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.
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.