WHAT IS TRUTH? - 3

(The following is my response to the previous post with John's permission.)

John:

I found your "3 important questions" quite significant though my answers disagree with yours.  I suppose we could write off most of our differences as merely semantic, but I think we both agree that definitions are important, as the first 2 questions indicate.  So I'll try and give my answers as well as my reasons for disagreement.

First, what is truth?  For some reason, though you asked this question first, you didn't answer it first.  Of course, you were responding to my post WHAT IS TRUTH?.  I still haven't changed my thinking on this, even though I posted this nearly 8 years ago.  Truth is simply that which is, those statements which correspond with reality.

It appears as if you, however, believe that there are two totally different kinds of truth, "physical truth" which, though it does exist, "cannot be known in a fixed and immutable way," and what I suppose you'd call "theological truth," that which "is exempt from challenge and improvement."

I disagree!  Though there may be many differing categories of truth statements, truth itself does not change its definition depending on its subject.

Though much of physical truth cannot be known with certainty as you state, there is quite a bit that can be known.  It is the truth for instance, that I got out of bed this morning; this is a known fact.  It is also a truth that the earth rotates around the sun and that if I jump off my roof I will fall in an earthward direction and so forth.

In the same manner, there are theological truths that can be known, that are "fixed and immutable."  But there are also many that, as in the realm of science, we cannot be certain of.  Centuries of theological debate certainly demonstrate that.

So then, there are truths in whatever category we may choose.  While some of these can be known with certainty, many cannot.  And all truth statements are open to challenge, though if they are truth they are not open to change.  Our faith or "belief" (or unbelief) in these statements in no way affects their truthfulness.

What is science?  You define it as "the construction and refinement of mathematical and conceptual models of observed physical phenomena; where the validity of a model is measured by how accurately the model predicts future events."  I wasn't sure exactly what this means.  I confess that I am not a scientist.  However, I am familiar with what is known as The Scientific Method, though as John C. Lennox states:  "Contrary to popular impression, there is no one agreed scientific method, though certain elements crop up regularly in attempts to describe what 'scientific' activity involves:  hypothesis, experiment, data, evidence, modified hypothesis, theory, prediction, explanation, and so on.  But precise definition is very elusive."  He quotes also the view that "science 'by definition deals only with the natural, the repeatable, that which is governed by law.'"  (God's Undertaker, page 32.)  Such definitions would rule out many fields such as cosmology as science, as he explains.  I would add that history and archaeology would also be ruled out.

Lennox gives "another way of looking at things" which he refers to as "the method of inference to the best explanation (or abduction ...").  He admits, however, that the previous method would "carry more authority."

Now to question 3:  "What point of view does the Bible come from in the field of science?"  Here it seems that while we both seem to end up in nearly the same place, we get there by different routes.

The Bible is not a scientific book; it is "pre-scientific."  The New Testament was completed 1,500 years before the birth of modern science; most of the Old Testament was completed even before the observations of the ancient Greeks; the Torah preceded them by 1,000 years.  So to speak of "early scientific models" is an anachronism, which

if Moses had used (to use your words), "he would have been ignored as a crazy person."

The biblical language, however, was not unscientific.  It simply referred to various phenomena as they were perceived.  Thus Moses would have perceived the sun as rising and setting (the same way we do).  The biblical writers also used figures of speech freely, such as metaphor and hyperbole.  I strongly suspect that the various creation accounts were just that.  (See my post:  SOME THOUGHTS ON CREATION.)

Of course, I'll also publish your response to my response.

(Now a few remarks as to some of CA's comments on your post.)

Yes, Galileo disagreed with the Church's teachings on cosmology.  But as I seem to recall, the problem was not that the Church had a biblically based view, but that the Church had adopted the "scientific" views of Aristotle, which had been around for two millennia.  Many -- both theologians and scientists -- of his day were opposed to him.  Scientists can be as conservative as theologians.  As you may know, the current "big bang" theory of the origins of the universe was opposed not only by 6-day creationists but also by scientists who held to a steady-state universe.

As I said above, faith doesn't determine truth; one's believe  in a truth claim does not make that claim true.  This goes for Atheists' beliefs as well as Christians' beliefs.  Atheists accept many unproven things by faith: how life emerged from non-life by natural selection; how mind evolved from non-mind.

Despite your claims to the contrary, there is evidence for the truths of Christianity, which if you really desired to, you could examine for yourself.

I would also recommend, John, that you do the same.