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truth or Truth Week #2
The Nature of Truth
What is truth? -
• Truth is discovered, not invented.
• Truth is transcultural. It is true for all people of all time periods.
• Truth is unchanging, even if our beliefs about truth change.
• Beliefs cannot change what is true, despite how sincere the person is who believes it.
• Truth is not affected by the attitude of the one professing it.
St. Augustine: “A statement is not necessarily true because it is wrapped in fine language, or false
because it is awkwardly expressed.”
What is a truth claim? -
“At the heart of postmodernism lies a patent self-contradiction. It expects us to accept, as absolute
truth, that there are no absolute truths. We should note this common, fatally flawed characteristic of
relativistic thinking: it tries to exclude itself from its own pronouncements.” - John Lennox
Tolerance (original) Tolerance (modern) –
Pluralism –
Is Star Wars a pluralistic approach to religion?
“The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that’s left of
their religion.” – Wilhuff Tarkin to Darth Vader, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
In 1999, Bill Moyers interviewed George Lucas for Time Magazine.
George Lucas: “I put the force into the movies in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality
in young people…. more a belief in God than any religious system.”
George Lucas: “I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill
them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct--that there is a greater mystery out
there.”
George Lucas: “When the film came out, almost every single religion took Star Wars and used it as
an example of their religion; they were able to relate it to stories in the Bible, in the Koran and in
the Torah.”
Bill Moyers: “You said you put the Force into Star Wars because you wanted us to think on these
things. Some people have traced the notion of the Force to Eastern views of God--particularly
Buddhist--as a vast reservoir of energy that is the ground of all of our being. Was that conscious?”
George Lucas: “I guess it's more specific in Buddhism, but it is a notion that's been around before
that. When I wrote the first Star Wars, I had to come up with a whole cosmology: What do people
believe in? I had to do something that was relevant, something that imitated a belief system that has
been around for thousands of years, and that most people on the planet, one way or another, have
some kind of connection to. I didn't want to invent a religion. I wanted to try to explain in a
different way the religions that have already existed. I wanted to express it all.”
(Full interview: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,23298-2,00.html)
George Lucas from an audio interview:
“When I was 10 years old, I asked my Mother, I said “Well if there is only one God, why are there
so many religions?” I’ve been pondering that question ever since and it seems to me that the
conclusion I’ve come to is that all the religions are true, they just see a different part of the
elephant.”
The Law of Non-Contradiction –
www.christianmomthoughts.com
Forms of argument that avoid dealing with truth (fallacies) –
Ad Hominem Arguments –
Straw Man Arguments -
Self-refuting statements -
There is no truth. –
There are no absolutes. –
All truth is relative. –
It’s true for you but not for me. –
You should be tolerant. –
You shouldn’t judge. –
You shouldn’t try to convert people. –
“Men love the truth when it bathes them in its light; they hate it when it proves them wrong.” – St.
Augustine
This week’s prayer: “Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.” –
Ps. 25:5