Can We Even Know the Truth?
Years ago, I heard a young woman talk about her family life when she was growing up. When it came to the big questions in life—God, religion, worldview, and so forth—her parents would tell their kids, “No one knows the truth, so just believe whatever you want.”
That was fascinating to me, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. At first, I was surprised that parents would give this kind of advice to their kids. Then I realized that this way of thinking is probably much more common than I thought.
If we as Christians are going to make a case for the Christian worldview, then we need to show that truth about reality is even knowable.
This isn’t too difficult to do, once you understand the nature of self-defeating statements.
Self-defeating statements are self-destructive. If you take them at face value to be true, they tell you that they are false. They negate themselves and render themselves meaningless. Consider the following examples and responses:
- “Don’t believe anything you read.” Then I guess I shouldn’t believe this.
- “You should not judge.” But this statement is a judgement, so whoever wrote it is judging me.
- “You should not force your morals on others.” Then why are you forcing this morality on me?
You get the idea. Since these statements refute themselves, they become nonsense. Now, consider the following statements on truth:
- “There is no truth.” Is that true? I guess not, because it’s telling me there is no truth.
- “Truth cannot be known.” Is this true? If so, then how can I know this?
- “You should doubt everything.” Should I doubt that?
- “You can’t know anything for sure.” Then I suppose I can’t know that for sure.
Once we see that the above statements are nonsense, then we can safely say that: there is truth; truth can be known; we don’t have to doubt everything; and we can know some things for sure.
Where, then, do we go from here? Well, we simply start examining the evidence.[1] In the coming weeks, I will begin to systematically run through a case for the truth of Christianity.
But first, I want to address the question of whether multiple religions can all be true. We’ll look at that in our next two posts.
[1]Dr. Norman L. Geisler, Twelve Points That Show Christianity Is True (Indian Trail, NC: NGIM Ministries, 2016).
Recommended Reading:
- Sean McDowell “Ten Self-Refuting Statements You Must Know”
- Ryan Pauly “10 Self-Defeating Ideas You Should Probably Stop Believing”
Okay, I’m convinced! Love this way of explaining things.
very interesting…I want to read/hear more.
This explains a lot!
This
This site was a Godsend. I writing in my journal about truth and how we can know truth and the truth will set us free. Then I search the internet to find other supportive ideas about what I was writing about. Boom, here I am. I love this site and have subscribed to it. God bless you.