Is there truth in the world or only in us? Is science the only source of truth? What are the consequences of a view where individuals determine what's true about murder, rape, and more?Audio

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Don't use iTunes? Subscribe here.TranscriptHello, and welcome to Unapologetic, a podcast about defending, not apologizing for, our Christian convictions. In subsequent weeks, we're about to embark on a journey of looking at the truthfulness of the Bible; how can we establish its truthfulness and how can we defend it. But before we do that, we need to actually talk about...truth!(0:25) Truth is so foundational and it's something that most of us just take for granted. However, in order for the Bible to be true, truth has to exist and it has to be knowable. In order for morality to exist and be something that we can actually say, "it's wrong to murder, it's wrong to rape," well truth has to exist. It has to be true, it has to reflect reality when we make those claims, in order for them to have any meaning at all. So that's why we're going to talk about truth today.(0:52) Now, there are two views of truth. The first is one of subjective truth. You'll notice that the main part of the word subjective is subject, and this is actually a claim about a person, a subject. And it expresses something that's only true for that person. A great example of a subjective truth claim would be the best flavor of ice-cream. So, you could ask someone, "what is the best flavor of ice-cream", and they would hopefully tell you chocolate moose tracks from Publix: that's the best flavor of ice-cream. That's my favorite and best flavor, I'll say that. Now here's the thing: it sounds like the person is talking about the ice-cream when they say it's the best. However, they're actually talking about themselves. They're talking about their opinions, their feelings, their preferences.(1:42) Now, that's all fine and good when you're talking about ice-cream, but some people have this same view of truth, that it's subjective, it's just about me and what I think, when it comes to issues of morality or religion. And I hope you can see just right off the bat, that's a dangerous position to be in. Because on a subjective view of truth, every individual decides what's right and wrong for themselves. And this leads to something called relativism.(2:09) So the main part of the word subjective is subject, it's about a person, a subject; the main part of the word relativism is relative. And relativism is the view that all truth claims are relative to the person making them. So when someone would say, "rape is wrong", on a subjective view of truth, it sounds like they're talking about the rape in the same way it sounded like I was talking about the ice-cream earlier. However, they're not really talking about the rape, they're talking about their feelings about the rape. "I feel that rape is wrong." But the rape itself is not actually wrong on this veiw. (2:47) Now, that's a quick summary of subjective truth. Now on the other side, we have objective truth. And this would be truth that corresponds with reality. It's truth, you could say, that's matched with its object. Subjective truth was about a subjective person; objective truth is about an object. And objective truth is true for all people, in all places, at all times, to whom the claim applies.(3:13) So here's an example of an objective truth claim. Gravity pulls objects together. That has nothing to do with my feelings, my preferences, or any of that. It's a statement about reality. Another example would be, I am male. It doesn't matter if someone else doesn't think I'm male,…