This week's Christian Carnival is...

...here.  I host it at my new on-line portfolio blog :)  I am not including my own submission this time, because I am still chewing on an idea for an article that talks about the difference between Hume’s is-ought distinction, which maintains a valid distinction between ontology and epistemology, and the false is-ought dichotomy, which keeps values outside the realm of truth.  One can rightly reject the false dichotomy without rejecting the is-ought distinction.  I think making clear the differences between the two will help further the dialogue in this area of philosophy and apologetics.  If you want to see my past posts on Hume’s is-ought, scroll to the “Euthyphro, Hume, Plato, Gettier” section here.  Favorite topic!

Is there no truth, are all beliefs true, or is there only one truth?

This is something to consider in relationship to these objections to the objective truth of Christianity:

1) Claiming that Christianity is "the" truth steps on other people's toes.

2) Science doesn't even know the answers, and yet you claim to.

3) Like saying chocolate is your favorite icecream, faith equals opinion.

I jotted down those three objections during a round table discussion at a Reasonable Faith chapter meeting back in January and am finally getting around to including them in this post.

These are the options regarding objective truth:

No truth: The idea that it is true that there is no truth is self-contradictory. If there is no truth, the statement “there is no truth” cannot be true, either.

All true: “To deem all beliefs equally true is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that to deny that statement would also, then, be true,” (4, Zacharias, “Jesus Among Other Gods”). So, if you deem all beliefs true, then you deem true even the belief that “Not all beliefs are true.”

One truth: That is what we are left with, and what we ought to do our best to seek until we find it (or until it finds us).

Students of logic:  Regarding the square of opposition... The options are some/all/no. In my post, one=some, but the some is only one, because 1) there is only one reality to which all true beliefs may correspond, so that 2) the points where various conflicting and distinct worldviews agree and are true, correspond to one reality. If one takes away all the false, conflicting beliefs from every worldview, only one true worldview can be left.

In reply to the above objections: We can seek truth without trying to offend people, and if we avoid that pursuit in order to please sensitive people, we need to work on our boundary issues. Sometimes science does get it right, which can be seen in the progress it has made, and we can get it right by examining the historical evidence for the resurrection and the arguments for God's existence from natural theology. And, lastly, genuine faith equals trust and is never blind (See Genuine faith is never blind).

Problem: If God is good and all-powerful, why does he not prevent evil, suffering and hell?

My thoughts on the solution:

1. Unconditional love is impossible if suffering and evil are impossible. God, like a good father, allows us to learn from our mistakes, rather than dysfunctionally protecting us from them by a) preventing us from making them, or b) preventing us from experiencing the consequences. If all suffering were made impossible, we would never learn what it means to love and be loved unconditionally.  It would be worse to make a world where unconditional love is impossible, than to allow all evil and suffering.  Love covers over a multitude of things.  Better off are those who love and lose, than those who never love at all.  Love is worth it.  That's what Jesus died to show.

2. Similar to 1, Heaven (ultimate love) is impossible if it is not a choice.  If there is no alternative choice--hell--then heaven is not a choice, it is a prison.  "On the question of a loving God sending people to hell, Keller writes that God gives people free choice in the matter. 'In short, hell is simply one's freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity' (p.78). In other words, those who end up in hell chose that destination by rejecting God." (Penguin) Heaven wouldn’t be heaven if we had no choice but to be there.

3. If there is no God making the idea of "good" true to reality, there is no “problem” of evil, suffering, or hell. That one senses a problem is a clue to there being a God--an always good being to which the idea of "good" is true.  Without a real "good" there is no real departure from good, and thus no problem of evil.  "Paraphrasing C.S. Lewis, the author states: '… modern objections to God are based on a sense of fair-play and justice. People, we believe, ought not to suffer, be excluded, die of hunger or oppression. But the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak - these things are all perfectly natural. On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unjust'? (p.26)" (Penguin).  The naturalist has their own "problem of evil" to answer, since the only being to which the idea of "good" can be real is God.