist’s writing like that, I’d probably get skewered as being irrational.

Same for the one about trusting in the Lord.  The suggestion is that the Bible is obviously against using the mind to rationally think with logic and evidence. Again, no effort to understand what the proverb might actually be suggesting. If it really did say that and that was the Bible’s message (“logic/evidence/intellect=baaad. Feeelings=goood!”), the history of Christendom most likely wouldn’t include guys like Augustine, Lewis, Aquinas, and Plantinga, and passageas like Romans 12 wouldn’t be in the Bible.

And on scholars, theologians etc “disagreeing widely:” you and I both know that there are many reasons people have for holding the beliefs they do, and many times those reasons don’t have much to do with the text itself. Some defend the turf they do because they want to impress a peer group. Others because it allows them to live a certain way they want to live. Still others because they’d give up lots of grant money if they gave up the game, etc etc. The point here is that pointing to the mere fact of disagreement among theologians and others doesn’t get you far. Best just to focus on the text itself, and your case for what you think it means. A solid, well-thought out and rational argument and interpretation will hold water, regardless of others (including “scholars”) that disagree. The mere fact of disagreeing voices does not mean there is no truth of the matter to be found.

By the way, what biblical scholars have you read? Sounds like you have read and consulted quite a few. Can you remember any names? Just curious.

Anything can be abused by power hungry charismatic individuals.  This is not a mark against whatever is being abused. Again, just because I might be able to take take some stuff you say out of context and abuse your words doesn’t mean you yourself are at fault. It’s all about whether the connection is actually there.

Lastly, yes, the Bible is ancient, and yes it is from a different culture, but why is that a bad thing? Are you suggesting we have no wisdom to gain from something ancient and outside of our own modern culture?

Part III coming up!

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Humanist Ad Campaigns, Part 1

Posted on January 16, 2011 | 3 Comments

Humanists have recently begun a number of ad campaigns.  They are silly.

Note I didn’t say “intolerant” or “in bad taste.”  My concern is not that they “hurt people’s feelings,” as if the skeptics and humanists need to step on eggshells when it comes to religious folk.  No, my claim is that the ads demonstrate the very signs of irrationality that humanists and such claim to eschew.

Some of the ads are patently absurd.   Take, for instance, the ad above.  Any thinking person who doesn’t have an axe to grind and isn’t already blinded by an agenda will recognize that Jesus is using hyperbole.  He was a Jew, afterall, who affirmed the Jewish Law, which includes the Ten Commandments, which includes the commandment “honor your father and mother.”   He is making a comment about the superiority of one’s love to God in comparison with one’s love towards everything else.  The ad obviously lacks charity, which is a pre-requisite of rationality when dealing with one’s ideological opponents.

Also look at this second ad.  It commits the fallacy of equivocation; it subtly uses another meaning of the word “fear” than what the passage intends.  Plus, it’s not as if fear is never a legitimate response to something.

And a third…how in the world does the group making the ads think that the proverb is actually saying that evidence and logic are bad things? (more on this later)  There are several perfectly good explanations of the meaning of that proverb, they make good sense, and for the ad makers to ignore them is the height of willful ignorance.

You might respond by saying that I’m setting too high of a standard for the ads.  They are advertisements, afterall, not graduate philosophy papers.  Yes, they are ads, and ad makers are usually given a pass to play more fast and loose with words and persuasive tactics than other genres of communication, but I still maintain that a little more charity and rationality and a little less caricature isn’t too much to ask.

I had a discussion with a friend on Facebook about this recently.  In the several posts that follow, I’m going to catalogue the conversation to unpack what I’ve started to say here in this post.

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On Intolerance and Proof

Posted on January 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

Ahhh…Facebook.

The conversations on there provide good blog fodder.

I was Roaming around on Facebook the other day, when I came across a conversation one of my former students was having with another person.  I don’t know how it ended up on my home page, being that I was a third party onlooker not directly involved in the conversation, but there it was.

Supposedly this third person had tried to show Mormons how Mormonism is false, and my former student was taking exception with this.  Being that the conversation took place on a wall I did not have access to, I could not comment on the conversation myself, but that doesn’t stop me from making a blog post out of it….:)

Here are some of the things my former student said, and my responses: 

“Intolerable Christians.” (this was his first comment)

What do you mean by “intolerant”? 

Judging by the other things he was saying, he was attempting to correct the other person (I’m going to call him “Steve” from here on out for matters of convenience) for saying another religion is wrong.  In other words, he was saying that claiming another’s religious beliefs are false is out of line, ie, intolerant.  Which, ironically, was the very thing he was doing to Steve.

