by Patrick C . Marks, D. Min., and Brian Thomas, Ph.D.*
Truth matters. Without truth, no one can say for certain that anything is right or wrong, good or bad. Confusion would reign. We sometimes hear, “There’s no such thing as truth.” But if we believe that idea is true, we admit at least one true thing: that there is no such thing as truth! This does not work. It is irrational—like a round square. Since the statement “There’s no such thing as truth” refutes itself, the opposite, “Truth exists,” must be true.
So, what is truth? Truth is an expression of things as they really are. Someone may sincerely believe that arsenic is a healthy medicine. But sincerity alone does not make something true. Arsenic is, in truth, a deadly poison! So, believing what is false can lead to serious results. Clearly, truth is important.
Some people think that whatever most people believe must be true. But many people once believed in spontaneous generation. They thought that maggots just popped into existence from rotting meat. Scientist Francesco Redi tested this. He found maggots in meat accessible to flies but not in meat that flies couldn’t reach. Redi didn’t create a new truth. Instead, he discovered what had been true all along: life comes from life. Truth is that which corresponds to reality, whether a majority admits it or not.
Another common idea is that “You have your truth, and I have mine.” But this doesn’t work either because people can believe opposite things. For example, some people believe God is real, but others believe He is not. Opposites cannot both be true.1
Some folks think no one can truly know anything.2 They question how anyone can know they exist in the first place. But if someone says, “I do not exist,” the very first word they use is “I,” which means they must exist first to even start that statement. This idea refutes itself.
Finally, claiming that nothing is knowable is another self-defeating assertion, requiring the person saying it to know that they cannot know anything. Thus, we can know truth. Thinking and existing are obvious truths because they are undeniable. Christian apologist C. S. Lewis illustrated a test for truth. It’s like adding two numbers together. You can see if the answer is true because even though some answers might be closer to the truth than others, there is only one right answer, or one correct sum.
Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Is this true? We would first like to make sure the Bible is true—a subject we will cover in this series. But if it’s true, then Jesus is Truth incarnate, and therefore someone we can know personally.
References
- More specifically, opposite ideas cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. This is called the law of noncontradiction. It is one of several laws of logic that make our apprehension of truths, and thus thought and language, possible.
- They say things like, “Perception is reality.” This statement refutes itself.
Stage image: C.S. Lewis
Stage image credit: Aronsyne, CC BY-SA 4.0
Dr. Marks is the senior pastor at Calvary Chapel FourteenSix in Surprise, Arizona, and earned an M.T.S. in 2017 and a D.Min. in apologetics in 2020 from Veritas International University. Dr. Thomas is a research scientist at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in paleobiochemistry from the University of Liverpool.
