Thursday, June 19, 2008

Unpacking Truth Claims

A response to http://godlesswoman.blogspot.com


I realize I have not established that Christianity is the only worldview that corresponds accurately with reality; what is. You will see in my blogs different focuses on various aspects of the Christian claims and a defense, if you will, of those aspects. My blog, “Who is God” is only a part of the whole. By no means is it a complete discourse on the nature of God, truth, et al.


Just the same, your response blog ask great foundational questions that require and deserve a good response.


Let me start where you start with the assertion that my reasoning was flawed by positing a singular foundational worldview of Christianity. You compare this with the fictitious Flying Spaghetti Monster to assert an analogous lack of reasonable evidentiary support for my claims. And you ask on what basis can I make a claim to truth that excludes your or others claims to truth. With this blog, I will focus on this question and I will answer your subsequent questions in subsequent blogs.


What is truth? Can we agree that truth is what corresponds to reality? I’ll proceed on this definition as being accurate. If truth is what corresponds to reality, how can two or more contradicting truth claims co-exist with equally validity? In other words, if I say the world is round and a tribesman in Africa says it’s a square box shaped planet we cannot both be right. The truth would be that the earth is round even though the African tribesman believes it to be otherwise. It would be illogical to argue that both truth claims are factual and equally true for one corresponds to reality and one does not. Truth, by its very nature is exclusive of non-truth. That’s the way logic works.


Likewise when I put forth that Christianity lines up with reality and explains it better than other truth claims, I then have to provide a framework to show the reasonability and probability that it does indeed correspond to reality. I don’t think, just because it’s my belief system it is any truer than anyone else’s belief system. I think it is true because it corresponds with what is real.


As stated above, I am attempting to write on the many reasons why I make this claim in the many blogs I am writing. Each one is designed to fit into the whole framework to create the big picture and provide reasonable and clear arguments to support the claims.


I understand that there are a plethora of different belief systems out there. And I believe that there is truth in every one of them, because we all live in the real world and anything we develop in our worldview in some way will correspond to what is, because we can’t get away from what is. However, that worldview that is developed can be a distortion or counterfeit of the real. I value people and I respect their various worldviews. However, because I value people I want to see people strive to align themselves with what really is versus living in some man made construct of what they think life to be about, that isn’t fully accurate. Thus, I write to encourage people to examine their belief system and really get to the heart of what they believe and why to see if it lines up with reality or not.


I don’t expect anyone to take an unsupported statement from me and blindly agree to accept such a statement. I might throw things out there from time to time that I haven’t yet established a framework for, but know that it is coming. However, if you see anything like that that just doesn’t make sense. I really want to hear from my readers so that I can take another go at it to make it clearer.


To Be Continued

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Note: I'm Godless Woman's husband.

"Likewise when I put forth that Christianity lines up with reality and explains it better than other truth claims, I then have to provide a framework to show the reasonability and probability that it does indeed correspond to reality. [...] I am attempting to write on the many reasons why I make this claim in the many blogs I am writing."

If you want to "provide a framework" that spans multiple blog posts, that's your choice, but GW asked a very straightforward question and we were hoping for a succinct response.

For example, if we were asked to defend our atheism, we would simply point out that there isn't a shred of evidence to support the existence any deities, and that there is plenty of evidence discrediting every major religion and its deity (e.g. the Bible and the Christian God).

Would you be willing to provide a distilled, straightforward defense of your position?

Karla said...

If I asked you to defend atheism and your responded "there isn't a shred of evidence to support the existence of any God and plenty of evidence discrediting every major religion . . ." that would not be a defense of atheism any more than if I responded to your request to defend Christianity that there is no shred of evidence to support that God doesn't exist nor evidence to support other belief systems. This would not be a defense of Christianity. To defend Christianity I have to explain what I mean by Christianity for I am not defending what many atheist think Christianity is about. I am defending "mere Christianity". I cannot do that justice in one blog. I have written three blogs in response, but I am posting them one at a time. However, I will change that and go ahead and post them now if you desire. Each response I give is directly in response to the flaws she alleges. Just the same, I will write more as the discussion goes on as needed. I think your wife deserves more from me than a pat answer in response. Thus I spent time developing a response.

Anonymous said...

My point was merely that GW asked specific questions and your response seemed evasive. I await your further responses.

Karla said...

I'm sorry, I reread my first post and realized I didn't get into the meat of the response until the second post. I have been trying to reset the second blog to post now and it's not doing it. If it doesn't post by tomorrow morning I will figure something out to get it to post.