Steve had a religious belief that it is ok to correct/critique false beliefs.  This, in fact, is a main part of the Christian religion.  Christianity has always been an evangelizing religion.  Part of the Great Commission itself is persuading people to drop their false beliefs and idols and pick up belief in and worship of Jesus Christ.  Christians could be mistaken about Jesus, for sure, but those who claim the persuasion efforts of Christians are intolerant are, in fact, trying to do the very same thing: persuade the evangelizing Christians that their missionary beliefs, values, and actions, are false.  Which means my former student was, by his own definition, being intolerant.

Now, I don’t think he was actually intolerant.  It’s ok to try to persuade others that what you believe is true.  The culprit was not his persuasive impulse, but his faulty definition of intolerance.

“I don’t support shoving my religion onto other people”

Again, what do you mean by “shoving religion down other people’s throats?”  If, by that, you mean trying to persuade others that your beliefs are true and theirs false, I guess Steve was guilty as charged, but also again, that would mean that my former student was likewise doing the same thing.  The minute he interjected and started calling Steve “intolerant” and implying that he was “shoving religion down another’s throat,” he was seeking to persuade Steve to stop that.  That is, he was trying to correct Steve.  “Intolerant” and “you are shoving religion…” are not compliments, so how else can I understand that?

If, on the other hand, my former student was accusing Steve of calling Mormons names, shouting, mocking, or getting angry at Mormons, then Steve was not guilty.  Steve’s only remarks on Facebook was how he thought Mormon belief was illogical, unscientific, and factually false.  Not once did he call names or anything like that.  He focused on the beliefs, not trashing the person.

I guess someone could reply that I wasn’t there, and maybe Steve did call names and such.  However, the same could be said about my former student: he wasn’t there either.  The only information I have to go on is the very same information he had to go on, and given what we were both privy to, there’s no reason to charge anyone with “shoving” anything down anyone’s throat.

“It seems to me that he was not being very accepting of the differences of the Mormon religion. Instead he attempted to show them his religion (Christianity) was true when he has no definite proof that either religions are right/wrong.”

Ahhh, there it is.  The ‘ol “no proof” charge.  A few things:

First, having no proof of your own beliefs doesn’t make your persuasive enterprise intolerant or bigoted.  It might make you irrational and foolhardy, but not judgmental.

Second, what does he mean by “proof”?  If by that he means indubitably certain, unassailable, uh, proof that can’t be doubted, then not only does the Christian religion not have proof behind it, but virtually no belief whatsoever, save, perhaps, belief in one’s own existence, has proof behind it.  Even obvious things like belief in the external world or belief that murder is wrong or belief that I had chicken for dinner tonight are subject to doubt and are not indubitable.  But those beliefs are incredibly solid.  This just means that certainty is not a requirement of proof.

But if he means evidence, reasons, and arguments that makes a belief more sound than its opposite, then of course Christianity has proof to it!  There’ s lots of stuff out there on this question.  For starters, I recommend this website.   Or this book.

And while we’re at it, how does my former student know there’s no proof?  Has he read deeply of the history of philosophy and science?  Has he read the copious literature on the formation of the Bible?  What scholars has he read?  William Alston, or Alvin Plantinga, perhaps?  Has he attended any debates, such as this one?  Has he done any deep research on big bang cosmology or the anthropic principle? 

If not, how can he claim with any sort of confidence that there is “no proof”?  Perhaps he can say that he, himself, hasn’t encountered any proof, but that wouldn’t be saying much.

“Not the belief itself is intolerant. The fact that people don’t listen to others and try to force their religion upon others is intolerant.”

Ok, but how is merely seeking to persuade, or thinking Mormonism hopefully false, mean Steve wasn’t listening?

“Because there is no definite proof. Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that is part of the definition of belief. Accepting something is true even though there is no solid proof.”

He is wrong.  The definition of belief is a statement or proposition that one holds to be true.  Proof/evidence/reason may or may not be along for the ride, but merely believing something doesn’t mean proof is nowhere to be found.  Otherwise, my former student would be just as guilty of having no proof.  My former student has beliefs, yes? In particular, that  “part of the definition of belief is accepting something without proof,” and “it is wrong to shove your religion down someone’s throat,” right?  I guess, by his own definition, those two things are without “proof,” and his efforts at persuading Steve that those beliefs are worthy of accepting is intolerant.

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Atheist Ad Campains

Posted on January 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of my buddies, a fellow Christian, emailed that picture to me the other day.  Some of his family members were floating it back and forth, commenting on how clever it was.

I had to chuckle, but not because I thought it clever.  IMO, it leaves atheists open to several responses.  One could just as easily retort back something to the tune of “Religion inspired Martin Luther King.  Science inspired Hiroshima.”

Someone could respond to that by pointing out that I shouldn’t be blaming a whole methodology for a particular thing that someone abused said methodology to invent…which is my point precisely in the retort in the first place. 

