Objective Truth
| By: Jim Virkler; ©2010 |
People react to issues such as God’s existence, how He acted, and when He acted in diverse ways. The existence of God, how He acted to create the cosmos, and when He acted to create it, may be regarded as objective truths. That is, no matter what we believe to be the case, some things are really true, and some things are really false.
Objective truth applies to issues of origins: Who? How? and When? The authors of most modern biology textbooks leave no doubt about how and when. Life evolved naturalistically over great time frames, they claim. Their textbooks relentlessly use terms like evolution, evolutionary, and evolved to strengthen their claims. The support for this evolutionary claim to account for the entirety of Earth’s life is almost entirely based on inference. Persuasive empirical evidence is lacking, notwithstanding, for example, that microbes mutate to produce new strains. They maintain such events support belief in macro-evolution on a grand scale to account for the diversity of all life on Earth.
What is the relationship between our beliefs and objective truth? Do we subject our belief or disbelief in God, whether we believe in creation or not, and our embrace of old earth or young earth, to careful investigation? More specifically…
- Is our belief merely based on personal choice to accept or reject evidence?
- Do we overly rely on our background beliefs, such as those we were taught as children?
- Are we only accepting the judgments of others–the religious body we affiliate with, or other authories in the field of science–to govern our beliefs?
- Does personal preference take precedence over actual weight of evidence?
- Do we accept weak or inconclusive evidence to build our case?
- How important are preconceptions and biases in molding our beliefs?
- Is our opinion confused with objective truth?
- Do we take the concept of truth too lightly?
- Are we able to admit error?
Conclusions of scientists may or may not be objective truth. This includes much of what is termed “consensus science.” It could include the conclusions of any well-known scientist or group of scientists. In some quarters the enterprise of science has acquired a bad reputation, particularly when the science does not support that group’s belief system.
Knowledge of objective truth about God, how He acted, and when He acted can be elusive. Acquiring beliefs which correspond to objective truth is an activity encouraged by scripture. Several hundred scripture passages reference truth. Objective truth transcends opinion, bias, presupposition, and ideology. It is God’s will that man discover and believe objective truth. Faith is sometimes defined as believing what is true. God’s gifts to man include the means to discover objective truth.
