There is only one source for truth, or civilization cannot exist.
Contents
The importance of objective truth.
Civilization exists because of objective truth. Until fairly recently, Western Civilization shared truth because of Christianity. Yet, the first time it was challenged, it ended the Holy Roman Empire, which gave rise to Western Civilization. The religious wars then began nearly depopulating areas of Europe.
Truth is very important. Presently, Christianity is in decline. If this continues, Americans’ and Europeans’ minds will go rigidly in different and incompatible directions. This is tribalism. Without reason, this cognitive diversification will lead to intolerance and, eventually, conflict.
The civilizational return to tribalism is the likely message of the Bible’s Tower of Babel story.
Genesis 11:1-9 — The Tower of Babel.
The Tower of Babel
According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar (Lower Mesopotamia), where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. Yahweh, observing these efforts and remarking on humanity’s power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world, leaving the city unfinished.
The primary options for finding truth
- The Catholic Church: Papal Infallibility1 & Sola Scriptura2
- Absolute truth claimed by the Church;
- Incompatible with reason.
- Reformed Churches (The Protestant Church, etc.): Sola Scriptura (The Bible is the absolute truth because it is the Word of God)
- Absolute truth claimed is provided by the Bible;
- Incompatible with reason.
- Reason: The pursuit of absolute truth
- Absolute truth is unclaimable (God claims absolute truth);
- Instead, understanding is developed, and objective truth is produced.
- NONE – Atheism, postmodernism, relativism: There is no absolute truth
- No SOLE originating source. “Experts” are substituted. Censorship is required to make pseudo “absolute” truth.
- Consequently, there is no contemplation of objective truth.
The first argument FOR reason (three) is that we must apply reason to choose among the four. That is to say, options one and two chose themselves, and four will not choose. Therefore, one, two, and four are irrational. Accordingly, the debate should end there because there can be no agreement between one, two, and four. However, we have four hypotheses. Using reason to find the objective truth, at least three hypotheses must be falsified. This is the search for the sufficient condition. Since it is about truth, the correct choice, i.e., objective truth, will satisfy the requirements of all hypothesizing groups.
Detailed Arguments for Approach Evaluation
Three approaches have falsifying arguments, though one survives (reason).
Truth Authoritarianism of the Catholic and Reformed Churches
Falsifying Arguments
- Violates the First Commandment by placing an intermediary between God and the faithful regarding truth.
- Jesus further declares it false by commanding the faithful to love only God while reaffirming the importance of the First Commandment.
“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’” — Matthew 22:37–40 (ESV) - The religious authoritarian approach offers no solution for non-religious truth pursuits. The pursuit of truth process must be the same for all questions; otherwise, it is not the pursuit of truth.
- The Tower of Babel warns against truth authoritarianism. When people claim truth, they form tribes. Tribes end civilization. Christendom has descended into tribalism.
Other evidence indicating this truth approach is false
- Incompatible with reason. Critically, reason is not falsified by the above arguments. In fact, the process of reason is affirmed by those exact arguments since the pursuit of truth REQUIRES absolute truth (God’s truth).
- Produces faith incompatibility with other Christians and religions. Synodality3 is out of the question.
- In a diverse religious world, truth authoritarianism is leading to a rise in atheism, postmodernism, and relativism. These groups reject objective truth altogether, which will, unfortunately, precipitate civilizational collapse.
- Truth authoritarianism brought about the Reformation and the death and destruction of the Thirty Years’ War.
- Literal Biblical truth conflicts with the archeological record.
Notes:
- Absolute truth is claimed and asserted here but in different ways. Yet, the problem is the same. It places the non-divine asserting authority before God.
Reason (the PURSUIT of truth)
Falsifying Arguments
Other evidence indicating this truth approach is false
Notes:
- Absolute truth is not claimed, so it is Biblically compatible. God claims absolute truth.
NONE (No sole originating source of absolute truth)
Falsifying Arguments
- Civilization would not exist without objective truth.
- Morality and justice are impossible without absolute truth and the objective truths arising from it.
- Science is not possible without absolute truth.
- Problem-solving would not exist without objective truth.
Other evidence indicating this truth approach is false
- A societal rise in narcissism. Pathological postmodernist thinking produces SELF-absorbed individuals.
- A societal rise in mental illness. Postmodernism is a prison of subjective thinking. Bad subjective thoughts, unchecked by reason, lead to diseased thinking.
- There is a growing disregard for the American Constitutional system (A government OF, BY, and FOR the people requires a rational population).
Notes:
- The premise of Absolute truth is rejected.
- Experts are substituted for sources of truth. Censorship is then later applied to make pseudo-absolute truth.
- Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine “initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in Scripture and tradition”. WIKIPEDIA ↩︎
- Sola scriptura is a Christian doctrine that states that the Bible is the sole source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The Latin phrase translates to “by scripture alone.” ↩︎
- Synodality (from synod which is Greek σύν “together” and ὁδός “way, journey”) is in the Catholic Church a term “often used to describe the process of fraternal collaboration and discernment that bodies like the Synod of Bishops were created to express”. WIKIPEDIA ↩︎
