In this episode, Kyle and Randy geek out a little bit about truth.
Truth is a tricky term these days, with everyone believing their own "facts" or having their own truths and alternative facts. How does a philosopher see and pursue truth? What is a healthy pastoral way to approach and pursue truth? Is there such a thing as truth at all, let alone absolute truth, as so many Christians attest to?
Our resident pastor and philosopher dive in and bring us into a really fun and healthy conversation about truth that our society would do well to engage in.
The whiskey we sample in this episode is Four Roses Small Batch Select from the always stellar Four Roses Bourbon.
=====
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The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
In this episode, Kyle and Randy geek out a little bit about truth.
Truth is a tricky term these days, with everyone believing their own "facts" or having their own truths and alternative facts. How does a philosopher see and pursue truth? What is a healthy pastoral way to approach and pursue truth? Is there such a thing as truth at all, let alone absolute truth, as so many Christians attest to?
Our resident pastor and philosopher dive in and bring us into a really fun and healthy conversation about truth that our society would do well to engage in.
The whiskey we sample in this episode is Four Roses Small Batch Select from the always stellar Four Roses Bourbon.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
[Music]
00:14
welcome to a pastor and a philosopher
00:16
walk into a bar
00:17
the podcast where we mix a sometimes
00:19
weird but always delicious cocktail of
00:21
theology
00:22
philosophy and spirituality
00:24
[Music]
00:28
welcome everyone to pastor and
00:30
philosopher welcome to a bar
00:31
uh we're going to be discussing
00:32
something today that is
00:34
pretty important to both of us and
00:36
something that we've
00:38
talked about having an episode on in the
00:40
future and now is that time so we're
00:42
both pretty excited about this our topic
00:43
today
00:44
is truth the philosophical perspective
00:47
and the pastoral perspective
00:49
on truth so it's gonna be heady it's
00:51
gonna be nerdy
00:53
buckle your seat belts it's gonna be a
00:54
good time
00:56
fun times well we have
00:59
a really wonderful beverage in front of
01:01
us that i'd love to to talk about to
01:03
sample i've been
01:04
wanting to sample this so today we have
01:07
four roses
01:08
single batch select this is four roses
01:11
i believe this is their top offering
01:14
retails for about 60 or 70 bucks and
01:17
it's a
01:18
it's a high proof it's a it's a i'm not
01:21
going to say hot because i haven't tried
01:22
it yet but it's
01:23
it's a high cut what's the 52 50
01:26
2 so that's on the higher end of the
01:29
spectrum
01:30
and four roses says that they use two
01:32
different mash pills and five different
01:34
yeast strains
01:35
to create 10 unique bourbon recipes in
01:38
of those recipes six are blended
01:39
together to make this the small batch
01:41
select so it's basically just a blend of
01:44
a bunch of their
01:44
best stuff that they sample and they
01:47
think this is their
01:49
their idea of the best they've got so
01:50
all right let's see if they're right the
01:52
look of it
01:52
is really gorgeous it's dark carmelly
01:56
colored
01:56
it's sticking to the there's a word for
01:58
this but i don't know it but it's still
01:59
it's
02:00
it's got great legs i mean it's sticking
02:03
to the side of our glasses like nobody's
02:04
business
02:05
really good i'm smelling it which i
02:07
always do first
02:08
you can hold it back a little further to
02:09
smell this one it you don't have to get
02:11
up in there that's that's complex though
02:15
the nose of it at least yeah floral
02:18
delicious
02:20
spicy oaky
02:22
[Music]
02:24
whoa man i like that it's not very often
02:28
i get
02:29
knocked back by a bourbon that's
02:30
delicious that's really good
02:34
yeah it's nice caramel pepper
02:38
it's i mean for me the only the main
02:41
word for it is complex
02:43
i mean we've just tried some bourbons in
02:45
whiskey's that are just straightforward
02:48
a couple notes but almost single note
02:51
this is on the opposite end of that
02:54
it's a little hot so you gotta you know
02:55
exhale a little bit get ready for it but
02:57
because of the alcohol content but man
03:00
it's there's so much going on there
03:02
now i'm getting like apples like fall
03:04
fruit
03:06
like it brings the the brighter berry
03:08
stuff in some but now i'm getting that
03:10
deep dark
03:11
almost tart apple
03:15
yeah there's something fresh about it i
03:16
don't know mm-hmm one of the uh
03:19
tasting notes i read which i don't get
03:20
but it was like spearmint gum
03:23
interesting interesting i couldn't quite
03:25
see that i wish he hadn't said that
03:27
i don't know i love i do love though
03:30
when
03:30
you know you'll read reviews and they'll
03:33
talk about the pro
03:34
the flavor profiles and then you taste
03:36
it yourself and sometimes that helps
03:38
and then sometimes they'll say something
03:39
like spear spring and gum which i can
03:41
respect a person who tastes spearmint
03:43
gum in something in a bourbon
03:44
but i and
03:47
but that's also fun that you can taste
03:49
the same thing and taste so many
03:50
different things
03:51
it's probably just the coolness of all
03:53
of the alcohol evaporating like that's
03:54
i mean booze that's what that is
03:58
yeah um
04:01
there's not seat and my knee bourbons i
04:04
either don't like the finish
04:05
or i don't like the the the start of it
04:08
but i like the finish or opposite
04:09
yeah there's no bad experience solid all
04:11
the way through not a long finish but
04:14
satisfying it's rich it's got a kind of
04:17
a rich mouth feel to it and uh
04:21
that depth of flavor brings um like
04:24
really deep woody flavors
04:25
it's like allspice and cloves
04:29
finishes off with some of that glass yep
04:31
finishes off with some of that
04:33
library leather note um
04:37
this is this is one i would add 10 drops
04:39
of water to it
04:41
i got some right there maybe i will
04:46
i'm tempted to add some water to it
04:48
because i'm i'd be interested to know
04:50
what it does but i almost don't want to
04:51
because i like so much what i'm tasting
04:53
right now
04:58
what do you think should i add some
04:59
water it definitely brings the pepper
05:02
out more
05:05
i don't know if it improved it actually
05:07
i i kind of like the
05:09
yeah i'm not going to do it the first
05:10
time i like this a lot
05:13
yeah and if you're noticing friends that
05:16
we're we got a little quiet i feel like
05:19
beer
05:19
brings out some fun times bourbon makes
05:22
things serious do you know what i'm
05:23
talking about whiskey's contemplative
05:25
it's like it's like reading a book but
05:26
silently like in the corner by yourself
05:29
well and you gotta actually like start
05:31
turning inward if you're gonna start
05:32
naming some of these flavors and
05:34
and articulate the experi experience
05:36
yeah
05:38
well friends four roses small batch
05:40
select
05:42
this is one that for me 60 or 70 is like
05:46
way high on what i would spend on a
05:48
whiskey this is one that
05:49
i'll put on my my shelf and only bring
05:52
it out for the special occasions because
05:53
this is good stuff
05:54
you said this one could go on my shelf
05:56
is that what i said i think so
05:58
my shelves are all full of them
05:59
[Laughter]
06:01
i mean my man from story hill bkc hand
06:04
delivered it to me so
06:07
we'll see about that
06:11
well thank joe for us this is really
06:12
awesome yeah really good
06:14
well cheers so one of the main things
06:18
that i've observed
06:19
in the course of our young podcast here
06:22
is
06:23
the way that we think about truth and by
06:25
we
06:26
mean me and kyle primarily but
06:29
elliott and i and kyle the way we think
06:31
about truth the way we
06:32
talk about truth how we hold that word
06:35
and that idea
06:36
is quite different and it's different in
06:39
a way that i really enjoy
06:41
i really enjoy being challenged and
06:44
pushed
06:44
and being forced and challenged to
06:46
critically think about what i kind of
06:48
take for granted
06:49
and i really enjoyed around truth
06:51
because i've to be honest with you i've
06:53
been uncomfortable for a long time
06:56
with how many christians and christian
06:59
leaders throw around this word
07:00
truth just like it's you know
07:04
just on the tip of their tongue all the
07:06
time and like they have the corner on
07:08
the market of truth
07:10
it drives me crazy to be honest a little
07:12
bit and
07:13
as you talk about truth kyle i've really
07:16
enjoyed it and you always say we'll save
07:17
this for another episode we'll save that
07:18
for another episode
07:19
here we are i'm excited to hear about um
07:22
what your
07:23
idea of truth what philosophers think of
07:26
when they think of the word truth and
07:27
the concept and what's
07:28
what are our options what's what's
07:30
attainable what's just a nonsensical way
07:33
to talk about it
07:34
because again when when you hear
07:36
christians talking about truth it's
07:37
usually in regard to sexuality
07:39
well we we know truth or whether it's
07:42
signs and creation
07:43
creationism we know truth or christians
07:46
will refer to the scriptures as
07:49
truth absolute truth even sometimes
07:52
right
07:53
the scriptures that's problematic for me
07:55
and i'm a pastor for crying out loud i
07:57
have
07:57
i have issues with that so i think
07:59
philosophy is helpful in that
08:01
it seems like philosophers are able to
08:03
take a very
08:04
objective view of something like truth
08:07
you you have as few ulterior motives
08:11
much less i would say than most
08:12
christian leaders can we say that well
08:14
we we uh we're very intentional about
08:17
making our motives clear when they're
08:20
when they're present
08:21
and uh yeah building the method
08:24
so that the motives are either left out
08:27
or at least the problematic aspects of
08:29
them are left out
08:30
or so that they're incorporated but in
08:32
an intentional way i'll say that yeah
08:34
and i would just uh you know burst your
08:36
bubble a little bit kyle and whatever
08:38
philosopher's other
08:40
other other philosophers are out there
08:41
listening yeah i mean you can be kind of
08:43
arrogant about this idea of truth right
08:45
which i mean philosophers can be
08:46
arrogant about a lot of things let's be
08:48
honest
08:48
but uh i mean have you ever read uh
08:51
plato i mean socrates was the most
08:52
arrogant bastard
08:57
i mean just the question have you ever
09:00
read plato is kind of arrogant right off
09:02
the bat
09:02
from the jump
09:07
but do you guys know what i'm talking
09:08
about when i say how christians toss
09:09
around the word
09:10
truth like it's kind of a weapon or like
09:13
they have
09:13
the full market on that word concept
09:16
idea
09:17
yeah so as the one in the room who
09:20
studied this
09:20
the least i i think maybe if i talk more
09:24
experientially just when i think about
09:25
truth like what that
09:27
what that means to me and i i realized
09:29
in
09:30
knowing we were going to talk about this
09:31
