CalvinDude.com

“If you look at it at face value and think about what she did, it might seem wrong, but I think you really have to, like, look beyond the whole thing with the cops to really understand, like, where she’s coming from,” said Orlando Ayala, a 24-year-old senior.

“SHE” mentioned in the quote is convicted cop-killer ”Assata Shakur.”  Comforting that the “face value” look at murder “might seem wrong” to someone graduating from college, ain’t it?

Even more comforting:

“You have to think why she did it, cause cops are known to mess with some people, you know. If she had a reason to do it then I have no problem with it.” — Sophomore Carlos Badilla, 20, of the Bronx.

Let’s see.  Hitler had a reason to kill Jews….  It wasn’t a moral reason, but hey he had one!  So what’s the prob?

After reading the passage in Redeeming Science (quoted in my previous blog entry), I got to thinking about truth.  Poythress’s arguments are amazingly profound for being so easily stated!

What is truth?  It is, as Poythress argued, fundamentally rational.  Truth is also linguistic.  Therefore, a simple definition of truth might be “Propostions (ie: statments) about some object that are consonant with reality.”

This is important because truth cannot exist without language or mind.  Note: reality could exist apart from these things; but truth–propositions about reality–could not. 

If we assume, therefore, that there is no God then before the human mind sufficiently “evolved” to formulate truth concepts, there was no truth.

If this is the case, though, then we cannot argue about whether something is true before man’s thoughts.  There was no truth before man invented truth through the evolution of language.

But this itself cannot be true.  That’s right.  It is a propostion about reality before the existence of truth.  In other words, five seconds before truth was created in the form of language, it was not true (nor false) that “there is no truth.”  The only way for it to be true is if there was some other mind with language that existed in order to formulate truth.  But if such a mind existed, then the statement would be catagorically false to say that there was no truth at the time!

In short, the propostion “There was no truth at X” (where X can be any time, past, present, or future) can never be true.  The only way it can avoid being false is if it become meaningless (ie: neither “truth” nor “falsehood” are relevant at the point).

Thus, if we argue as previously stated–”before the human mind sufficiently ‘evolved’ to formulate truth concepts, there was no truth”–we are forced to recognize that that argument is either false or meaningless.

This is the case for all historical “truths” that precede the human mind (again, assuming there is no God).  It is not true that the Big Bang happened, for instance.  When the Big Bang happened there was no truth, and thus there was no truth-value for the Big Bang.

But naturally we do not talk this way.  Instead, we presuppose that there was truth before man came on the scene.  We presuppose that it is actually true that the Big Bang happened, for instance.  But in presupposing this, we must also presuppose the existence of some kind of mind and language in order to make the proposition true.

Now some may argue that this is semantics.  Some may even argue that we can change it to “reality” instead.  It was “reality” that the Big Bang happened, even if it wasn’t “true” per se.

But this statement about reality is itself a truth-statement, and thus this statement falls back into the same problem.

Therefore, even in speaking of “reality” before human thought, the atheist must presuppose the existence of another mind with language.

In short, the atheist is left with a problem.  Either he must assert that everything pre-human intelligence is meaningless (and thus embrace radical skepticism and relativism), or he must assert that there was another mind (or minds) that existed pre-human intelligence.

This isn’t a problem for the Christian, however, as we do assert the existence of a Mind that pre-existed human consciousness.

I have some specific comments in my next post, but wanted to give you this quote in context first:

We may travel through the divine attributes one by one, to check whether they extend to include not only law, but truth.

First, consider omnipresence.  Laws are the same in all places, by the very nature of the law.  The same is not so obvious for particular, as opposed to general, truth.  each distinct situation has its own facuality and its own truths that pertain to it.  At the moment it is true that I am seatined in a chair in my office; my wife, by contrast, may be standing up at home.  But if it is true that I am seated in a chair, it is also true for my wife who is at home that I am seated.  The truth describes a situation at a particular location in time and space.  But the truth so stated is true in whatever location from which we choose to state it.

