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 1tp-50x50 Truth is Not …
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There are many incorrect ideas about Truth.
Some of the common misconceptions are listed below:
Truth is self-evident.
If truth was self-evident, there would be universally accepted propositions and the search after truth would have ended long ago.

Truth is what we all agree upon.
There is nothing that we all agree upon! (including this statement!)

Truth is Correspondence.
The most commonly held theory of truth is that Truth is a property of propositions whose meanings describe the world as it really is. There are serious problems with this theory, not to mention the fact that it does not provide a definition for the word Truth.
See page: Theories of Truth.

Truth is Coherence.
Coherence would be possible only if we were omniscient. It is completely dependent on Correspondence, making it subject to the same difficulties faced by that theory.
See page: Theories of Truth.

Truth is Pragmatism.
Pragmatism is evidence of the fact that all theories of truth, including itself, have fallen short of the requirements and needs of mankind for a source and a definition of Truth.
See page: Theories of Truth.

Truth is a Combination of Correspondence, Coherence & Pragmatism.
0 + 0 + 0 = 0

We can conclude that the numerous attempts at theories of truth have shown that Truth is NOT the property of any proposition which makes any claim about any created entity.

What is true for me can be false for you.
This person does not have the faintest notion of what Truth means.

All truth is God’s Truth.
This is a very pious sounding phrase which is seen often in the literature, especially those writings that are trying to reconcile or harmonize “truths” of science with the Biblical Revelation.

This fraudulent philosophy leads to a more erroneous step where “nature” is seen as complementary to Biblical revelation. The dangerous notion that “nature” is a book which can “reveal” true knowledge, and that this knowledge is compatible with or is of equal validity as the Scriptures is its inevitable perilous aftermath. Its advocates continue to cling to the carcass of empiricism, mistaking its stench for the fragrance of truth.

It is the basis of an insidious philosophy which rests on several incorrect and unbiblical assumptions because the writer does not know the correct definition of the word Truth.

These several Incorrect Assumptions are:
1- That there are multiple truths available to mankind which can be known
2- That these truths become evident to any honest seeker
3- That these truths can be known by any thinking person
4- That these truths can be acquired through human efforts
5- That information about creation is of the same significance as True Knowledge of God
6- That True knowledge of God is plainly evident to all
7- That God has revealed True Knowledge of Himself in creation
8- That knowing that a God or Supreme Being exists is the same as Knowing the True God
9- That by studying the creation we can come to know the True nature of the Creator

In other words …
Revealed Verbal Truth is confused with information or facts which most anyone can acquire.

The Correctives to such confusion:
It is imperative to understand that:
a- Eternally True knowledge of God must not be confused with information acquired through our daily experiences;
b- Eternally True knowledge of God  cannot be discovered by any human;
c- Eternally True knowledge of God can only come through the Holy Spirit by grace through faith;
d- Eternally True knowledge of God is revealed knowledge;
e- Eternally True knowledge of God is not available to anyone except the elect;
f- Eternally True knowledge of God does not “reside” in God or “belongs” to God or is separate from Him or is “known” by Him or is “believed” by Him;
g- Eternally True knowledge of God CANNOT be known by the natural man;
h- Knowing about God’s unique attributes is Not the same thing as knowing Truth. Since we usually use the word "God" in a generic sense, unless we define the word, we ascribe to him attributes that any religious person of any faith usually ascribes to God: that God is trustworthy, omniscient, omnipotent, etc. are common concepts in all theistic religions, but these ideas are NOT truths;
i- So called General Revelation (as opposed to Special Revelation) is an oxymoron and this phrase should NOT be used by Christians. By definition, Revelation is a ONE WAY flow of verbal information. Information acquired through human efforts is always erroneous and has no resemblance to Truth.
Truth IS God. Knowing Truth is knowing the only True God.

Truth is what can be proven in the laboratory.
Scientists can never discover truth.

Truth can be easily discovered.
One of the most foolish statements ever recorded.

Truth is what God believes to be True.
Anyone with a basic understanding of the nature of God should know that believing is NOT one of God’s activities. The idea that God believes is repulsive and betrays a lack of understanding of the Nature of God and the Nature of Knowledge. Believing is a necessary activity of fallible and ignorant beings. To ascribe belief to an omniscient being is a meaningless venture.
Believing is what is needed to acquire knowledge. By definition, God does not need to acquire additional knowledge.
Peter Geach Talk of God’s beliefs is of course a danger signal; one who so speaks of God can hardly command serious attention. We may ascribe knowledge to God, but not belief. Belief is a disposition to think and talk and act in various ways; God, who is eternal, can have no dispositions, let alone variable ones.
Peter Geach; (1916-2013); Truth & Hope; 2001; p77
All we need do is look into ourselves and we will find truth.
There is nothing in us that is true because we are all fallible, changeable, lacking in knowledge, and unable to distinguish the true from the false.

The use of words to modify Truth, such as “absolute” or “relative” or “moral” or “religious” or “scientific” or “objective,” etc.
Anytime the word “Truth” is modified by these and similar adjectives, it is evidence that the writer has little or no idea of the meaning of Truth.

As Isaac Newton stated, when we discover nature’s laws, we are thinking God’s thoughts after Him. God’s thoughts are always true.

At first hearing this sounds very sincere and pious, but on further investigation we see that it is the statement of a person whose arrogance has exceeded his knowledge of God’s nature. To ascribe our thoughts to God is to try to make ourselves equal to God, a terrifying thought.
A critical evaluation of Dr. Clark’s attempt to define Truth.

(A) “A proposition is true because God thinks it so.”*

In other words
“A proposition is true because God thinks it to be true. ” i.e. “Truth is what God thinks a proposition to be true.”