day i was thinking like what is what is
09:32
truth and how do i relate to it i
09:34
realize i've had this increasingly
09:35
complex
09:36
relationship with truth because belief
09:39
in something
09:40
as true gives gives us that's what
09:42
creates the platform from which you can
09:44
critique or reject things other than
09:46
that as
09:47
untrue or false so
09:50
i guess that's one option we can we can
09:52
reject them as false in this kind of
09:53
active
09:54
confrontational way uh and this is oh a
09:57
lot of my
09:58
context and history is around this very
10:00
moralistic focus um
10:01
like you said like we've cornered the
10:03
market on truth and this is this is ours
10:05
and so
10:06
there's that or you have to be okay to
10:08
just live
10:09
in the this unresolved space where
10:12
i say something's true and you say that
10:14
something else is true and we're just
10:16
not going to resolve that
10:17
which i guess is okay it sounds like the
10:18
world we live in yeah uh or then there's
10:21
this
10:21
this concept of like there's your truth
10:23
and there's my truth and we all have
10:24
our truth and i i just can't really wrap
10:27
my head around that it feels
10:29
i like that but it doesn't make sense to
10:31
me yeah
10:32
so i i guess where i've landed is i
10:35
i've been wrong enough times and i've
10:37
been assertive
10:38
about what is true enough times to get
10:41
myself in trouble
10:42
to where okay so now i'm not gonna do
10:44
that anymore
10:45
i still see certain things as true but
10:47
the scope of what i'm willing to
10:49
actually
10:50
argue about is much less be because
10:54
i know i've changed my mind on stuff
10:56
that i used to think was really core to
10:57
who i am and so i don't know what i'm
10:59
gonna believe
11:00
next week or five years from now beyond
11:03
a very narrow set of of things that i
11:05
would say are
11:07
actually true and even in those i'm
11:09
going to be hesitant to try to impose
11:10
that on anybody else which creates
11:12
conflicts in me around things
11:14
concepts like uh sharing my faith or
11:17
uh or trying to spread the gospel and
11:19
scar
11:20
scare quotes whatever that means so
11:22
that's
11:23
that's how i'm sitting with truth right
11:25
now i'm looking forward to hearing you
11:27
guys
11:28
go a level down from that yeah and i
11:30
mean i feel like
11:32
many many christians think when they
11:34
think of truth and when they think of
11:36
what
11:36
their idea of truth is or what they have
11:39
in their hands when that they call truth
11:41
we think it's very objective we think
11:44
that this is concrete objective real
11:46
when i want to say that's probably not
11:49
true
11:50
um when when there's no way what do you
11:52
mean by that
11:53
when there's no way of proving something
11:56
outright besides using your sacred text
11:59
it's probably fairly subjective and
12:01
something that we'd do well to hold with
12:03
some humility and with
12:05
and hold loosely but here's the pastoral
12:07
side of me i just want to
12:08
i know that we have listeners who are
12:09
listening right now and already your
12:11
hackles are
12:12
straight up in the air and you're you
12:15
are
12:16
either if you haven't turned this off
12:17
yet you're getting ready to push that
12:19
button
12:21
or you're getting ready to get real
12:22
angry and you're already judging what we
12:24
say
12:25
i just wanna i just wanna pastorally
12:28
invite you
12:29
into this conversation to listen from a
12:32
place
12:33
less from judgment because you have this
12:35
choice to make now in this moment you
12:37
can listen
12:38
from a place of being a learner and
12:40
listening
12:42
or you can listen from a place of
12:43
judgment one of those
12:45
will be very productive and you might
12:47
not change your mind you might if you
12:48
sit as a learner here
12:50
and say i just want to listen to these
12:52
guys because they might know things that
12:53
i don't or maybe they don't
12:55
but if you listen as a learner you're
12:57
going to actually walk out of this
12:59
with integrity and with having actually
13:01
listened
13:02
and maybe even your position will feel
13:04
even stronger to you
13:06
the other side if you're listening in
13:08
judgment and already poking holes and
13:10
getting angry and get your butts
13:11
butt cheeks are are tightened there's
13:14
very
13:15
you're gonna you're not gonna benefit
13:17
from this conversation whatsoever
13:20
sorry i'm sorry if your hackles are
13:21
straight up and your butt cheeks are
13:23
tight you're going to be really
13:24
uncomfortable yeah man
13:24
just in general with this episode take
13:27
some deep breaths
13:29
so i'm just inviting you into a place of
13:32
non-judgment
13:33
listening learning and then when you're
13:35
done with this you can think what you
13:36
want to think
13:38
so kyle that being said can you give us
13:41
just a cliff notes version i know we're
13:43
talking to professor kyle here
13:45
professor whitaker give us a cliff's
13:48
nose version of
13:49
the philosophical pursuit of truth and
13:51
the philosophical view of truth
13:54
yeah okay i do want to say that we're
13:57
recording this on november 19th which
13:59
just happens to be world philosophy day
14:01
uh
14:02
so it it makes me kind of happy i feel
14:04
like you've said that before
14:05
like are there real numerous world
14:07
philosophies
14:10
yeah yeah i didn't even know there was a
14:12
world philosophy day until today
14:13
so uh it made me pretty happy that we're
14:16
talking about truth
14:17
there you go so in a certain sense truth
14:20
is the whole point of philosophy so
14:22
we've talked about
14:23
socrates on previous episodes and the
14:26
pursuit of wisdom the pursuit of
14:27
knowledge the pursuit of
14:29
the right way to live this this is what
14:31
philosophy is all about
14:33
and so truth is the core concept in many
14:35
ways which is interesting that's so
14:37
similar to
14:38
religious religious world yeah with an
14:41
important difference so
14:43
uh in in religious life usually truth is
14:46
attained
14:47
through some kind of authority structure
14:50
so if i'm a religious person part of
14:53
what that means
14:54
is that my beliefs about how the world
14:57
is and my
14:58
beliefs about how i should be in the
14:59
world and how i should treat other
15:01
people
15:02
is based on or derived from or at least
15:05
constrained by
15:07
what my religious authority tells me the
15:09
authority might be a person
15:11
might be the pope it might be a body of
15:13
people it might be a
15:14
thousand year tradition it might be a
15:16
text whatever it is
15:18
i'm constrained by authority and truth
15:20
is given to me by the authority
15:22
in a way that i'm not free to then
15:24
question it right the true truth is
15:26
received
15:27
if you're a religious person or it's
15:30
revealed
15:30
to to use the more the theological
15:32
language for philosophers truth is
15:35
discovered
15:35
truth is a problem truth is something
15:38
that we're ever in pursuit of we're
15:39
approaching it
15:40
asymptotically we're never actually
15:42
reaching it but that's our goal
15:44
uh and truth is not the sort of thing
15:46
that an authority could just pronounce
15:48
on because nobody has the authority to
15:50
pronounce on that
15:51
the the authorities that have pronounced
15:54
on it
15:55
are viewed with suspicion by
15:56
philosophers because they're humans too
15:58
and they're limited in all the same ways
16:00
that the other humans are
16:02
um and and all of the other things you
16:04
might view as an authority like a text
16:05
or a tradition that can all be
16:07
questioned we can't be certain about any
16:09
of it
16:09
so truth is a pursuit it's the point of
16:12
philosophy but simultaneously it's the
16:14
frustration of philosophy because
16:17
it never never quite works out i like to
16:20
tell my students
16:21
at the beginning of each semester my
16:22
intro philosophy students
16:24
like everybody we're going to read in
16:26
this class was wrong
16:27
in fact they were wrong about almost
16:29
everything
16:30
and we know that they were wrong like
16:33
aristotle thought
16:34
that the sun orbited the earth and that
16:38
you know the stars were like
16:39
self-reflecting consciousnesses and
16:41
stuff
16:41
uh like everybody else like everybody
16:43
else period you know and
16:45
uh like everybody we read is mistaken
16:49
but they were mistaken in fascinating
16:50
ways and their methods
16:52
for discerning truth were the best
16:55
we've not surpassed the methods we're
16:58
still tweaking some of the same methods
17:00
actually including aristotle's
17:01
for what it's worth so which makes sense
17:04
of why
17:05
you philosophers are such slippery sobs
17:07
you're really hard to
17:08
nail down and give a real answer to
17:10
things well because we think the real
17:12
answers that you can give are always
17:14
partial answers yeah no i like that
17:16
reality is complicated
17:18
you know and insofar as truth is the
17:20
thing
17:21
and i mean in some ways one of the views
17:23
we're going to discuss here is that
17:24
truth just is reality but
17:26
insofar as truth is connected to how
17:28
things really are i mean things are
17:29
complicated
17:30
at the end of the day we're animals and
17:32
we're animals that happen to have large
17:34
brains through an accident of evolution
17:36
and grasping at the ultimate nature of
17:39
things
17:39
is just it's gonna take a while
17:43
and just in case you there's any
17:44
listeners who immediately were triggered
17:46
when
17:47
when kyle said our brains are accident
17:50
of evolution
17:51
i disagree with them too don't worry i
17:53
don't disagree with the evolution part
17:55
i disagree with the accident part but
17:57
we'll talk about that we'll keep going
17:59
so okay so truth is said in many ways
18:03
um so that was a that was an aristotle
18:05
joke for the philosophers listening to
18:07
the podcast
18:08
aristotle famously said that the very
18:10
same thing about being being is said in
18:12
many
18:12
many senses the same thing is true for
18:14
truth so
18:15
in popular discourse popular vernacular
18:17
how this word gets used by
18:19
normal people on the street right it can
18:21
mean anything
18:22
from just whatever's out there
18:26
reality itself the truth right it can
18:28
mean something as simple as
18:30
uh the opposite of a lie true truth is
18:33
simply
18:34
an antonym for a lie it can mean mere
18:37
agreement you and i agree about
18:38
something and i say that's true and
18:40
that's really all i mean by it is that
18:41
we agreed about it
18:42
it can be accordance with some kind of
18:45
principle
18:46
it can be rhetorically this is the way
18:48
it gets used by christians a lot
18:50
is it's whatever i find to be morally
18:53
significant
18:54
an opinion that i find to be morally
18:55
significant or socially significant
18:58
it's important enough to me in my
18:59
community and so i just call it truth
19:02
and and that's really all it means it's
19:03
nothing deeper than that it's not
19:04
analyzed any deeper than that very often
19:07
or and this is the way philosophers tend
19:09
to think about it
19:10
truth is a property that's had by some
19:14
cognitive state like a belief or
19:17
it might be a property of an utterance
19:19
something that i can say so it's a
19:21
linguistic entity
19:22
or it might be a property of a
19:24
proposition which is a thing that bears
19:26
meaning
19:27
which is related to language but also a
19:30
little bit distinct
19:32
so there's all these different ways of
19:33
cashing out what that means but
19:34
philosophers tend to think of truth
19:36
as something cognitive that
19:40
describes ideas
19:43
either in the sense of ideas that are
19:46
expressed in language or maybe just
19:48
ideas on their own
19:50
and the thought is traditionally
19:53
that every idea that can be just
19:55
expressed in a sentence like a
19:57
declarative sentence
19:58
has a value of either true or false
20:02
and to have a value of true means
20:06
well there's some options for what it
20:07
could mean okay the the classic
20:09
view aristotle's view is that
20:13
it means that that idea or that sentence
20:16
or whatever
20:18
matches up with the world so the
20:21
the the classic formulation uh
20:24
is aristotle's he said to say what is
20:27
true
20:28
is to say of what is that it is and to
20:31
say of what is not
20:32
that it is not that's what it means to
20:35
say something true
20:36
and so even for him truth is a property
20:38
of sentences
20:39
it's a property of something that you
20:40
can say and it has to do with
20:42
whether or not that sentence or that
20:44
idea matches up with the world
20:46
that's the classical view that's called
20:48
correspondence
20:49
so philosophers like to talk about that
20:51
theory of truth as the correspondence
20:53
theory because it's
20:53
this idea that there's a world out there
20:56
and it really is a certain way
20:58
and it's independent of how we think
21:00
about it it's objective
21:02
in other words it doesn't depend on
21:03
humans it doesn't depend
21:05
on the whole consensus of rational
21:08
beings it just
21:09
is the way that it is and my
21:12
representation of it
21:13
in my idea or in my sentence or whatever
21:16
either matches up with it or it doesn't
21:18
if it does it corresponds and we say
21:20
that it's true
21:21
how do we make this episode required
21:24
listening for our whole
21:26
stinking nation right now right like
21:30
post-election one side believes one
21:33
thing
21:33
you know the other side believes the
21:35
other there's i mean
21:37
not just about the election just so many
21:40
things in our world there's different
21:42
realities different
21:44
truths different facts and it's
21:47
conservative
21:48
nauseating different yeah yeah i mean it
21:51
doesn't make
21:51
sense but that's what yeah i remember
21:54
while that went right after that
21:56
happened i was
21:58
going to class one day then i got on the
22:00
elevator in my building
22:02
and an older guy gets on the elevator
22:04
with me who turned out to be a
22:06
theologian and so in our building
22:08
theology's on the third floor and
22:10
philosophy is on the fourth floor which
22:11
is the top floor
22:12
and yes i use i remind the theologians
22:15
of that every chance i get
22:17
and uh he saw me hit first shelby last
22:19
brother
22:21
that's that's a religious idea
22:25
um so he saw me hit the button for the
22:28
fourth floor so he knew i was in
22:29
philosophy he's like so you're
22:30
you're going to the philosophy oh you
22:32
must be a philosopher he's like yeah
22:34
he's like so this must be an interesting
22:35
time for you guys what with the nature
22:37
of
22:38
truth and facts being questioned at
22:40
every turn
22:41
it was right after uh what's-her-face
22:43
had had done the alternative facts thing
22:46
right yeah yeah which from a
22:48
philosophical perspective is
22:49
absolute nonsense i mean it's just it's
22:52
incoherent
22:53
right because a fact is just another way
22:55
of describing
22:56
the thing that my statement corresponds
22:59
to there's something out there that
23:00
is a certain way now we're totally open
23:03
to the option
23:04
that we might never know what it is okay
23:07
there are many influential philosophers
23:10
who have taken that view but there
23:12
there's got to be a thing
23:14
and it is not guaranteed to be the way
23:16
that it seems to me
23:19
so i interrupted you were talking about
23:21
aristotle yeah so so we get this
23:23
correspondence view from aristotle i'll
23:25
just give you
23:26
as quickly as i can a run through of the
23:28
other major options okay
23:30
for how philosophers think about truth
23:32
because many people are unhappy with
23:34
that correspondence view for various
23:35
reasons
23:36
so another way of thinking about it is
23:39
truth is it's still a property of
23:41
beliefs or it's still a property of
23:43
statements or something like that
23:45
but truth for some philosophers is
23:48
simply
23:48
coherence between your beliefs
23:51
so some philosophers like a guy named
23:53
willard quine for example
23:55
argued that humans each individual human
23:57
is like a
23:58
a repository for a set of beliefs okay
24:01
so we have all these beliefs about
24:03
various things
24:04
and we can never really be certain if
24:06
our beliefs match up with what's out
24:07
there or not
24:09
correspondence or at least certainty
24:11
about correspondence isn't attainable
24:13
and so maybe it would be better to think
24:14
of truth as the beliefs all fit together
24:17
somehow so there's like a coherent web
24:20
of them
24:21
and each one kind of goes with all of
24:22
the other ones
24:24
and so maybe to say that something is
24:26
true just means
24:27
it fits into your web in a coherent way
24:31
so that's one option some philosophers
24:33
like that view another option
24:35
and this one is due to my personal
24:37
favorite philosopher a guy named charles
24:39
purse
24:39
who is the most original american
24:42
philosopher
24:43
so this is called the pragmatic view and
24:45
this says that
24:46
truth is the end of inquiry
24:50
it is the final opinion as perce put it
24:53
it's it's where human inquiry is headed
24:57
so again we're approaching it
24:59
asymptotically we never quite get there
25:01
but eventually all the disputes are
25:04
settled
25:05
or at least that's how things have gone
25:07
so far we can we continue gathering
25:10
evidence we continue thinking through
25:11
things presenting the best arguments
25:13
doing
25:14
you know all the experiments and
25:16
eventually we come to greater and
25:18
greater knowledge
25:18
so truth is simply a description of the
25:20
final stage
25:22
of that process which which will never
25:24
actually be realized but we're always
25:25
moving towards it
25:27
and purse thought that it was it was
25:29
like an obligation that we try
25:32
to continue moving towards it so that's
25:34
called the pragmatic view of truth it's
25:36
something
25:36
ideal out there somewhere that we're
25:38
headed towards which means we
25:40
we never actually possess it right now
25:41
yeah very frustrating for religious
25:43
people very
25:44
however may be fairly healthy to
25:45
consider i mean this is how science
25:47
works
25:47
right scientists when they're speaking
25:49
carefully won't say that their theories
25:52
are true
25:53
that when they're speaking really
25:54
carefully they might not even say that
25:55
we know that various things are true
25:57
even though they're so well confirmed
25:59
that they're extraordinarily unlikely to
26:01
ever be overturned
26:03
they might as well be facts nonetheless
26:06
what happens in science is you you try
26:08
to disconfirm a thing until you can't
26:10
anymore and then you just treat that as
26:11
though it were true until you find good
26:13
reason not to it's a very
26:14
uh pragmatic idea we're moving towards
26:17
something but we're always open to
26:19
being overturned um so those are kind of
26:21
the big three the correspondence the
26:23
coherence and then the
26:25
the pragmatic recently there have been a
26:27
couple other um
26:28
kind of popular views but they're a
26:30
little more technical i don't want to go
26:31
into them too much but
26:33
there's one called a semantic view which
26:34
is due to a 20th century philosopher
26:37
named alfred tarski
26:38
and he basically made truth um
26:41
a property of sentences that can be
26:43
expressed
26:44
in a very rigidly defined language
26:49
and so so not a natural language but a
26:51
language that logicians
26:53
actually invent and so he made truth uh
26:56
something a kind of thing that exists
26:58
within a really rigorously defined
27:00
language
27:01
so his definition is very mathematical i
27:03
mean it's
27:04
we can be certain about it within the
27:06
system um
27:08
but it doesn't actually have the
27:10
metaphysical implications of the other
27:12
views so in some ways it just kind of
27:13
brackets out
27:14
the question of what's out there and
27:16
whether or not our opinions ever
27:18
actually line up with what's out there
27:20
and says instead let's just kind of
27:21
focus in on
27:23
how this language is working and we can
27:26
define truth very precisely within that
27:28
and so a lot of philosophers have liked
27:29
that because
27:30
it's manageable we can use it we can we
27:32
can do we can make discoveries like we
27:34
can do some interesting
27:36
logical work and some of those
27:37
discoveries have actually
27:39
like spawned computer science so i mean
27:41
they're like really really significant
27:43
discoveries
27:44
but it doesn't actually tell us a whole
27:45
lot about like what's out there in the
27:46
world
27:47
unless unless you're somebody like
27:50
willard quine
27:51
who looked at that and said you know
27:52
what i think that actually is the
27:54
metaphysics
27:55
all it means to exist is to be
27:58
describable in that language
28:00
that was his view so can you describe
28:03
for us
28:03
what what you mean by what metaphysics
28:05
means metaphysics is simply the question
28:07
of what's out there
28:09
what what is being what actually is what
28:11
actually exists
28:13
and so quine was notoriously a
28:15
reductionist about everything he wanted
28:17
to get rid of as much as possible
28:19
and so for him only a couple of things
28:21
exist
28:22
and so his notion of truth is is very
28:25
deflationary
28:26
in the sense of we're trying to get rid
28:28
of as much stuff
28:29
as possible and that's actually the last
28:32
um
28:33
the last notion of truth i wanted to
28:34
mention is the deflationary theory which
28:36
has
28:36
various parts but a lot of people are
28:39
just kind of
28:40
suspicious about whether it's even
28:43
meaningful to say that anything is true
28:45
so some people want to say for example
28:47
that if i say the sentence
28:49
it's raining outside and then i say that
28:52
another sentence
28:53
it's true that it's raining outside for
28:55
a lot of philosophers i haven't said
28:57
anything different
28:58
those sentences have exactly the same
29:00
semantic content they mean the exact
29:02
same thing
29:03
i can get rid of or deflate the whole
29:06
truth part altogether
29:07
so for some philosophers truth isn't
29:10
actually meaningful
29:11
it's just redundant that's a rather
29:14
unless you live in a time like we do
29:15
today
29:16
where people do say things that aren't
29:18
true
29:19
in both ways right yeah so you can
29:21
definitely say things according to this
29:24
view
29:24
that are unverifiable or that are
29:28
proven to be out of sync with what is
29:31
when you try to verify it it's difficult
29:33
to describe the view without using words
29:34
like true and false
29:36
but they still want to say that if you
29:37
say a thing is true in addition to just
29:39
stating the thing you haven't actually
29:41
said anything additional
29:42
so philosophers like that would think it
29:44
would be kind of odd
29:46
to aim at or seek after quote-unquote
29:49
truth
29:50
as a as a goal because truth is just
29:53
like this
29:55
kind of unclear way of speaking uh that
29:58
isn't really necessary that's not doing
29:59
any additional work
30:01
that sounds like a party guess that i
30:03
would kind of want to stay away from
30:04
yeah these would not be fun people to
30:05
talk to
30:06
at parties but i mean it's quite a
30:09
sizable
30:10
group of philosophers that takes that
30:11
view and then i'll just mention one more
30:13
and i promise i'm done so there's also
30:15
another favorite philosopher by
30:17
friedrich nietzsche
30:18
and nietzsche was what's called a
30:20
perspectivist
30:22
and so he's famous for saying like
30:23
little quippy things like
30:25
there is no truth there are only
30:27
perspectives uh
30:28
and sometimes he's misinterpreted to be
30:30
a kind of relativist but that's not
30:32
really what he meant
30:32
what he meant was at least i think what
30:34
he meant was he's kind of notoriously
30:36
hard to pin down on this
30:37
if if you want to because we're all kind
30:40
of limited by our own perspectives and
30:41
our own
30:42
social locations and our own drives and
30:44
desires and motives and everything
30:47
if you really want to get as big a
30:50
picture of the world as possible you
30:52
could say as accurate a picture as
30:54
possible but that kind of presupposes
30:55
some things
30:56
if you want to get a little bit outside
30:58
of your perspective the only way to do
30:59
it
31:00
is to take up other perspectives to
31:03
dialogue with others as much as you can
31:05
and so it's kind of like if you had a
31:07
partially drawn map
31:08
on semi-transparent paper and then you
31:11
had another layer of semi-transparent
31:12
paper that had a different part of the
31:14
map on it and then another layer and
31:15
then another and then another
31:16
and you overlaid them all together you
31:18
could get a picture of the whole map
31:20
and so each each individual represents
31:22
only you know a partial perspective on
31:24
the world
31:25
and so adding together all the
31:27
perspectives
31:28
will get you a better picture than you
31:30
could get on your own but he also
31:32
thought there's nothing outside the
31:33
perspectives
31:35
so so looking for a ground to the whole
31:37
thing
31:38
or a god's eye view is just not possible
31:41
there's nothing outside yeah i mean i
31:44
feel
31:45
and sense a lot of truth and common
31:47
sense in
31:48
that nietzschean kind of way of thinking
31:50
there is no truth only perspectives
31:52
it seems a little cynic like overly
31:54
scientifical to me but
31:56
yeah um it also reminds me there's a
31:58
contemporary philosopher named
32:00
pete rollins out of ireland who now
32:03
lives in the us but he has
32:05
he actually has these workshops in
32:07
numerous offerings whether it's
32:09
a dinner or uh it's called atheism for
32:12
lent or whether there's
32:13
numerous ways in which he's trying to
32:16
i'm trying to think of the right word
32:18
that he heard the word that he uses but
32:19
it's
32:19
it's i'm sorry it's de-centering
32:21
practices so us
32:23
spiritual leaders would talk about
32:25
centering practices it's good to
32:27
you know sit here and have some
32:29
centering prayer happen and calm your
32:31
soul and your inner man
32:32
pete rollins says i want to de-center i
32:35
want to have some de-centering practices
32:37
because we can't really know what we
32:38
believe unless we hear from someone who
32:40
has a different perspective
32:41
than us he'll have dinners where they'll
32:44
invite somebody who has the opposite
32:46
view of them
32:47
and then you your only job is to listen
32:51
and that person who has the opposite
32:52
view will tell them everything that they
32:53
believe about this thing
32:54
and they'll tell them tell this group
32:56
how i see you
32:57
and how i think about the way you think
32:59
and the way you believe
33:00
and you're you're not allowed to talk
33:03
the only thing you're
33:04
able to do is ask questions yeah and
33:06
then you do this from a number of
33:07
different perspectives a number of
33:08
different topics and at the end of it i
33:10
think it's like 12 weeks or something
33:12
you kind of reflect together as a group
33:14
and talk about what you learned and
33:16
really just by saying you can't really
33:18
know what you believe and you can't
33:19
really stand on something
33:21
unless you've heard the opposite
33:22
perspectives and different perspectives
33:24
it sounds very challenging to me but it
33:26
sounds very
33:28
healthy and just healthy yeah and he
33:32
we should have him on the podcast i
33:33
think that would be interesting i think
33:35
we will yeah
33:36
he's a big fan of nietzsche so that's
33:37
probably where he's getting it so he's
33:39
involved in what's called the death of
33:40
god
33:41
movement or death of god theology which
33:43
is straight from nietzsche nietzsche is
33:44
most famous for his proclamation that
33:46
god is dead
33:47
uh which is doesn't mean what you think
33:48
it means no no
33:50
various philosophers have described
33:53
being informed having their faith
33:54
informed by nietzsche in a healthy way i
33:56
would be in that group of people
33:58
nietzsche certainly was no christian he
33:59
was no phantom no friend to christianity
34:02
but his critiques of religion and
34:04
particularly the religious perspective
34:06
on truth
34:07
is helpful can be very helpful
34:11
so i just said a lot of stuff about
34:14
about truth
34:15
uh there's a lot going on there the
34:17
upshot okay here's my
34:19
what i think the upshot is for our
34:21
audience anyway philosophers don't know
34:23
what truth is
34:25
and we're the group of people most
34:28
interested in it in the world
34:31
at least as interested in it as
34:32
religious people have ever been
34:34
and we're the group of people and this
34:35
might sound arrogant but we're the group
34:37
of people most capable of figuring it
34:39
out
34:40
we've literally spent thousands of years
34:42
on this do you think that sounds
34:43
arrogant
34:45
i mean i say that because we're the
34:47
group of people that's trained
34:48
specifically to deal with questions like
34:50
that
34:51
and we have reached nothing even close
34:53
to a consensus
34:55
um so there are there are pockets of
34:58
people who take all the views that i
34:59
just described
35:00
there are pockets of people who try to
35:02
create create hybrids out of them
35:04
personally i subscribe to a pragmatic
35:06
view i think that's a good way to go
35:08
but there are problems with all of these
35:10
and in many cases thinking
35:12
trying to get clear logically on what
35:14
truth is often leads you into paradox
35:16
so they're very famous paradoxes that
35:18
philosophers and logicians who work on
35:20
truth
35:20
try to sort out and it's very hard so
35:23
the upshot for me is
35:25
we don't know what truth is ergo
35:28
you don't know what truth is like
35:32
humans don't know which one the truth is
35:36
that's kind of the bottom line for
35:38
philosophers now
35:39
now let me say this much okay and then
35:41
i'll return it back over
35:43
there's nothing whatsoever wrong with
35:46
believing
35:47
that you are correct about how you see
35:49
the world
35:50
in fact it would be weird not to
35:53
like to have a belief implies usually
35:57
they're exceptions but
35:58
usually to have a belief implies that
35:59
you think the world is a certain way
36:02
yeah you think it's true yeah everybody
36:04
thinks their perspective is correct
36:06
everybody thinks their beliefs are true
36:07
and that's perfectly natural
36:09
and good that's as it should be and
36:11
people ought to defend
36:13
their views and you ought not to give up
36:14
a belief if you don't have good reason
36:16
to do so every philosopher i know would
36:17
agree with that
36:19
it's just that no one has ownership of
36:21
the concept
36:22
and no one can actually explicate the
36:24
concept
36:25
in a way that's convincing to other
36:27
smart people and
36:28
when the church has you know got some
36:31
real eggs on its face
36:32
are when the church has thought
36:35
something is true
36:36
so strongly that they're willing to burn
36:38
people at the stake
36:40
because they have a different
36:42
perspective you can understand why they
36:43
thought that right
36:44
if your idea of truth is that this is a
36:47
thing that we receive
36:48
from god so it's in
36:51
in it's almost you can think of it as a
36:53
kind of humility i think it would be a
36:56
warped sense of humility it's not it's
36:57
not a humility that i would recommend as
36:59
a virtue
37:00
but i mean burning someone at the stake
37:03
or condemning someone or
37:05
you know excommunicating someone or
37:06
whatever
37:09
was in a way an expression of humility
37:12
in the sense of
37:14
who am i to say what is true the
37:16
tradition has given this to me
37:18
and by the lights of the tradition
37:21
you're outside of it
37:22
and the tradition has also told me what
37:24
to do about that
37:26
it's a kind of obedience it's it's an
37:28
obedience that
37:29
a philosopher would never see the virtue
37:31
in but from a religious perspective you
37:33
can kind of understand
37:34
the perspective so
37:38
if i if i'm someone with faith and i
37:41
believe that i
37:42
know something of god or even heard
37:44
something directly from god
37:48
is that where i should be stopping or do
37:49
i layer on
37:51
this uh supreme
37:56
human philosophical wisdom that makes it
37:58
so that
38:00
uh you can say there is none who knows
38:02
truth and and
38:04
i guess as as someone of faith which
38:07
lens am i supposed to look through
38:11
yeah i mean my recommendation and it's
38:13
simply that because you got to do what
38:14
you got to do right i mean you're
38:15
responsible for your shepherding your
38:17
own beliefs but
38:18
i would say test yourself to see how
38:20
sure you are to see how confident you
38:21
are do you really know that
38:23
and there are ways of testing yourself
38:25
and the easiest way is to
38:26
ask other people and then we can
38:29
we can work together to find out if
38:31
you're actually sure about that
38:33
and i bet give us a few minutes or maybe
38:36
a few hours and i bet
38:38
i could get you to doubt it but if i
38:40
can't if that fails
38:41
if we go through the process and you
38:42
don't doubt it at the end of the day
38:44
you're absolutely sure about it as sure
38:45
as you are of anything then
38:48
who are we to say that that that's not
38:51
the case
38:54
yeah i think at the very least it just
38:57
we do well to be more careful with the
38:58
word truth
38:59
as christians as religious people yeah
39:02
yeah you get no argument from me there
39:05
so let's flip this around
39:06
so uh i just gave you that probably
39:10
annoyingly nerdy take on what
39:12
philosophers think about this
39:14
what's it like from your perspective so
39:17
how do you think about truth how do you
39:18
communicate the idea of truth
39:20
in your position as a pastor yeah
39:25
it's interesting you're going to get a
39:26
different take from me than you would
39:28
many many other past christian pastors
39:30
because
39:31
i grew up in that world that felt like
39:33
we knew what truth was and we have
39:36
we've cornered the market on truth and
39:38
that's in regards to
39:40
end times theology and eschatology it's
39:42
in regards to sexuality it's in regards
39:44
to who's in and who's out we've
39:45
that's in regards to science and
39:48
creationism that's in regards to
39:49
everything right
39:50
but it's been a long time since i've
39:51
thought like that um i i got
39:53
quickly weirded out even before i was a
39:55
pastor by the the way that christians
39:57
used the word truth so willy-nilly
39:59
and so in a such a weaponized fashion
40:03
i would say i got very skeptical of it
40:05
pretty early on
40:07
and now i'm just not one of those
40:09
pastors that you'd hear talking about
40:10
truth
40:11
a lot and i some people don't like me
40:14
for it
40:14
some people probably have left our
40:15
church because of it and some you know i
40:17
just had this conversation
40:19
literally a couple weeks ago person who
40:21
is considering leaving our church
40:23
and he's his first question was do you
40:26
believe in absolute truth
40:28
i think oh here we go all right it's
40:29
that kind of conversation and
40:32
his question was he asked the question
40:34
because he doesn't hear me talk about
40:35
absolute truth so much
40:36
and so maybe that means that pastor
40:38
randy doesn't believe it
40:40
and very few people call me pastor randy
40:41
by the way the reverend
40:43
i bet there's a venn diagram of the
40:45
people that do and the people that use
40:46
the phrase absolute truth
40:49
yeah sure sure well
40:52
no most of the people who think use the
40:54
phrase absolute truth are
40:55
pretty questionable about whether i'm
40:57
qualified to be a pastor or not
40:59
um and what i told them was
41:02
you know i probably believe in absolute
41:04
truth but it's not the scriptures and
41:06
and he didn't love that but so i'll go
41:10
to where
41:10
i think truth lies and then kind of
41:13
unpack it from there but
41:15
when i talk about truth i'm talking
41:16
about a person and i know that
41:18
freaks you philosophers out but that's
41:20
just that's just my take and where i am
41:23
right now where i've been for a while
41:25
and what i'm most comfortable with
41:26
i'm uncomfortable with talking about
41:28
anything as absolute truth
41:30
unless you're talking about the person
41:32
of christ and
41:34
then i can say truth is found in christ
41:38
and i can say that because a
41:41
everything that i've seen or heard from
41:43
christ in the christian scriptures
41:46
resonates in such a dynamic way in me in
41:50
such a
41:50
deep way that that is elevated above
41:53
anything
41:54
both in the scriptures and anything that
41:56
i've heard the person of christ
41:58
is something in someone who
42:01
continues to to to make sense of things
42:04
and to make sense of reality and i feel
42:06
like the further i get away from the
42:07
person of christ
42:09
the further the more unraveled i get and
42:11
the closer and closer
42:13
and more connected i am to this person
42:15
of christ both in
42:16
my thought life and my soul and my my
42:19
devotional life
42:20
the more centered and real i feel the
42:22
more grounded in reality i feel
42:25
and i think the most inspired
42:28
portions of the scriptures by far are
42:31
the ones that speak to jesus
42:33
as truth ones like john 1
42:36
where it talks about the divine logos
42:39
the divine word of god that was
42:41
before all things and all things were
42:43
created through this word through jesus
42:45
and john even says we received the law
42:49
through moses
42:50
but we've received grace and truth
42:52
through jesus
42:54
now that i mean most of us just walk
42:56
right by that
42:57
but do you realize what john what john
42:59
is saying when he said that
43:01
he's saying that we didn't get the truth
43:03
from moses
43:04
right like the the old testament the
43:07
hebrew scriptures
43:08
weren't this fullest embodiment of truth
43:11
he says we didn't get truth until we got
43:13
jesus
43:15
that's profound and then i fast forward
43:18
to
43:18
colossians 1 where the apostle paul said
43:21
that jesus is the image of the invisible
43:23
god
43:24
so the apostle paul got something he got
43:26
that like this god that we believe in
43:28
that we put our faith and trust in and
43:30
are giving ourselves to
43:32
he's invisible she's invisible this
43:35
divine life is invisible we
43:37
that's why it's called faith we can't
43:39
know
43:41
but we have this human one
43:45
who we believe was fully divine and
43:47
fully human in
43:49
in this one named jesus the christ
43:52
is the fullest expression of the divine
43:55
life that we will ever have
43:57
in this life and that when if we've seen
43:59
jesus we've seen god
44:01
and so that just tells me that's the one
44:03
thing i can have confidence in in
44:05
talking about truth that truth is a
44:06
person and jesus even said it himself
44:08
for crying out loud he said i'm the way
44:10
and i'm the truth and i'm the life i am
44:12
the truth i'm very comfortable with that
44:14
statement
44:15
because it's so complex but yet it's so
44:18
simple
44:19
you know you're not able to to
44:22
to reduce truth down into a formulaic
44:25
system of bullet points
44:26
you're actually have to observe
44:30
and become a disciple of and give
44:32
yourself to
44:33
a person and you have to listen
44:36
and you have to lay lay aside your
44:40
judgments
44:40
and your preconceived notions about what
44:42
reality is what truth is
44:44
and you just become a learner of this
44:46
one who defied the religious leaders of
44:48
his day
44:49
who was killed by the religious leaders
44:51
of his day
44:53
who was killed by the empire the
44:55
greatest empire of the world
44:56
that was in the world at that point and
45:00
yet was probably the most has become
45:04
the most followed and respected person
45:08
who's ever walked planet earth that we
45:09
know of so that's my perspective on
45:12
truth and i get very uncomfortable if we
45:13
go
45:14
somewhere outside of that i i get
45:17
yeah i just i can't stomach those
45:19
conversations that
45:20
makes truth out to be something that
45:22
it's not um and i know again
45:24
philosophers i know that you're saying
45:25
well that's what you're doing when
45:26
you're talking about jesus
45:27
truth that's fine we can disagree but
45:30
that person that life is where i found
45:32
the most truth of anything in
45:34
anyone and it seems like one thing
45:36
you're both sharing is
45:38
that there's this idea of some external
45:40
thing that we
45:42
won't attain or know and and we can't
45:46
we can't say that we've got it no it's
45:48
it's outside of us
45:49
and we journey towards it continually
45:51
yeah if if
45:52
truth is a person as in christ and in
45:56
by christ i mean i'm a trinitarian
45:59
christian so i believe
46:00
in father son and spirit i believe in
46:02
this relational god
46:05
that this relational divine life that
46:07
together they represent and make up
46:09
who is god and i believe that that
46:11
divine life
46:12
is the ground of being of all reality
46:14
and so when i talk about truth as a
46:16
person that's what i'm talking about
46:17
that the
46:18
the ground of being of all reality
46:20
actually has been revealed in a person
46:22
who is jesus christ
46:23
and i'll nev i'll spend my life
46:25
journeying towards
46:26
truth that whose name is jesus yeah
46:30
yeah for all i said about those
46:32
perspectives on truth from
46:33
you know different philosophers i think
46:36
everything you said
46:38
could be consistent with most of those
46:40
theories so for a correspondence
46:41
interesting example
46:43
i mean the thing that's out there that
46:45
our statements are trying to
46:47
correspond to might be jesus
46:50
it it might be what khan called the
46:52
thing in itself
46:54
the numenal world it might be what purse
46:56
called the
46:57
uh he had another name for it i can't
46:59
think in itself is that i
47:01
am that i am i mean we could interpret
47:03
it that way right
47:04
so the it's kind of yeah khan explicitly
47:07
had god in mind
47:08
uh because he wanted to make the case
47:10
that humans
47:12
weren't capable of knowledge of god we
47:14
weren't capable of
47:15
knowledge of many things but god is one
47:17
of the things because god is
47:19
understood in classical philosophy as
47:21
the source of being
47:23
god is the primordially existing thing
47:26
from which all other things
47:27
spring and we are limited by our own
47:31
uh cognitive filters and we just can't
47:34
access that that was his view
47:37
it reminds me of the way you talked
47:38
about an ensemic way of
47:41
describing god or a case for god right
47:43
yeah god's the
47:44
necessarily existing thing or the
47:46
self-existent thing or whatever
47:48
and from our perspective i mean
47:52
what's the difference between saying
47:54
that that's jesus or the christ
47:56
or saying that that's i don't know
47:59
the one if you take take the view of
48:02
platinus or if you're a buddhist it's
48:03
the
48:04
the universe or it's the eternal flux or
48:07
whatever i mean
48:08
all those descriptions are semantically
48:10
equivalent from the perspective of a
48:12
correspondence theorist so
48:14
it's an article of faith to say that
48:15
it's jesus but a lot of philosophers are
48:17
fighting
48:18
with that yeah or if you're a pragmatist
48:20
about truth like i
48:21
am then you know to say that
48:24
uh jesus is the truth in a in a kind of
48:28
i don't know really general sense might
48:30
mean something like
48:31
uh we're gradually as a human race or as
48:34
a race of rational beings
48:36
maybe bigger than humanity we're
48:37
gradually heading towards
48:39
a perspective of the world where
48:42
jesus nature will be more and more
48:45
realized or at least our understanding
48:47
of the world will get closer and closer
48:49
to
48:51
that kind of nature i'm okay with that
48:53
um i
48:54
personally when i read that part in john
48:56
about jesus being the way the truth and
48:58
the life i interpret it
48:59
ethically i don't think that jesus was
49:02
trying to make a metaphysical statement
49:04
to or i don't think john was trying to
49:06
make a metaphysical statement to satisfy
49:08
the
49:08
greek philosophers but um he's he's the
49:11
way for me to become fully human he's
49:14
the life for me as a human and he's the
49:16
truth in the sense of
49:17
he's the thing that i should aim all of
49:19
my religious beliefs at and all of the
49:22
things that
49:23
uh i believe about how i should treat
49:24
other people i interpret it in a kind of
49:26
ethical sense but
49:28
um but i don't think it's necessarily
49:30
doing damage to the text or to the
49:32
christian view
49:34
to treat it as more than that
49:37
and many christian philosophers have
49:38
said that whatever reality is
49:41
it's it's christ it's
49:45
yep in ways that we don't understand
49:47
it's mysterious but
49:49
he's the primordial thing you know in
49:52
and it's fun
49:53
to me that on this journey towards truth
49:55
because that's what i would
49:56
that's how i would describe a real
50:00
religious religious journey and
50:02
particularly for me a christian journey
50:04
is a journey towards truth so i'm i'm
50:07
journeying towards
50:09
that which is real i'm journaling
50:11
towards that which is the foundational
50:13
reality of the uni
50:14
of the cosmos of existence of reality
50:17
but while i do that i feel like the
50:19
closer i get
50:21
the more i don't know yeah and that's
50:23
super fun to me that's
50:25
you know this idea of wonder and mystery
50:28
i feel like the
50:29
the further we go on this journey
50:30
towards truth if we do it in a humble
50:32
and
50:32
you know authentic kind of way
50:35
ironically
50:36
the more we understand how much we don't
50:38
understand
50:39
and how far from that that foundational
50:43
ground of reality that is the divine
50:44
life that is christ
50:46
which just thrills me i i actually
50:49
love that that's a that's a spiritual
50:51
journey that i can say yes and amen to
50:54
is one that is open to wonder journeying
50:57
towards truth and the
50:58
the further you go the more that you
51:00
realize you don't know yeah
51:02
so was your friend happy with any of
51:04
that when you
51:05
explained well no i mean
51:08
that conversation went the way a lot of
51:10
conversa these conversations go
51:12
is i just ask a lot of questions because
51:15
jesus if if if you take jesus out of the
51:18
scriptures
51:19
it's easier to have a formulaic form of
51:21
christianity
51:22
right but but because of jesus we can
51:26
we have to get comfortable with all
51:27
sorts of nuance and so that conversation
51:29
went like because of the absolute truth
51:31
foundation
51:31
then it went to do you think there's a
51:34
clear-cut way to get into heaven or to
51:35
have eternal life you know and i was
51:37
like well
51:38
i'm not qualified to give that answer
51:40
but the one who is
51:42
walked on planet earth and gave a number
51:44
of different ways
51:45
seemingly to to have life to have access
51:48
to that life
51:49
sometimes it looked like faith and
51:50
belief sometimes it looked like caring
51:52
for the least of these
51:53
sometimes it looked like you would do
51:55
all sorts of things in
51:57
in jesus name and still he would save
51:59
depart from me for i never knew you and
52:00
so
52:01
i think just using jesus words
52:04
actually the red letters in the bible is
52:07
just
52:08
it's hard to get around in these
52:10
conversations you have to build a
52:11
christ-less theology in some ways
52:14
to come to these hard fast truths to be
52:16
totally honest if i'm just going to be
52:18
that that was offensive well what i just
52:20
said but
52:21
so wow so a thoroughly biblical theology
52:25
would entail
52:26
for you a christless theology i didn't
52:29
say
52:30
biblical well but that's where they're
52:31
getting it from right i mean
52:33
the truth is what the bible says which
52:36
is obvious yes i would say
52:37
many modern protestant christians have a
52:41
shockingly
52:42
small amount of jesus in their
52:44
functional theology let me say that yeah
52:46
and i would say most of their theology
52:48
is based on the apostle paul who would
52:49
disagree with most of their theology but
52:51
when you bring up jesus to a lot of
52:54
protestant christians
52:55
you're actually challenging their their
52:57
theology because they formulated a
52:58
theology that's very formulaic and very
53:01
you know a plus b equals c and it's just
53:03
jesus
53:04
breaks those categories jesus comes
53:07
along
53:08
and brings the gray in and he brings
53:10
even more gray when you get more
53:12
uncomfortable with it
53:13
it's why the religious people kill jesus
53:15
yeah i mean it's almost like god is a
53:16
person and not a
53:18
mathematical theorem absolutely
53:21
absolutely this could be so much more
53:24
simple
53:24
right like this this christian journey
53:26
could be just so cut and dry
53:28
and so many american christians would
53:30
love it if it was you know because we
53:32
turn the bible into a manual or to a
53:35
textbook and turn all our
53:36
theology into formulas and that's just
53:39
jesus comes along and disappoints you at
53:41
every turn if you have that
53:43
viewpoint it's why we can't really focus
53:44
too much on jesus if that's the way we
53:46
want to think
53:46
yeah friends before we continue we want
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yourself for visiting story hill bkc
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and if you're not remember to support
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local one more time that's
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storyhillbkc.com
54:25
so what do you think christians mean
54:26
when they use that phrase absolute truth
54:28
i've never quite
54:29
got my head around that i mean i used to
54:31
be super into apologetics and we'd throw
54:33
that
54:33
that phrase around all the time but i'm
54:35
not
54:36
to this day i'm still not really clear
54:38
what we meant by it like when i when i
54:40
think about sexuality is when it when it
54:42
kind of
54:42
crystallizes for me and i think when you
54:45
when they say
54:46
absolute truth they mean something that
54:48
cannot be argued with
54:50
something that is from god
54:53
is true eternally and it doesn't matter
54:56
what cultural context you find yourself
54:57
in it doesn't matter what
54:58
science or logic say this is
55:02
absolute truth and it it that's the end
55:05
of the conversation so if i have a son
55:07
or a daughter who's gay
55:09
i know absolute truth an absolute true
55:11
set of says i've got to fix them or i
55:13
know absolute truth and
55:14
absolute truth means that experience is
55:17
wrong and we've got to figure them out
55:18
we've got to cycle
55:19
psychoanalyze and you know jesus eyes
55:21
them
55:22
because absolute truths is very clear
55:25
absolute truth
55:26
allows for no wiggle room would you is
55:28
that about right when it comes to
55:30
absolute truth what
55:31
we mean yeah it's it's the opposite of
55:33
the relativistic like
55:35
yeah yes you believe what you want i'll
55:36
believe what i want and i'll be okay
55:38
it's like no these but these things you
55:40
must yep
55:42
they're true whether or not you see them
55:44
as true exactly
55:46
well i guess i'm trying to get clear on
55:47
what the absolute part adds to it
55:49
so it just sounds redundant to me if a
55:52
thing is true
55:53
totally true so what does it mean i mean
55:55
if the absolute part is as you said
55:57
can't be argued with surely they mean
56:00
shouldn't be argued with
56:02
or do they really mean yeah to which you
56:04
say watch me
56:06
i mean like if you go outside
56:08
occasionally
56:09
and talk to people you would hopefully
56:11
not take the view that there's anything
56:13
you don't can't do let me let me i'm
56:16
trying to get inside of the head of my
56:17
friend who
56:18
i'm talking about this conversation from
56:20
several weeks ago
56:21
and i think he would say there are
56:24
things in the
56:24
i know he would say there are things in
56:26
the christian faith and in the church
56:27
that we can disagree about
56:29
the non-essentials if you if you will
56:31
and that's okay we can actually
56:33
still be friends and fellowship as
56:35
christian brothers and sisters and
56:36
disagree on those things
56:37
but there is absolute truth there are
56:40
the essentials that cannot be
56:41
compromised that cannot be
56:43
we cannot be wishy-washy about we cannot
56:46
allow for disagreement about because if
56:48
we disagree
56:49
those things are absolutely true and
56:51
there is no wiggle room there then we
56:53
have to break fellowship then we have to
56:54
say you're not a christian anymore then
56:56
you we have to say
56:57
you're wrong because this is absolute
56:59
truth
57:01
but i mean but again what they mean by
57:03
that must
57:04
be functionally what i think is true
57:09
and therefore
57:14
doesn't matter to them what the
57:15
scriptures say is what matters there are
57:17
a lot of things i think are true
57:18
but the absolute truths if i'm taking on
57:20
this mindset are the things
57:22
on which i cannot tolerate your
57:24
disagreement and still
57:26
see you within the camp that i'm in so
57:28
just the most important ones
57:32
yeah sure okay so absolute truth means
57:34
the things i think are most important
57:36
i'm like getting uncomfortable like i
57:38
have to defend this i'm not i'm no i'm
57:40
just trying to get clear on the idea
57:42
i mean it's an idea that i guess i used
57:43
to hold i just don't remember
57:45
i'm just trying to it's the things that
57:46
we cannot these people think
57:48
the things that we cannot compromise on
57:50
the things that if our culture tells us
57:52
some person has their own truth and you
57:54
have your own truth
57:56
well okay but hopefully wrong so
58:00
if if it's that that's a consequential
58:03
consequentialist thing
58:04
which which means if if the
58:06
justification for this being the
58:08
absolute truth is that
58:09
if i don't treat it that way then really
58:12
terrible stuff will happen
58:14
then that's not truth we're not talking
58:15
about truth anymore right because now
58:17
explain that now that depends on what i
58:19
do
58:19
and so it's just not truth anymore so it
58:22
can't be what they mean cannot be
58:24
at least as far as i can understand it
58:27
that
58:27
this is something that if we don't treat
58:30
it as true
58:31
then terrible things will happen because
58:34
then it
58:34
it's its nature as truth somehow depends
58:37
on me or its importance
58:39
depends on me that would that wouldn't
58:41
make any sense so to say that something
58:43
is
58:43
quote unquote absolute truth has to mean
58:46
something else as
58:47
the clearest i can see on it is that it
58:49
means what i or my community
58:52
says is most important well yeah and
58:55
what they think is absolutely true or
58:57
absolute truth
58:58
is the grounds for human flourishing
59:01
they would say
59:02
the reason that our world is the way it
59:04
is is because
59:06
the world is relativistic and hates
59:07
absolute truth
59:09
if we had absolute truth we'd have
59:11
strong nuclear families
59:13
if our world believed in absolute truth
59:16
we would have
59:17
a flourishing economy and freedom would
59:19
be uh you know the
59:21
what it what it was meant to be if we
59:22
had absolute truth
59:24
we wouldn't have all these people coming
59:26
out as transgender and
59:27
gender confusion and all that stuff
59:29
because we've gone so far
59:31
in this relativistic you know
59:33
truth-hating
59:34
culture that we live in that we've got
59:36
what we deserve
59:38
sure yeah but even even there those
59:41
things are evidence to you of people
59:43
having given up on truth
59:44
because you have an idea of what human
59:47
flourishing looks like
59:49
and if you're getting that idea from
59:51
somewhere
59:52
you're either getting it from something
59:54
external to your faith in which case
59:57
you're in the same boat as the rest of
59:58
us you're just a hypocrite about it
60:00
or you're getting it from the bible in
60:01
which case your view is circular
60:03
or you're getting it from your tradition
60:04
which is still just a circular so
60:07
and what do you mean by circular it's
60:09
kind of like when
60:10
when somebody says you should believe
60:12
the bible and i say why and they say
60:13
because the bible says so
60:15
if i think it's the bible i mean if i
60:18
think that
60:19
not grasping absolute truth will lead
60:21
you to
60:23
unhappiness or will prevent your
60:24
flourishing as a human being
60:26
but my notion of absolute truth is
60:29
derived from my own opinions or the
60:33
tradition the tradition
60:34
of which i'm apart and i say well
60:38
why is that the correct notion of human
60:41
flourishing
60:42
and the answer is because the tradition
60:44
says it like you can't give
60:46
a demonstrable yeah justification for
60:49
that it's basically in my world i equate
60:53
that to
60:54
being a fan it's like sports i would say
60:57
a person would ask me who's the best
61:00
a kid would ask me who's the best
61:01
football team and i'd be like duh
61:03
the packers yeah and they'd be like why
61:05
are the packers the best i could give
61:06
them all sorts of reasons why we because
61:07
we have these amazing quarterbacks and
61:09
you know tradition and we do things
61:11
right but at the end of the day why are
61:13
the packers the best team
61:14
because of the packers what does that
61:15
mean they're just the packers they're
61:16
the best
61:18
yeah and i guess that's what confuses me
61:20
about the whole phrase and why i spend
61:21
so much time on it now
61:22
is that i mean i'm fine with sticking to
61:25
a tradition saying you know this is how
61:26
we think about things and we have our
61:28
coherent system
61:28
and it makes sense to us it's internally
61:30
consistent and
61:32
uh we think it provides a a good path to
61:34
flourishing
61:35
and if if you disagree then you're just
61:37
not part of our system but that's fine
61:38
but like adding the absolute truth part
61:41
to it makes it sound like
61:43
you think it's bigger than your system
61:44
which makes it sound like you think it's
61:46
demonstrable
61:47
which means you should be able to
61:49
demonstrate or somebody should be able
61:50
to demonstrate it so
61:52
it's the figure that it just reduces
61:54
back to like when you dig into it it
61:55
just reduces back to
61:56
this is what our group said any of our
61:58
listeners who could explain this to us
62:00
better than
62:00
we're seeming to be able to grasp it
62:02
should just email us because yeah i
62:03
tried to look back on uh
62:06
on google trends they only go back as
62:07
far as 2004 but it looks like absolute
62:09
truth
62:10
has like it kind of it peaked some time
62:13
before that because it was already
62:14
trending down that's as far back as they
62:16
go but
62:16
uh my guess is that it was the the
62:19
christian response to post-modernism
62:22
as a movement you've got post-modernism
62:23
that comes in and starts to talk about
62:25
things like okay multiple truths and so
62:28
then and then there's this
62:29
this response on the part of
62:30
christianity where you have to well no
62:32
there's not multiple truths there
62:34
but but there are absolutes these are
62:35
these are things that
62:37
that would be my guess i'd i'd love to
62:39
hear if something in high school
62:40
i mean this is you know i i
62:44
condemn cynicism but i'm pretty cynical
62:47
i want to say
62:48
this is part of the reason why we see so
62:50
many people walking away from from the
62:51
faith from
62:52
from christianity is because we're
62:55
obsessed with
62:56
little weird you know cult like
62:59
ideas like absolute truth like that we
63:02
just don't have to obsess over that
63:04
and talk about it ad nauseam because
63:07
it's just not
63:08
helping us i would say let me ask you
63:10
this kyle
63:11
um as someone who grew up in the church
63:13
and you said you know in the very
63:15
beginning of this podcast that
63:16
you grew up as a fundamentalist in many
63:18
ways and as someone who was passionate
63:21
about apologetics up until
63:23
you know inside of this last decade
63:25
which is the ultimate irony i think
63:27
and as somebody who still identifies as
63:29
a christ follower how would you
63:30
recommend that
63:31
we who identify as christians because i
63:33
sure hope there's some non-christians
63:35
and some atheists and some other faiths
63:38
listening
63:39
but how would you recommend that we
63:40
christians think and talk about truth
63:44
do it less okay
63:47
there's a good start um
63:51
i mean listen to experts people that
63:53
know what they're talking about
63:54
don't take a concept that's extensively
63:58
exhaustively studied in some other area
64:01
and then like
64:02
co-opt it and claim ownership of it and
64:04
like
64:05
give it a kind of parochial definition
64:07
and then insist that that be the
64:09
definition for everyone else it's
64:11
it's not a way to like win friends and
64:12
influence people if you you know what i
64:14
mean
64:15
um i don't know like for maybe it's my
64:18
apologetics
64:19
days jaded me for the whole the whole
64:21
christian use of the concept but
64:24
what we meant by it back then was the
64:26
ability to
64:27
clobber somebody in an argument that's
64:29
what truth was to
64:31
to vindicate your position um and i
64:34
don't see that as a christian idea
64:35
anymore
64:36
in fact i see it as a sinful idea um
64:39
more often than not so i'd like to see
64:41
less emphasis on truth and more emphasis
64:44
on love
64:44
personally not that there's not room for
64:47
true
64:48
robust notion of truth within
64:50
christianity i think there is but
64:52
i think maybe the church would be well
64:54
served by spending a generation or so
64:56
just trying to put truth on the back
64:59
burner for a while
65:00
focus on love a bit more i mean if you
65:03
think reality is one
65:04
thing then and you think that thing is
65:06
love and you think that thing is truth
65:08
then either one should get you there so
65:09
let's just focus on
65:11
love a bit and see where we end up with
65:12
the truth i mean that would be
65:14
my hope for the church but i don't know
65:18
for me the the focus of the christian
65:20
life should be on
65:21
being as faithful and as loving as
65:23
possible
65:24
and but i think both faith and love have
65:28
a kind of rocky relationship with truth
65:30
in the way that it's often practiced in
65:33
the church
65:35
and has been practiced and i don't just
65:36
mean evangelicals either
65:39
i mean orthodoxy in general uh i mean
65:42
the idea that
65:43
religious people have ownership of
65:46
understanding reality that seems to me
65:49
in tension
65:50
with both faith and love
65:53
which are supposed to be humble things
65:56
and i don't see a lot of humility in
65:57
that
65:58
sense of ownership even if we think as
66:01
any good catholic would that
66:05
truth is a gift of god somehow
66:08
nonetheless i'm still
66:09
a fallible human who's trying to
66:11
interpret it the best i can
66:13
alongside other fallible humans who
66:15
don't see it the way that i do so
66:17
yeah and just in case there's any
66:20
good wonderful christians who are again
66:24
getting a little angsty right now i'm
66:26
just going to encourage you
66:28
with keeping in mind what you just heard
66:30
from kyle stop your car
66:33
stop cutting your grass whatever you're
66:35
doing and
66:37
on your phone go turn to first
66:39
corinthians 13
66:40
and read that through and then see what
66:43
you think
66:44
yeah i don't see paul talking
66:47
that much about being being able to i
66:50
don't know vindicate your view he i mean
66:52
he definitely argues a lot okay so to be
66:54
fair he definitely uh like
66:56
likes to win arguments but it's
66:57
definitely all in the service of getting
66:59
people to love each other better to be
67:00
more faithful
67:02
so i don't know i think i just want to
67:05
advocate for
67:06
more humility and less confidence that
67:09
we possess
67:10
the truth it's okay to think that you
67:12
know what's correct it's okay to try to
67:14
convince other people about it if you do
67:15
so in an honest way
67:17
and in a way that preserves the dignity
67:19
of the other person
67:20
uh which a lot of times we don't but to
67:23
think that you possess it that it's your
67:26
your thing that's yeah that's a problem
67:29
yeah so this is getting at something
67:31
that um an idea and a concept that
67:33
i think you know i'm quite certain you
67:35
introduced me to
67:36
that i'm really really a huge fan of now
67:39
which is
67:40
this idea of epistemic humility
67:42
epistemic being
67:43
like how we know what we know right
67:45
being humble about what we know
67:47
epistemic humility i think christians
67:50
would
67:50
do very well to acquaint ourselves with
67:52
this idea of epistemic humility so kyle
67:54
can you can you
67:55
just unpack just a little bit more again
67:57
for us the concept of epistemic humility
68:00
and why it might be a virtue in in this
68:02
day and age
68:03
yeah i mean it's it's regular humility
68:06
applied to what you know
68:07
so regular humility is a virtue you're
68:10
putting the interests of others ahead of
68:12
of your own but you're also not denying
68:15
or downplaying or deprecating your own
68:17
interests
68:18
you're simply focused on the good of
68:19
others that's your fundamental
68:21
orientation
68:22
uh and now apply that to knowledge well
68:25
i'm
68:26
i'm focused on learning from others i'm
68:27
focused on
68:29
building something together with a
68:31
community of people because i think
68:32
we're better together
68:34
than we are as individuals so in a way
68:37
it's just the opposite of overconfidence
68:39
it's the opposite of
68:41
going it alone being sort of a lone
68:43
crusader and figuring things out
68:46
so actually i wrote a blog a little
68:48
while ago where i talked a little bit
68:49
about this so
68:51
i give a description how very like early
68:53
2000s
68:54
i know right yeah um i give a
68:57
description in there of an epistemically
68:58
humble person that i just want to read
69:00
for you
69:00
if that's okay it's just a couple of
69:02
paragraphs um so i say
69:05
uh the epistemically humble person will
69:07
know both her own limitations and her
69:09
strengths
69:10
how important it is to rely on others
69:11
for what she knows she'll be
69:13
focused on learning from experts and on
69:15
making a genuine contribution rather
69:17
than
69:18
appearing to make a contribution she'll
69:20
recognize that her own opinions are not
69:22
obviously true
69:23
and will understand that disagreement
69:25
itself is evidence of this
69:27
she'll be quick to say i don't know when
69:29
she doesn't know
69:30
she won't succumb to the pressure to
69:32
pretend that she knows or to excuse her
69:34
ignorance by redirecting attention to
69:36
all the things that she does know
69:38
and moreover she will readily change her
69:40
mind when presented with new evidence
69:42
which tips the scales in another
69:43
direction
69:44
and she won't pretend that she didn't
69:46
change her mind or pay lip service to
69:48
the pernicious idea
69:49
that changing one's mind is a defect