…

And the truth is present in all times in the future.  The past might seem to be more questionable, if this world allows genuine contingency.  A human being situationed in the past cannot predict beforehand whether I am seated just now or not.  But if tomorrow at 4:00 PM I will be seated, it is true today that tomorrow at 4:00 PM I will be seated.  We do not seem to be able to escape the impression that if something is true, it is true!  And, at least to an ordinary way of thinking, this sameness does not make impossible the existence of contingent human decisions.

The truth, then, is everlasting. …

Next, truth is immaterial and invisible.  We see that the apple is red.  We do not with our physical eyes see the truth that the apple is red.  We know it.  This conclusion is also apparent from the fact that I know the truth that the apple is red even when I cease looking at the apple.  Truth is ideational in character, not physical.

Next, consider the attribute of power.  Does the truth have power over the world?  I observe a red apple, and I say, “That’s a ripe, red apple.”  If what I say is really true, it matches the state of affairs in the world.  In fact, it matches perfectly, not in the sense that it says everything in exhaustive detail, but in the sense that it is not deficient or incorrect in what it does say.  The match between truth and the world is perfect, suggesting that one determines the other prefectly.  Perfect determination means perfect control, perfect power.  But which determines the other?  Does truth determine the world, or does the world determine the truth?

At first glance, many people might think that the world determines the truth.  In human experience, we observe the world and from observations find out what is true about the world.  The order in our experience moves from the world to truth.  But someone else might have observed the apple before I did.  And still a third person might have predicted the ripening of the apple from still earlier observations, which precede the appearance of redness.

Human prediction, of course, is fallible.  But it relies on regularities in the world.  We thus come back to the issue of regularities, or general truths, and these seem to precede any particular instance, rather than vice versa.

Moreover, we always know truths in a context of other truths, which give meaning to any particular truth.  We know what “red” is partly from earlier experiences of red, and we know what an “apple” is from earlier experiences with apples.  The truth that “this apple is red” has meaning not in isolation but in relation to the familiarity of apples and of red colors.  This familiarity itself presupposes regularities of very basic kinds, regularities that mean that there are apples and that certain familiar characteritics allow us (perhaps with occasional mistakes) to recognize an apple when we see one, and to group it together with other instances of the same kind.  The relation between a universal (”apple”) and a particular case (”this apple”) presupposes both general regularities and particulars that manifest those regularities.  Thus the particular truth “this apple is red” can be grasped only as it coheres with other truths, about other apples and other instances of red color.  This truth enjoys harmony with other truths.

The harmony is prior to any particular instance within the harmony, inasmuch as the instances cannot of themselves create harmony.  And this implies that, at least at some level, truth is prior to the particular case.  The particular case conforms to truth, rather than vise versa.  So the truth has power over the world.  And the power is perfect, that is to say, omnipotent.  Because God is truth, all that he creates conforms to truth.

…

The truth is both transcendent and immanent.  Particularly when we think of the harmony of many truths, the harmony transcends any one situation.  At the same time, it applies to the situation, so that it is immanent in its application.

…

…[T]ruth is rational.  We demonstrate that it is rational when we grasp truth with our minds; and we presuppose that it is rational when we search for truth and expect beforehand that it will fit our minds.  Truth is also language-like, in that it can be expressed in human languages.  These two characteristics, rationality and expression in language, belong to human beings as persons.  Even though some may deny it in theory, our practical treatment of truth as rational and as linguistically graspable affirms its personal character.

Poythress, Vern S. (2006).  Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach, Wheaton: Good News Publishers (pp. 188-191).

 

I just saw the latest US Snooze and Whirrled Report.  Its cover story was the annual Christian-bashing Gnostic rehash.  They say that new finds are shedding new light on the issue of whether Christ was more teacher than savior…

Frankly, I’m amazed they still try to pretend these Gnostic “gospels” have been “newly” found.  Hey, breaking news!  JFK was shot!  WE LANDED ON THE MOON!  There was a little “conflict” in Vietnam that finally ended.  Oh yeah, and can’t forget the Hungarian revolution that just happened.

All these things happened…what’s the word?  Oh yes…AFTER the Dead Sea Scrolls containing these Gnostic heresies were “newly” found.

The rate the US Snooze and Whirrled Report is going, I expect next week’s cover to read: “CIVIL WAR OVER!  CONFEDERACY SURRENDERS!”