In Norman Geisler and Frank Turek's book I Don't Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist,
they lay out a 12 step argument that will lead from the reality of
truth to the reliability of the Bible and Godhood of Jesus. Using their
framework, I intend to have a series of posts about each of the 12
steps. However, I would like to take a deeper look at many of the issues
they cover. This is not to say that the coverage in the book is
lacking; it's just to say that my own studies have taken me deeper than,
I presume, space allowed in the book. The first two posts in the series will
cover the first 2 steps, which are:
1. Truth about reality is knowable.
2. The opposite of true is false.
In part 1 of steps 1&2 we talked about the 3 major theories of truth. They are: correspondence, coherence, and pragmatism. The correspondence theory is the only theory of truth that is actually connected to reality and reflects actual objects or events in the world. In this part we are going to discuss the major obstructions to thinking that propositions don't have to correspond to reality. These are postmodernism and relativism. Essentially what is being said is that there is no such thing as objective truth that corresponds to reality. Things can be true for one individual but not for another individual in different circumstances. Let's dig in.
Postmodernism could come in many different forms depending on the individual postmodernist you happen to be conversing with. However, there are 3 main tenets of this theory that inform the postmodernist's worldview. They are: the deconstruction of texts, the assertion that reality is a social construction built on language, and that there are no metanarratives. These all boil down to a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth and thus truth is what the individual or a society makes it.
The postmodernist rejects "authorial meaning in texts along with the existence of stable verbal meanings and universally valid linguistic definitions" (1). What this means in practice is that everyone interprets a text. There isn't one meaning for a given text. With regard to Christianity, this means, for instance, that the resurrection of Christ could be whatever the reader wants it to be; bodily, spiritual, vision, hallucination, conspiracy, etc. They get to this idea by declaring that language is merely a social construct among a linguistic group. A linguistic group could be defined in a number of different ways. A family could be one, a neighborhood, or a small town. Rarely, larger groups such as country regions or nations could be linguistic groups. Groups that get to large could pose problems for the postmodernist language theory due to the fact that if several hundred million people (the US for example) share a language construct this deflates the idea that texts cannot communicate even semi-universal truth. Furthermore, postmodernists assert that all reality is determined by language as shared by linguistic groups. What this amounts to is that Americans and Chinese nationals cannot communicate with each other, even if one or the other group can speak Chinese or English respectively. In fact, they tend to take this even further by saying that someone from Boone cannot converse, whether in speech or in text, with someone from Greensboro because they do not share a language construct. I think you can see how ridiculous this theory is, but I will save the critique for a little later. Finally, a metanarrative is simply, a worldview. Postmodernists hold that there are no metanarratives and thus no way to decide if a worldview is true. In practice this means that if Buddhism, Atheism, or Christianity works for someone, then it is subjectively true for that person or group of persons and no one else.
There are many problems with these views of postmodernity. First of all, there is only one meaning to a text; that of the author's. Paul had a certain idea or argument in mind when he wrote each of his epistles. We should be trying to get to that meaning by placing the text in its appropriate historical and cultural context and being careful to understand the words as they were used in Paul's time. In reality, postmodernists are not postmodernists in everyday life. When they read a label on a poison, they do not claim that the text is whatever they interpret it to be. They rightly do not ingest the poison because the label asserts a universal truth. Namely, humans who eat the poison will die. The postmodernist would deny this in theory, but not in practice. Another problem with postmodernism's thoughts on language is that no one would be able to communicate with one another. If we keep splicing out what people share with each other in terms of life experience, we would discover that even very similar people have not shared every life experience and thus, cannot communicate with each other because their language, while the same words, doesn't mean the same thing. You could imagine two kids who are born in the same town, in the same year. They go to the same grade schools, graduate the same year and sign up for the Marines. They attend boot camp together in the same platoon and graduate the same day. They go to infantry school together and their first active battalion together. They go to Afghanistan together and Iraq twice together in the same company. They both separate from the Marines on the same day. They attend college together in the same degree program, graduate the same day and both get jobs with the same company. And we could go on. On postmodernist theory, these two people could not communicate with each other due to the difference in life experience: i.e. the two people viewed the same things differently. This is clearly absurd and self-defeating. Furthermore, how can the postmodernist think that they can write effectively about their theories of postmodernism? No one can understand the words in their articles because they are interpreting the writing within their own language construct. A similar notion to some aspects of postmodernism is relativism, which some postmodernists adopt as well.
Relativism is a type of subjectivism. Subjectivism means that everything is just a matter of opinion, such as, "I like ice cream." Relativism mainly applies that to morality and ethics. There are 3 kinds of relativism (2). They are: society does relativism, society says relativism, and I say relativism. Society does relativism could also be called cultural relativism. This is a purely descriptive relativism that simply describes, without judgment, what another society does concerning morality. For instance, in India they do not eat cows because they are considered sacred. The inference that is supposed to be drawn is that Americans and Indians have different morals. This is false though. In America, we bury grandma when she dies; in India, the cow might be grandma. Thus, the moral is not to eat (kill) grandma and is the same between countries. Society says relativism dictates that an individual should act in accordance with his own society's code. There are 3 problems with this view. There would be no immoral societies, no immoral laws, and no moral reformation. If a society can just dictate what is right and wrong, then no society could be immoral or make immoral laws. If a society doesn't make immoral laws, a moral reformer, who is trying to change his societies' laws is just a troublemaker. We can put this in a syllogism to see it more clearly.
1. If no society is immoral, then no societies' laws are immoral.
2. If no societies' laws are immoral, then no one should try to change the laws.
3. Relativists believe what society says is moral.
4. Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to change the laws of American society.
5. Therefore, in relativist America, Martin Luther King, Jr. was wrong to try to change the laws of American society.
This is obviously false. Dr. King was right in his championing of equal rights for African-Americans. But, on a relativistic society says view, Dr. King should have just shut-up and sat down. The final view is called I say relativism. This view says only individual preferences are guidelines to behavior. This view fails because nothing could ever be right or wrong. If I determine what is right, no one could say I was wrong or vice-versa. We would have people running all over the place doing whatever made them feel good. In summary, relativism has 7 fatal flaws (3):
Relativists can't...
1. accuse others of wrongdoing
2. complain about the problem of evil
3. place blame or accept praise
4. make charges of unfairness or injustice
5. improve their morality
6. hold meaningful moral discussions
7. promote the obligation of tolerance
Relativism presents a view of reality in which there is no objective moral standard (God) and seeks to reject the fact that true is the opposite of false by declaring that everyone's position is true.
In conclusion for steps 1&2, we can assess whether something is true or not. The correspondence theory of truth shows us how to do that. We check to see if what we think or say corresponds to reality. If it doesn't, then it isn't true. If we can determine what is true, then we know what is false because they are opposites. In the next several posts we are going to look at step 3: It is true that the theistic God exists. A number of arguments will be offered to reasonably demonstrate this fact.
Notes:
1. J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview. pg. 145.
2. Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl. Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-Air. pgs. 36-9.
3. ibid, pgs. 61-9.
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