How do we know what s true?

Transcription

1 Series: Which way to God? A respectful Christian exploration of answers from the Mormon Church, Islam, and other belief systems Topic #1: How do we know what s true? a foundation to help us evaluate history and evidence Yvon Prehn, teacher

2 Truth is more than an academic question Most people believe they are going to live forever Question is, What neighborhood? Ultimate questions, ultimately personal Many gods, approaches to God, many prophets all have differing claims YOU must decide Do not forget in all of this you have an enemy Satan masquerades as an angel of light 2 Cor. 11:14 he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44 the accuser of our brothers and sisters Rev. 12:10 Eph. 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

3 Truth, it won t be easy to explore Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley But better to be hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie. Khaled Hosseini If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. C.S. Lewis SO we need to look at what Truth is not

4 Truth is not what works A statement is known to be true if it brings the right results. William James In life, lies, cheating, adultery can all bring about short term desired results, even if based on lies and evil motives. In religion, to say all religions are true and all lead to the same place, may accomplish a short-term goal of interpersonal peace, but with eternally disastrous results. Citation, much of the following from The Baker Encyclopedia of Apologetics, ed. Norman Geisler

5 Truth is not that which coheres Some thinkers have suggested that truth is what is internally consistent: it is coherent and selfconsistent. In life, you can make all sorts of statements that are internally consistent, but empty. E.g. All children are younger than their biological parents. In religion, a religion can have an internally consistent structure, but if the basis of the structure is false, internal consistency won t make it true.

6 Truth is not what feels good The popular subjective view is that truth gives a satisfying feeling and error feels bad. In life, it is obvious that bad news feels awful, but that does not make it less true, if it is about real events. In life, also different people like different things, e.g. in music. Was brings an emotional high to some, triggers a migraine in others. In religion, Mormons often testify how they prayed for wisdom when reading their materials and how truth was confirmed to them by a burning in the bosom. But this does not confirm anything.

7 Truth is not relative, there are not different truths for different people This is a very popular view today. But it violates the basic logic of the law of noncontradiction. In life, either you are either in this class or not in this class; you either have blue eyes or you don t. In religion, either Jesus died on the cross or he didn t. Either Jesus is God or he isn t. How do we decide what is true?

8 Truth is Correspondence to Reality Definition: the body of real things, events, and facts; the property of being in accord with fact or reality Merriam-Webster Dictionary Geisler: Truth is telling it like it is.... Falsehood, then, is what does not correspond. It tells it like it is not, misrepresenting the way things are. The intent behind the statement is irrelevant. If it lacks proper correspondence, it is false. So how do we find out what corresponds to reality?

9 History as basis for correspondence and ultimately true For religion, for it to be true theologically, it should also have a historical factual basis Every religion of course requires that believers in it accept more that acknowledgement of facts, many things are by faith.. BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No religion, to be true, to correspond to reality, should be less than or contradictory to the facts of history. It has to be true for us to believe it.

10 How do historians evaluate data? How to they determine what is true? Obviously cannot go back to the events themselves Look at: artifacts and documents Artifacts, we ll look at archeology later Documents: Source criticism Reliability of the sources used Authorship Credibility of the author Authenticity or corruption of the text

11 Additional principles to consider A given source may be forged or corrupted; strong indications of the originality of the source increases its reliability. (many ways to tell this) The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened. A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source, which in turn is more reliable than a tertiary source and so on. If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased. (especially if unfavorable)

12 First look at Core Documents No decisions for some time as to who is God or what plan of salvation is correct. Let s take some time to simply evaluate the historical value of Core Documents. Both Islam and Mormons claim Christian documents were corrupted and their religions restored the truth Certainly time for that to happen, Christian Bible written by 40 authors over 1600 years Christians, Bible written from about 1500 BC to 70 AD Islam, Koran written in 610 to 632 AD Mormons, Book of Mormon, published in 1830 AD

13 Meaning of Corruption #1: That the facts in them were not true initially We ll look at this more when we discuss individual topics #2: That the texts of the Christian Bible have been copied and recopied so many times they are no longer true to their original copied What does evidence, what does history show us, objectively, in answer to these questions?

14 More confirmation for the textual trustworthiness of Biblical documents than any other ancient texts Dead Seas Scrolls: Discovered in 1947 in Qumran, a village about twenty miles east of Jerusalem on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea They include manuscripts or fragments of every book in the Hebrew Bible except the Book of Esther, all of them created nearly one thousand years earlier than any previously known biblical manuscripts. Dating Manuscript evidence: from 3 rd century BC into first century AD see website for this Verified by Carbon 14 dating Archeological Dating: Pottery and coins from 150 BC to about 100 AD.

15 Significance of Dead Sea Scrolls Old Testament: When compared with Medieval Mss. 95% identical, and the 5 % minor spelling and scribal error Shows that corruption did not happen New Testament, not discussed as much Fragments found from Mark, Acts, Romans,1 Timothy, 2 Peter, James, prior to 100 AD, most dated AD Significance: EARLY DATES! No time for mythological embellishment This was not a Christian community

16 New Testament Author Date Written Earliest Copy Approximate Time Span between original & copy Number of Copies Accuracy of Copies Pliny A.D. 850 A.D. 750 yrs Plato B.C. 900 A.D yrs Demosthenes 4th Cent. B.C A.D. 800 yrs Herodotus B.C. 900 A.D yrs Suetonius A.D. 950 A.D. 800 yrs Thucydides B.C. 900 A.D yrs Euripides B.C A.D yrs Aristophanes B.C. 900 A.D yrs Caesar B.C. 900 A.D yrs Tacitus circa 100 A.D A.D yrs Aristotle B.C A.D yrs Sophocles B.C A.D 1400 yrs Homer (Iliad) 900 B.C. 400 B.C. 500 yrs % New Testament 1st Cent. A.D. ( A.D. 2nd Cent. A.D. (c. 130 A.D. f.) less than 100 years %

17 Source Criticism Conclusion You can say you don t believe the content You can say you think the content is incorrect You can question if the history of events backs up the content ****And we will look at this *** But you cannot say that the texts were corrupted or changed or that key content was lost in the translations. That is simply not true because the reality of thousands of documents shows that from start to finish the text and message of the Christian Bible has remained the same.

18 Questions Go around the group share your name and your favorite TV show How do you describe truth? Either before or after the lesson? Why is truth important in our faith? How can history help us determine what is true? How can you share what you learned today to help someone in finding the way to God?