You see, the ad commits the fallacy of hasty generalization.  It lumps all religious ideologies into one amorphous whole, and it uses the evil caused by some specific religious ideologies to paint all religions.  Not a very rational or honest thing to do, yet I find some atheist types doing it all the time.  They completely ignore all the huge differences between religions and treat them all the same.  As one author quipped, saying all religions are ultimately the same is like insisting that aspirin and arsenic are ultimately the same because they come in tablet form.

I don’t know how folks can logically put the worldview of Jesus and the worldview of Mohammed in the same boat, but that doesn’t stop people from foolishly trying.

Talk to these folks, and you get the impression that belief in and devotion to any and all higher powers is dangerous.

I guess that depends on what the character of that higher power is.

I have reason to hold that when I pass away, I will be held accountable for my actions in this life by a powerful, just, loving Creator God who insists that I treat my fellow man with compassion…BOO!  Fear me.

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Kinda Convicting

Posted on December 12, 2010 | 2 Comments

This week my pastor told a really poignant story in his sermon, and the point he drove home with the story was powerful and right on:

He told of something he saw on the news a while back, where a woman had an asthma attack, but she had no inhaler with her.  Her husband thought fast and quickly brought her to a nearby CVS pharmacy.  They rushed to the pharmacy window and, presenting their urgent need at the desk, asked the clerk for an inhaler.

The clerk brought one to the counter, and gave the price: $21.50.

The husband produced a $20, and frantically searched for the other $1.50, but couldn’t find enough.  He told the clerk and asked if he could just have it; after all, his wife was in a serious condition, it would take too long for the paramedics to arrive, and time was of the essence–she could die.

The clerk, unfortunately, was obstinate: “I’m sorry, but it costs $21.50.  I can’t just give you something you haven’t paid for.”

The husband, surprised, attempted to plead, but to no avail: “you mean you’re gonna let my wife die for a buck fifty?  Come on!”

“Sorry, can’t do that.”

The paramedics arrived eventually and the woman was helped, but wasn’t the clerk a jerk? 

The point the pastor made with the story was that he was like that with the gospel.  People all around are dying and perishing without Christ, and he simply goes around with the inhaler in his pocket, cowing to silly cultural rules:

“Oh, I don’t want to be a holy roller.”
“Oh, I don’t want to shove the Bible down their throat.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be rejected.”
“Oh, I just want to love them in action rather than tell them.:

Oh…? and on and on and on.

That point stuck with me.  I’m familiar with the mindset because I’m like that too.  I’d rather withold life-giving spiritual medicine from people for a buck fifty of being well thought of.

Kinda convicting…

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What is Truth?

Posted on November 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

…such was the subject of a recent Socratic Seminar (Socratic seminars are basically class discussions on a certain question/text that are more student-directed, rather than teacher-directed) in an English class of one of my colleagues.

The day before the discussion, she put up a status update on Facebook to the tune of “this should be interesting.  Lots to talk about,” as if the question was controversial or somehow hard to answer. 

I commented, somewhat sarcastically: “uuhhh..answer: correspondence with reality.  End of discussion.”

My comment, though I was trying to be funny and witty (I probably royally failed), was only somewhat sarcastic.  That is *the* answer.  A statement or belief is “true” when it matches, corresponds to, or aligns with an actual state of affairs in reality.  Aristotle, though by no means the inventor of this, was perhaps one of the first to articulate it when he said:

To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.

Boy, thank goodness we have philosophers (sarcasm implied there).

Now, that doesn’t mean that no other answer has been proposed.  Plenty have.  Some philosophers have argued that “truth” is when a statement or belief coheres and meshes well with your other beliefs (called the “coherence” view of truth), while others have insisted that we can’t know reality as it is in itself; we can only know our perceptions.  These fellas hold that concepts in our minds do not match with (or fail to match with) reality–they construct reality.  This is called the “constructivist” view of truth (see a trend here?).

Richard Rorty, Duke U. philosopher, is famous for quipping, “truth is what my peers let me get away with saying.”

Funny story: one time, whe Rorty gave his version of truth, Alvin Plantinga, of Notre Dame fame, shot back: “Richard, we are not going to let you get away with that,” shining a light on the slightly self-defeating nature of the statement.

Notice this, though: no matter what the alternative version is, they all have one thing in common–they all assume the correspondence view of truth.  They wouldn’t make sense without it.  In other words, folks who think truth is something other than correspondence to reality say something like this: “truth is NOT correspondence to reality.  Truth is ____.” To which one can always ask, “are you accurately describing truth?”  In other words, does the alternative view of truth correspond to what truth really is, or is it just a statement of the speaker’s belief?  If the latter, it can be written off as “just a belief.”  If the former–if the person making the statement is purporting to describe reality, purporting to describe what truth is really like, they’ve really shot themselves in the foot.

A few comments down in the Facebook thread, my colleague noted: “if you were in the discussion, they (the students) would have plenty to say.  Many would question you and disagree with you.”

