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Apologetics
4. Questions about Truth, Knowledge &
Beliefs
(Misunderstandings,
Myths & Mistakes)
A
series that helps consider the foundations for faith
Contents:
Introductory
Comments
•
let's try and be simple.
1.
What is Truth?
•
truth and
reality
2.
How does Daily Life affect our Understanding Truth?
•
we have to
live within the constraints of reality
3.
Why do we need to be careful with Language when Considering Truth?
•
it's important
to check meaning of language
4.
How do Facts differ from Knowledge and from Belief?
• the
differences
5.
How do we go about Interpreting the 'Facts' of History?
• how
history is worked out
6.
How has 'Intelligent Design' opened up questions about Scientists?
• intellectual
struggles versus narrow beliefs
7.
Is it Legitimate to Question the Characters of Scientific Commentators?
• science
in a world where morals and ethics are undermined.
8.
Why is all this Important when Considering the Existence
of the Bible?
• consider
the Bible as you would any other historical data
9.
Why is all this Important when Considering the
Content of the Bible?
• ditto
10.
Why is all this Important when Considering the
Beliefs of the Bible?
• ditto
Conclusions
Questions
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.
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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:
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.
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| 2.
How does Daily Life affect our Understanding Truth? |
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,
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3.
Why do we Need to be Careful with Language when Considering
Truth?
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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!
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4.
How do Facts differ from Knowledge and from Beliefs?
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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
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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.
- 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.
- This is true regardless
of what I think – everyone else confirms it.
e.g. “England
is the best country to live in, in the world.”
d)
Errors to Watch For
As
we'll see below,
- there is an erroneous
belief that scientific knowledge is the only
real knowledge and therefore the only meaningful knowledge.
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| 5.
How do we go about interpreting the ‘facts' of History?
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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.
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| 6.
How has 'Intelligent Design' opened up further questions about
Scientists? |
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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,
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.
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Is it Legitimate to Question the Characters of Scientific Commentators?
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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."
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| 8.
Why is all this Important when Considering the Existence
of the Bible? |
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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.
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9.
Why is all this Important when Considering the Content
of the Bible?
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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.
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10.
Why is all this Important when Considering the Beliefs
of the Bible?
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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.
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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.
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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'?
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