69:52
when dealing with others who believe
69:54
differently she will remember what it's
69:55
like to hold a different view
69:57
and will try to be grateful for those
69:58
people who listened to her and helped
70:00
her
70:01
then she will keep in mind that people
70:02
often have bad introductions to ideas
70:05
and will try to find out how they
70:07
understand what's at stake
70:08
before launching a counter-attack the
70:11
humble person will present her opinions
70:13
when it is appropriate to present them
70:15
such as when people ask or when she is
70:17
an expert
70:18
or when she can highlight a point made
70:19
by someone else that went unnoticed
70:22
or when she's aware of being able to
70:23
articulate an important point clearly
70:26
and and this is important she will
70:28
present her opinions with her level
70:30
of confidence so i believe this but i'm
70:32
not certain about it for the following
70:34
reasons
70:35
and she'll know when not to have an
70:36
opinion and will be comfortable saying
70:38
i don't have enough information to take
70:40
a position on that
70:42
and finally i say this is the end of it
70:44
she will make her arguments and
70:46
assertions unapologetically without
70:48
condescension but also without pretense
70:50
or embarrassment because i think a part
70:52
of humility is having an accurate
70:53
self-understanding
70:55
i know my limits but i also know my
70:56
strengths and i don't try to present
70:58
them as anything other than what they
70:59
are
71:00
yeah all that sounds fantastic but um
71:03
makes for a really bad preacher
71:07
people like certainty you're joking
71:09
though
71:16
yeah so we we've already recorded
71:19
an episode with another philosopher
71:21
where we kind of
71:22
dive into this a bit and we haven't
71:24
released it yet at the time of this
71:26
recording but
71:28
but this is important i mean there is a
71:30
sense in which
71:33
evangelizing or not even just
71:35
evangelizing but
71:37
exhorting people to faith which is part
71:39
of the job of a pastor
71:43
i don't want to say that it can't be
71:44
done humbly i think it can and i think
71:46
you you model that pretty well usually
71:49
but it it lends itself to overconfidence
71:53
you kind of have to i remember so i used
71:56
to
71:56
back when i was doing my apologetic
71:58
stuff i would go and speak places
72:00
sometimes
72:01
about that stuff and a buddy of mine who
72:03
was kind of my mentor also really into
72:05
that
72:06
he's given me some advice on how to do
72:07
it one time and he said
72:09
when you walk into a room you decide the
72:12
room is yours
72:13
and you own it yeah you own the audience
72:16
and then when you walk out of the room
72:18
you give them back
72:20
and you have to like very intentionally
72:21
do that and so i kind of trained myself
72:23
to do that and
72:24
it's really easy to forget the second
72:26
part and i think
72:28
pastors are in a hard position because
72:32
they have to speak in a way that's
72:34
exhorting and upbuilding
72:36
uh but they are they also have to speak
72:39
in a way that's humble
72:40
and it doesn't let on that they know
72:43
more than they do and that's
72:45
that's a hard road to walk which is why
72:46
i don't think everybody should do it
72:49
[Music]
72:51
is it possible kyle to have real faith
72:54
in something
72:56
in the divine while holding that faith
72:59
with epistemic humility what does
73:01
you described a lot within you know
73:03
quoting your blog post
73:04
but what what does that look like where
73:07
have you seen it in in a person
73:09
and what does it look like what's the
73:10
flavors
73:13
yeah it's definitely possible i mean
73:16
i i think you successfully do it most of
73:18
the time
73:20
i think i've been actually blessed to be
73:22
surrounded by people who are a lot
73:24
better at faith than i am for most of my
73:25
life and
73:26
i've seen really good examples of
73:28
humility um
73:30
it it's like c.s lewis said when when
73:32
you're around a humble person you
73:33
probably don't really remember it
73:34
probably didn't stick in your brain very
73:36
well because they were probably just
73:37
good conversationalist they probably
73:39
just were interested in you
73:41
mm-hmm i've definitely seen a lot of
73:42
really great examples of that i mean i
73:44
think it just
73:46
it just looks like presenting
73:49
your confidence and presenting your
73:52
doubt transparently
73:56
and not never pretending i mean pretense
73:59
is the opposite of humility
74:01
so and anybody can do that you can you
74:04
can do it about anything
74:07
i can i can pretend to know more than i
74:08
do about theories of truth i can pretend
74:11
to know more than i do about
74:13
how to be a faithful christian and i
74:15
think that's
74:16
what you just said there talking about
74:18
what being
74:20
confident about what you believe and
74:22
being honest about what you doubt
74:24
i think that's why this conversation one
74:26
of the reasons why this conversation has
74:27
gotten
74:28
so difficult and so needed in the church
74:30
is because
74:31
of this well we've talked about the
74:33
before the idol of certainty in the
74:34
church
74:35
that it's for for any christian
74:39
to have doubt or uncertainty about
74:42
something
74:43
as it goes with their faith journey
74:46
theology what have you
74:48
that's a scary and dirty place to be
74:51
you're not allowed to do that
74:52
in a lot of the church i mean our church
74:56
you are allowed to do that but i
74:57
remember talking to someone who is from
74:59
our church network
75:00
and i talked about how i'm going through
75:01
we're going through ecclesiastes at this
75:03
point and we're talking about
75:05
uh doubt and uncertainty and christ
75:09
faith crises and giving faith space for
75:11
that and he was
75:12
blown away that we would be talking
75:14
about this you know he was he lives in
75:16
the bible belt
75:17
where it's especially you know profane
75:20
to admit any doubt or uncertainty but
75:22
the church has replaced
75:26
i think much of the christian church has
75:28
replaced faith
75:29
with certainty and really we can't get
75:32
it through our heads that
75:33
those are opposing concepts that one
75:36
doesn't match with the other
75:38
it's just not the the fact in the
75:41
apostle paul let's go back to the
75:42
apostle paul maybe someone who
75:44
we on the other side of this
75:45
conversation would like to quote more
75:47
than anybody
75:48
the apostle paul didn't say certainty
75:51
in the reality of christ will save you
75:54
the apostle paul said
75:55
faith and even in the greek translation
75:57
it's faithfulness
75:58
to the way of christ is what saves you
76:01
if if anything does
76:02
and that's just diametrically opposed to
76:07
this idea of being certain of not having
76:08
any doubt of knowing
76:11
why how did we get to this place where
76:14
we replaced
76:15
faith and belief with certainty and
76:17
knowing and
76:18
and by knowing i mean a very
76:22
silly sense of knowing yeah
76:25
that's a question for historian i think
76:27
we could do a whole episode on that we
76:29
should definitely probably have one on
76:30
the podcast i mean
76:32
i think the answer whatever it is would
76:34
be pretty frustrating
76:36
i mean in my experience with the holy
76:38
spirit
76:40
certainty or even confidence about
76:43
propositions has really never been even
76:46
part of the interaction
76:51
it's the holy spirit has only ever led
76:53
me away from that if if i'm
76:55
frank and so i have a hard time and i
76:59
know that this is
77:01
i have really good catholic friends that
77:03
i respect a great deal and i have
77:04
friends who are parts of other
77:06
traditions who would
77:08
take us take a similar view as the one
77:10
i'm about to critique but i have a
77:11
really hard time
77:13
thinking that orthodoxy was
77:17
the result of the leading of the holy
77:19
spirit
77:20
the battening down the hatches about
77:23
what's true
77:25
was was the result of following god
77:32
that's a huge thing to say and probably
77:35
not a very humble thing to say because
77:36
i'm
77:37
one little guy in this long tradition of
77:40
christians trying their best
77:41
and i think most of those people were
77:43
probably trying their best and they were
77:44
sincere and i'm sure they
77:46
heard from the holy spirit but in my
77:49
interactions and that's all i can speak
77:50
to
77:52
that's just not what she does she leads
77:54
me to
77:56
serving people particular people in my
77:58
sphere
78:00
and i'd like to be a fly on the wall on
78:04
some of those ecumenical councils
78:06
just to see how often and if ever the
78:09
point was raised
78:12
is this actually what we should be doing
78:15
and is this in service of
78:17
particular people that we can name
78:20
again that's a question for his story
78:21
and maybe it was yep
78:23
yep so friends
78:27
if you're still with us if particularly
78:30
you friends who were getting a little
78:32
bit insecure and
78:34
you know angry during the beginning of
78:36
this episode
78:38
if you're still hanging with us if
78:39
you're still here i just want to say
78:42
maybe maybe that same spirit that kyle
78:45
was just speaking to is
78:46
offering us an invitation out of
78:50
a prideful religion that's built on
78:52
pretense
78:54
and into a never-ending
78:58
journey towards truth that we'll never
79:01
fully wrap our hands around and our
79:03
heads around and our hearts and our
79:04
spirits around but we're never going to
79:06
stop journeying towards truth we're
79:08
never going to stop
79:10
journeying towards that which is real
79:13
we're never going to stop journeying
79:14
towards christ and it's going to be the
79:16
best
79:18
most beautiful journey that we could
79:20
ever go on is going to be painful
79:22
it's going to be you know there's going
79:24
to be grief in it there's going to be
79:26
disappointment along the way
79:28
but the whole time even in our grief
79:30
we're going to be
79:31
invited into truth even in our pain
79:35
and even in our wrestlings even in our
79:37
longings
79:38
we're going to find truth there because
79:40
we're going to find christ in those
79:41
places
79:42
and so maybe we're just being invited
79:44
into a different way of holding and
79:45
looking at
79:46
and walking with our faith that
79:50
is a lot more appealing to both yourself
79:52
when it comes down to it and to the
79:54
people around you
79:55
and actually seems a little bit more
79:57
christ-like in the way we find it in the
80:02
gospels
80:09
thanks for spending this time with us we
80:10
really hope that you're enjoying these
80:12
conversations as much as we are
80:14
and if you are help us get the word out
80:16
before you close your podcast app leave
80:18
a rating or a review
80:19
that helps new listeners find us maybe
80:21
for the first time
80:22
if you'd like to share the episode you
80:23
just heard with a friend or a family
80:25
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80:26
you can find those links on our social
80:27
media pages you can also find us over on
80:29
patreon
80:30
at patreon.com a pastor and a
80:32
philosopher
80:33
thanks again for listening until next
80:35
time this has been a pastor and a
80:37
philosopher
80:38
walk into a bar
80:49
[Music]