4 Oct 2013

Denying absolute truth is wholly illogical

By Madison Ruppert: If you’ve had even a few conversations in your life dealing with faith or philosophy, you have probably run across someone who claimed that there is no absolute truth.
Such claims usually go something like, “Well, that’s true for you but it’s not true for me,” or, “There is no absolute truth.”
For those familiar with such positions, it smacks of absurdity. Yet, somehow, it continues to be said in the course of informal conversations and even in college classrooms.
How this actually happens is hard to grasp, due to the seemingly obvious fact that such a position is self-refuting.
To explain how the position is self-refuting one must only apply the rule of “no absolute truth” to the statement, “There is no absolute truth.”
If it is true that there is no absolute truth, the statement itself would have to be an absolute truth, but it can’t be since there’s supposedly no absolute truth. Sounds absurd, right?
It’s something like saying, “I always lie.” If I always lie, then that’s a lie and I don’t always lie, but then I always lie but then I don’t always lie because I’m lying about saying I always lie. Clearly such a statement is nonsensical.
Yet somehow the notion that there is no absolute truth is given credence in some circles, even in what one would hope would be bastions of critical thinking such as centers of higher education.

One can quite easily show just how incorrect the notion that “all truth is relative” or that “there is no absolute truth” is by putting it to a similar test as that which we applied to the “I always lie” statement.
If there is no absolute truth, then the statement “there is no absolute truth” is an absolute truth and therefore there is at least one absolute truth, thus refuting the “no absolute truth” claim.
Obviously, if there is at least one absolute truth statement, the “no absolute truth” claim is false. It really is that simple.
Hopefully when you encounter this line of reasoning – if you can even call it that – you will challenge the person by asking them one simple question, “Is that true?”
If said person has even the most rudimentary ability to think logically, they will almost certainly realize how intellectually untenable their position is and reject it in favor of the only logically consistent position which asserts that there is, indeed, absolute truth.


Note: this is republished from Seek Theos.

Edited by WD 

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