Without any deep analysis, we can see that this is an invalid definition. Where the subject: Truth, appears before and after the copula, this makes this statement invalid. The subject of the proposition: Truth, must not also appear in the complement of the proposition (in the phrase after the copula).


This attempt to ascribe truth to a proposition is not a
definition of truth. This claim is a condition of truth: If God thinks that a proposition is true, then the proposition that He is thinking of, is true. (A) does not answer the question:
What is Truth? It is an attempt to answer the question: When and under what conditions can we ascribe truth to a proposition? Dr. Clark’s answer is: When God thinks it to be true. But this claim is not a definition of truth. It has not enlightened us about the nature of truth because it has not provided us with a definition of truth.

Thus we can justly dismiss (A) as a definition of truth.

Another way to interpret (A) is to replace “think” with believe .”
Often people use the term to think to mean “to believe.”
Thus (A) becomes A proposition is true because God believes it to be true.
This interpretation of (A) can be dismissed outright because an omniscient being has no need to believe in anything or in anyone.
Exercising belief or faith or trust, is a necessary activity of pauciscient beings, but not for God. The reason that the act of belief exists is for the acquisition of knowledge. An omniscient being has no need to acquire additional knowledge, thus He has no need to believe.


We must conclude that (A) is a completely erroneous definition.

Dr. Clark, it seems, did not feel the need for a definition for truth because he began with the assumption that truth is anything given in scripture and logically derived therefrom. He did not realize the significance of the nature of truth as given by Augustine, to arrive at the correct definition of truth:
Truth is God; Truth is knowledge of God; Truth is salvific knowledge of God.

*Gordon Clark; An Introduction to Christian Philosophy; v4; Christian Philosophy; 2004; p303
[3/12/2024]
For me ‘truth’ is everything I can know that doesn’t require words (whether said, heard, read, or written to communicate its ‘truth’, argue its ‘truth’, to defend its ‘truth’, to know its ‘truth’. […] Truth is what remains when all the language has been removed.
“What I have just written is not true.”

Truth is when things are the way one believes them to be.
A feeble and shoddy restatement of the Correspondence Theory.

Aristotle’s Definition of truth can’t be beat.
… Truth or True must be defined. Although the Bible points to truth as an essential attribute of God, it does not give us a precise theological definition. We rather see the definition in the use of the word. However, truth is an abstract and possibly ambiguous term. There is always the danger that one will only move the debate from a discussion of error to a debate over the meaning of truth or true.
For pristine simplicity and clarity one can hardly beat Aristotle's definitions of true and false. He said, “To say what is, is, and what is not, is not, is true. And to say what is, is not, and what is not, is, is false.”**


Paul D. Feinberg, The Meaning of Inerrancy; p294 in Inerrancy; Norman L. Geisler; ed. 1980
**Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1011b,
26ff.
Verbatim quotes which betray ignorance of the nature of Truth. Their authors shall remain nameless.
Truth matters because we are the only species we know of that has the ability to find it out.
An established fact is as sacred as a revealed truth.
Truth is the perfect correlation of mind and reality.

Truth for me is what I cannot help believing.
Truth cannot be found in facts. It can only be derived from removing everything that cannot be true and seeing what is left.
There is absolute truth, and every person has the internal capacity to figure out just what it is

Truth is the judgment and verdict about an issue at stake.
Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.
We must use truth to make truth true

Truth is that which the constitution of our nature determines us to believe.
Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living.
The only truth is that there ain’t no truth.

Truth is a meaningless concept.
Truth is the way that God sees things.
Truth is the possession of God.

Truth is one of God’s essential properties.
The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
Truth is just the system of propositions which have unconditional claim to be recognized as valid.

Truth is a name for all those judgments which we find ourselves under obligation to make by a kind of imperative duty.
Each age has its own truth.
Truth is different for different people.

Truth is what God knows.
The only truths we can know for certain are those we have invented ourselves.
Truth is reality as perceived by God.

Truth is what our peers will let us get away with saying.
Truth is the eternal principles of God embedded in the physical and spiritual worlds He has made.
Truth is the objective and absolute explanation of reality.

Truth is what you attempt to attain when you seek to synthesize all of the little truth claims you have come to accept.
Truth is an objective and absolute framework for understanding reality.
Truth is the one thing that explains everything.

Truth is that which affirms propositionally the nature of reality as it is.
Truth is what God decrees.
The truth is the centre of all religion.
 
Experiment is the sole source of truth.
Truth is defined as that which corresponds to reality as perceived by God. Because God’s perception of reality is never distorted.
That is true which stimulates and satisfies intellect and feeling and all that makes us men.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
Truth is discovered, not invented.
Truth is that firm conformity to reality that proves to be wholly reliable, so that those who accept a statement may depend on it that it will not turn out to be false or deceitful.

So, what is truth? My answer is this: Truth is as personal as is beauty, and is professed in one’s behavior, not necessarily in words. My Truth, then, is whatever my behavior reveals. Likewise, your Truth is what your behavior reveals it to be.
Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief […]
Truth is semantically correct affirmability, under contextually operative semantic standards.

[…] truth is God’s being true to Himself, His faithfulness or consistency.
[…] truth is truth the world over, whether it be revealed by science or by art or by love of God, or man. How, and in what measure, truth is reached by these diverse lines of approach is just the problem that calls for solution by philosophy.
Truth is the daughter of time.

Truth is a norm of assertoric practice.
Truth is like a spiritual echo of being which, however, when it refers to the temporal, does not participate in the temporal rhythm of historical being itself, but refers to temporal things in a manner atemporal or supra-temporal.
[…] truth is nothing more than that whose expression in a language gives that language a device for the formulation of indirect and generalized assertions.
There is none who seeks after God (=Truth)
Romans 3:11
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