The wedding went well, and I went on a road trip with Chowon's family, which was cool. I'm very impressed by Chowon's mom's faith, and by her dad's knowledge of historical Korean figures and their philosophies. Chowon was a great help during this whole trip. We head back home tomorrow.
I put a lot of mental energy in my spare time towards trying to refute my own worldview, and so I woke up this morning with a question on my mind that I hadn't considered carefully enough, and spent an hour or so meditating to decide on a response. The question was "Is it possible to discern what is absolutely true", or better stated, "Is it possible to know absolute truth and to simultaneously know that it is absolutely true.", having, I think, thoroughly established that it is possible to know absolute truth.
I put my answer into my phone's notepad right after my Bible study and shower. Now that I've got a stable internet connection, I'll paste what I wrote into my blog....
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Self defeating questions... I've blogged about this before, but I think this is a catchy way to approach the topic, and the horse isn't dead yet.
"Is it possible for me to ask a question?"
"Is it possible that this is a question?"
"Is it possible to make a rational judgment?"
"Is it possible to know absolute truth?"
"Do I exist?"
For each of the above, the only answer that fits in with an internally consistent reality is "yes". If you answer "no", or "I don't know", then the question (and, I think, logic itself) breaks down, because you've demonstrated a positive answer just by answering at all.
Now, with that information as a backdrop, I'd like to pose the more complicated question,
"Is it possible to know absolute truth and to simultaneously know that it is absolutely true?"
The way to answer this question is to use the prior questions as examples. If it is absolutely true that, "Is this a question?", is a question with the answer, "yes", then it is an example of absolute truth which we know to be absolutely true, and we know that we know it.
The above questions and answers also depend on certain assumptions which have not been addressed yet as part of this post, most relevant of which is, "The truth is internally consistent", with the converse, "lies are known by their inconsistency". This is the assumption for which a basis or foundation cannot be reached by deduction, because the only way to deduce is to use faculties which depend on these assumptions. (You can't use logic to prove that logic is valid.) However, it is possible to provide a foundation for those assumptions without committing any breach of rationality.
"Now do it."
That's the challenge to atheists.
Now, I'd like to illustrate the method here by providing an example. Let's say we have a closed system, and in it there is a hammer, bound to a machine which swings hammers downward, and the hammer is covered in egg, and some broken shell pieces and egg guts are lying around the impact area. The basis is the hammer covered in egg, the conclusion is that the hammer crushed the egg. Since the set of things comprising truth is internally consistent, it is also valid to say "The basis is the hammer crushing the egg, the conclusion is the hammer covered in egg". I made this a closed system because I wanted to make an example with a simple and obvious cause/effect relationship. For example, if we say, "the hammer didn't crush the egg, the egg was just opened above the hammer", then we require more stuff to be added to our closed system: something to open the egg above the hammer and spread guts around. It doesn't exist in our system.
The point is that the truth works both ways, because all parts of it intermingle with one another. We can start with the hammer crushing the egg and work backwards to the evidence. That's why the scientific method works, isn't it? We form a hypothesis and then examine and test it to determine if it conforms to reality. We can start with atheism and work backwards to see if it allows for the reality that we know to be true. When we find that it doesn't allow for us to know things like truth, we discern that we must start elsewhere.
Christianity provides that internally consistent reality which is found nowhere else.
"An example of the common method for drawing grapes, but using bold and quick brush strokes."
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
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