Truth and Knowledge - Part 1

I always feel yucky after any heated argument, whether it is politics or theology or the price of tea. I think it's called sin :-)

Anyway, after repenting before God and my debate antagonists, I get back up and try again...I'm just hoping my getting back up instead of letting an avalanche of shame take me to new lows points to Someone greater than me. If not, all I can say is, believe it, without Him, this blog would probably have been taken down by your's truly after the first week.

Trying to transcend political issues without abandoning critical items, I would like to strip away all the names, parties, platforms and talk a little about truth and maybe explain alot of how we think in our times. So, I want to talk about truth and knowledge.

I know, philosophical is passe and far too overwhelming. So let me try to at least attempt to deal with truth and knowledge as best I can without boring or losing anyone. I want to try because I think it is very critical, whether we look at politics, literature, theology, philosophy or simply conversations on the golf course.

Did you know that if you send your child to college....and that child shoots for a PhD, the university that you spent so much money for tuition and books and room and board will end up teaching your child that no one can attain objective knowledge? To our universities, knowledge is limited to science. The only knowledge obtainable is emperical knowledge....knowledge gained solely through the five senses. To the universities, there exists no such thing as non-emperical knowledge. Any knowledge claims that are beyond the five senses, simply cannot be determined or known. So the university is split between naturalistic materialism (hard sciences with the underlying philosophy that nothing exists but matter, energy and time) and postmodernism (study about 'meta-narratives' rather than study of knowledge outside of hard sciences).

You see this with the studies that come out. Government grant money is spent for universities to crank out emperical studies (remember---emperical means the five senses--only knowledge we can have, according to the well educated). Studies reflect statistical results that arrive at inductive conclusions regarding self-esteem, work force productivity, impact of gender-based thinking on children, etc. Because universities have become overwhelmingly atheistic or agnostic regarding God, a study about prayer with statistical results claiming that prayer helps people feel better about themselves and even aids in fighting illness....not because God exists, but because the statistical result this human behavior has on the sample group.

The studies are released to the media, the media releases the studies and continues to pervade and lead 'conventional wisdom' based on new statistical results. You will hear a PBS documentary discuss how marriage is reduced to evolutionary propogation of genes (based purely on emperical knowedge). Turn the channel and you can hear Oprah bridge the gap, as she discusses god and whoever he, she or it may be (non-emperical 'narratives'--rather than knowledge--created to help us make sense beyond what the PBS documentary reduced everything to).

You get the picture? The picture is that when it comes to morals, meaning, God, spirituality, there can be no knowledge claims...only personal speculation, which is why there are no experts on God on Oprah or much of any other talk show. There are no experts on God, because there is no one with knowledge of God, let alone His existence. C. S. Lewis had called people with this same situation, in his day, 'men without chests'. We are fragmented people who, on the one hand, believe there is no such thing as non-emperical knowledge (knowledge that can't be obtained through the senses--like morals, politics, God, spirit, purpose, etc.), but can't practically live as if that were true and create our own stories to ease the tension, understanding such stories are not in the realm of knowledge.

So, what's left? Power. Pretty scary, but that sums it up. And power is gained through politics, not as a way to help weed out poor information, assess the truth and help lead a city, state or nation in the right direction. Albiet the same language is used, but only tools to win. Remember, we are taught through universities, media and culture itself (even in many churches--like the UCC), there is only emperical knowledge. Once we get outside of that realm, there are no experts, no right or wrong, no up or down...just winners and losers, those in power, fighting to keep it and those struggling to take it away. Bottom line, it is about power.

Nieztche may not have been the most original philosopher, but he was a prophet for our age. It is the age of the new superman.

So, that power is obtained by any means necessary. For example, even though insurance fraud is a crime, in and of itself, if you can do it and not get caught, so long as it aids your gaining more power and influence, it is a means to an end....and that end is solely your creation. Our current generation breathes in and exhales out this thinking and way of life...and it is propogated from the institutions of learning, through the media and politics, to our family living rooms, daily paper and talks by the coffee machine. If you think I am overreaching, consider the current Obama-Ayers controversy, looking into Ayer's past and the Annenburg Foundation (Ayer's was into bombs in his early years, which he has no regrets. He even lost a past girlfriend while constructing a bomb). You can't excuse that, unless you admit the non-existence of non-emperical knowledge, especially objective moral values...and especially if it gets in the way to power.

I want you to think about this and think about it again because in the subsequent parts of this stream, I want to tackle a couple of incredibly important things: 1) what is truth and knowledge? 2) does non-emperical knowledge and truth claims exist? 3) what impact does this have on our culture and lastly 4) what is the unavoidable conclusion of such truth actually does exist?

I hope you remain patient with me and keep me honest. This is a hard issue to tackle, but the more I observe, I truly believe this is the #1 problem with our nation, universities, churches, families and workforce. The issue of knowledge is about as basic and pervasive as the issue of eating or walking. But because it can get weighty and because I am not very good at communication, let alone issues this weighty, I need you to meet me half way....and I promise it will be worth the investment.