My Conversion Story

To read my conversion story, I have posted it in .pdf format available for download.


Wednesday, September 28, 2011

"What's true for you is not necessarily true for me"

On a recent Catholic answers radio program, a caller, Ann, asked if modern philosophers believe that there is no objective reality and how does that affect the ethics of what's going on in our society today.

Guest, Chris Kaczor answered,”A lot of people, just regular folks are what you might call “relativists”. They think there is no truth. They say things like, “that may be true for you but it's not true for me”. Now among professional philosophers… very few… today hold that position…The reason that philosophers have rejected that view is that that's an example of a self-defeating view. It just cannot possibly be correct. It has to be wrong. And the reason is this. Let me give you another example of a self-defeating idea.

If I say to you “I am not speaking English right now”--well I said that in English right? So it can't be right. So if someone were to say there is no truth, they are asserting that something is true. Namely, that there is no truth. But if it’s true that there is no truth then that statement has to be false. The philosophers have recognized that there is a self-contradiction, a self-defeating nature in these sorts of denials truth.

The good news is that contemporary philosophy has turned away from that kind of relativism. The bad news is that that kind of relativism is still very common in people who haven't really studied the issue very deeply.

You can listen to the whole show here. It is titled, "God and the Problem of Evil".

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