To which I replied: “…and in so doing unwittingly confirmed my view.”

The only way in which their disagreement would matter and make any sense is if they would say that my claims do not accurately describe/match up with what truth really is, i.e, my claims do not correspond to reality.  Otherwise, who cares?  If, in their disagreement, they would just be expressing their personal taste or preference, why bother?  Why have an in depth and principled socratic discussion over what would only amount to ice cream tastes?  Only if we are talking about reality would I want to waste ANY energy at all in the dialogue.

So how did the discussion go?  I asked my colleague that question the next day, and she said that it actually turned out to be quite a discussion, and she summarized some of the things her students remarked.  Their comments clued me in that they were really answering and asking a bunch of different questions that departed from the original topic somewhat.   That doesn’t mean they weren’t good questions to ask/statements to make, but it sounds like they never really got around to addressing the topic directly…I’ll just lay it all out here and hopefully you’ll see what I mean:

* “One’s beliefs and perceptions are shaped largely by their environment and how he was raised.”

Yes, true.  Question, though: so what?  What follows from that?  Does that mean that said person doesn’t know the truth?  Does that mean that no one can know the truth?  The answer to both questions is “no.”  Just because one’s beliefs or views have been shaped by his surroundings (“if you were raised in Saudi Arabia, you’d be a Muslim, not a Christian.”) doesn’t mean the views he does hold are false, unjustified, unknowable, or that the person doesn’t hold those beliefs for rational, solid reasons.  To suggest otherwise would be a major non sequitur.

* “How can a person be sure that their religion or belief on truth is the correct one?”

Good question.  Short answer: take the claims of the religion, along with the reasons and evidence supporting those claims, and compare/contrast with the claims of other religions.  The first thing you’ll notice is that a) they can’t all be true, and b) they all aren’t on equal footing when it comes to rational justification.

Sometimes, people ask this question not as a genuine query or search, but as a way of skeptically dismissing someone who does strongly hold to a certain belief.  Some, when confronted with a strong believer, merely shrug, mumble “how can you know?” and walk away, without waiting for an answer.  This is the lazy man’s way of justifying his own intellectual laziness. 

Someone who asks that question but refuses to actually go further and seek an honest answer to the question is not a real player in the game.  Until these folks demonstrate that they take the enterprise seriously and are willing to think through how one could know, I tend to not take them seriously.

* “How can someone know his views are correct if he hasn’t explored the alternatives?”

Another good question.  If you haven’t done this, you need to do so.  You could be wrong, so comparing your worldview to the worldview of others will only benefit you.  You’ll either figure out you got it wrong, and you’ll need to change your view, or you’ll figure out that you are onto something, in which case you’ll gain confidence and peace.  Either way is a win for you.  People of all stripes, atheist, Jewish, Buddhist, Agnostic, Skeptic, not just the Christian, need to do this.

By the way, though some detailed examination of other beliefs is needed, for some worldviews and religions, this need not be complicated.  For example, if a religion claims that evil is an illusion or that the individual is an illusion (as do some strains of Hinduism, and some atheists), that pretty much disqualifies that one right there.  Pretty easy to say that in an academic classroom setting removed from the flotsam and jetsam of reality; quite another thing to state it with a straight face at the foot of the gas chambers of Auschwitz.  In other words: though you will need to do a great bit of digging on some questions and for some worldviews, some questions can be answered and some worldviews eliminated with common sense, so don’t fret and make the search more complicated than it needs to be.

*Religion (in large part) is handed down from parents and surrounding influences when children are young.

Yes, this is the case with many people.  As is commonly said: “if you were born in China, you’d be Buddhist,” or “if you were born in Iraq, you’d be Muslim.”  First, while that is generally true with a wide swath of people, that does not mean we should conclude environment or locale determines belief.   Christians are dispersed the world throughout, and we see all the time instances of people rejecting the worldview of their culture.   Difficult, yes.  Rare, comparitively.  But very possible.

Secondly, it is an error to conclude from the observation above that such a belief gained through the influence of one’s own culture is therefore unjustified.  You can’t fault a belief on it’s source; that is the genetic fallacy.  Beliefs are true or false wholly apart from the environmental influences that might have caused it.  Just because someone might have received his beliefs from his parents does not make those beliefs false, and does not mean the person can’t know his beliefs are true.  It is a semi-interesting observation of human nature, nothing more.

*When is it okay to lie? When is it not okay to lie?

Quick answer: if it is 1942 in Nazi Germany, and you have Jews in your basement, you get a pass.  Otherwise, I usually advise against it.

All these statements and questions are interesting, but they are a way’s down the road, and, strictly speaking, someone that brings them up in the context of the “what is truth?” topic is changing the subject.  The answer to the question “what is truth?” is fairly simple.

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