Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
How do you know what you know? Can you be certain about what you think you know? Is there genuine truth, and would you recognize it if it passed by?
These questions sound like juvenile brain-teasers. They are, however, pretty important if we are going to be mature thinkers.
Here are some more: Since scientists in America are holding symposiums on the question of whether or not our reality is really real; and, since shining lights such as Neil Degrasse Tyson have suggested there’s a 50-50 chance that we’re all living in a computer simulation, can you be certain your thoughts are even your own?
What if they were programmed into you? What if you’re a brain in a vat somewhere, and everything you think you know or have experienced was downloaded to you this morning?
Christian faith provides a path to certainty about these things. If God did in fact produce the Bible with the intention of revealing the truth, then, insofar as I comprehend what it says, I have every reason to be assured of what it tells me.
The atheist/agnostic has no such path to certainty. Will you set your faith in the laws of logic? Who made those? Are they always true? How would you know?
Will you trust in science? I’m a fan of science. But science is founded upon certain assumptions, like the reliability of human observation, and the uniformity of nature. Given materialistic naturalism, there is no way of supporting those assumptions.
Atheist Richard Dawkins spent a chunk of his book, The God Delusion, showing that human senses are notoriously susceptible to deception. He saws off the tree branch he’s sitting on. If you can’t trust your lying eyes, then experimental science is a bust from the get-go.
C. S. Lewis highlighted the problem here:
“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking.
“It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought.
“But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London.
“But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”
The only path to truth is the one held out for us in the Bible.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-4, 14)
Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at: