Determining Truth
Last Thursday night I heard a lesson about epistemology as relates to apologetics. How do I know what is the truth? It is not right to assume that what I have been taught from my youth up is correct. It is important for me to analyze my beliefs and determine that they are the correct beliefs to hold. It is not comfortable to break away from the belief systems one has followed all his life, but if a born-in Hindu never doubted his religion, he would not reach truth. (Let me be clear that I do believe Christianity is correct - but my retention of the Faith has not been without much thought.)
The speaker (Kathleen Fast of Campus Ambassadors) outlined three main ways to arrive at truth: empiricism, rationalism, and mysticism.
Empiricism (ideally) does not start with any preconceptions but uses pure induction to determine truth from empirical data based on how they integrate.
Rationalism starts with "truth claims" and tests them using logic to see if they are consistent. If two axioms are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be true.
Mysticism is based on experiences.
It is possible that the entire truth may not be arrived at with certainty by using only one method. Never will the truth be disputed by one method and supported by another, but maybe not all methods prove the same thing. I use all three methods to support my faith.
I might tend to start with empiricism (obviously, I have some preconceived notions that probably color the way I view matters. But I ideally try to see what the facts point to.) and then use rationalism to test the axioms that empiricism produces. For instance, the facts of nature's existence point to a creator with great intelligence. You can test the idea of a creator producing nature by comparing it rationally to its antithesis: nature arose without a creator. Which makes more sense? That something created. One can accept the professed divinity of Jesus because of the facts of his resurrection and the miracles he performed. One can test Jesus' profession of divinity by regarding the other possibilities. For example:
"A man who was a great moral teacher and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher... Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."(Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, page 41)
Answers to prayer fall into the mystical category. For instance, once my mother and I baked and sent two boxes of bread to another family - my mother's reasoning was that they were busy and would be blessed by it. We found out later that they were in financially tight circumstances and had little food left in the house. One box of bread arrived the day after we sent it, and the second box arrived later. It seems that God had something to do with it, but I realize that others could dispute that claim. It's important to not base your whole faith on mystical experiences, because interpretations can easily lead astray.
Let me know if I am off-base on this.
The speaker (Kathleen Fast of Campus Ambassadors) outlined three main ways to arrive at truth: empiricism, rationalism, and mysticism.
Empiricism (ideally) does not start with any preconceptions but uses pure induction to determine truth from empirical data based on how they integrate.
Rationalism starts with "truth claims" and tests them using logic to see if they are consistent. If two axioms are mutually exclusive, they cannot both be true.
Mysticism is based on experiences.
It is possible that the entire truth may not be arrived at with certainty by using only one method. Never will the truth be disputed by one method and supported by another, but maybe not all methods prove the same thing. I use all three methods to support my faith.
I might tend to start with empiricism (obviously, I have some preconceived notions that probably color the way I view matters. But I ideally try to see what the facts point to.) and then use rationalism to test the axioms that empiricism produces. For instance, the facts of nature's existence point to a creator with great intelligence. You can test the idea of a creator producing nature by comparing it rationally to its antithesis: nature arose without a creator. Which makes more sense? That something created. One can accept the professed divinity of Jesus because of the facts of his resurrection and the miracles he performed. One can test Jesus' profession of divinity by regarding the other possibilities. For example:
"A man who was a great moral teacher and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher... Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."(Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, page 41)
Answers to prayer fall into the mystical category. For instance, once my mother and I baked and sent two boxes of bread to another family - my mother's reasoning was that they were busy and would be blessed by it. We found out later that they were in financially tight circumstances and had little food left in the house. One box of bread arrived the day after we sent it, and the second box arrived later. It seems that God had something to do with it, but I realize that others could dispute that claim. It's important to not base your whole faith on mystical experiences, because interpretations can easily lead astray.
Let me know if I am off-base on this.
posted by Claire at 16:32
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home