Tag Archives: self-refuting arguments

Problems for Those Who Believe Truth is Relative

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In the last blog post, I started discussing what’s happened to truth today in our society. Absolute/objective truth (a correspondence to reality)  has been overshadowed by a new type of truth – relative/subjective truth in which each person or group of people has individual truths. Let’s take a look now at the problems with this relativism, which is so prevalent in our society today.

First of all, an easy criticism has to do with the fact that it is self-refuting. Think about somebody who tells you he or she can’t speak a word of English but uses English to tell you that. You can see the confusion with that claim. Or somebody else says that each sentence in English must be shorter than two words. Again, there’s a problem here because the person took more than two words to give you that sentence. In each case you notice that what he or she says defeats the point the person was trying to make. This is what I mean by saying some statements are self-refuting.

So now let’s look at self-defeating comments made by somebody who is a relativist when it comes to truth. “All truth is relative.” But this statement claims to be true for all people, which is an absolute statement. Here’s another one – “There are no absolutes.” But again, this is an absolute statement. Someone may say, “That’s true for you, but not for me.” That individual has made a claim that is true for both people. Then there’s this one – “There’s no such thing as truth.” See the problem? That’s a true statement. One more – “We can’t know anything about God.” However, that is a statement about what we can know about God.

Watch for these self-refuting statements from modern-day truth skeptics. They will make such skeptical statements, but their claims are blanket statements which they believe apply to everyone in the world. Probably the most blatant example of self-refutation has to do with individuals who write books supporting their belief in relativism. Why in the world would they write books for everybody if they think there’s no such thing as truth for everybody?

Okay, more to come with problems for relativists in a future blog post.

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Specific Tactics in Engaging the Non-Christian

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For the last couple of blogs I have been going over an introduction to apologetics and tactics to use when talking about your Christian beliefs. This time I’d like to discuss specific tactics that can be effective.

For one thing, we can ask questions of the person who has made a claim about Christianity. This takes pressure off of us to defend our position, it allows the other person to see you as someone interested in him/her, it gives you time to think, and it will help the other person clarify his/her thoughts. Two key questions are these: What do you mean by that? How did you come to that conclusion?

The first question (What do you mean by that?) Is asking the person to clarify the comments. The second question (How did you come to that conclusion?) asks the person to justify the comment by giving good support. So, for example, someone tells you there is no God. The first question seems pointless since we all know what we mean by God. The second question would work better in that case, to ask a person for proof of that statement. If somebody tells you the Bible has been changed over the years, the first question might be a good place to start. What they mean by the term “change”? You can then move to the second question. Someone says that Christians are narrow-minded, and our response would be to ask for clarification as well as how that person came to that conclusion.

The second tactic is to look for self-refuting arguments. These are statements that somebody makes that is contradictory to itself. For example, someone says, “I can’t speak a word of English.” That statement self-destructs since it is contradictory to itself. So, when someone says, “You shouldn’t judge people,” we might point out that that statement is one of judgment itself. Somebody may claim Christians are intolerant, which suggests that person is intolerant of the Christian position. Or, another person says we can can’t know anything about God, yet the statement suggests there is something we can know about God, mainly that he is unknowable.

These two simple tactics (asking questions, looking for self-refuting arguments) will help us immensely as we interact with people who disagree with our Christian viewpoint. Of course, we need to have good reasons for our beliefs, but these tactics will give us a chance to discuss the issues on a more equitable footing.

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