Category: Truth
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Rod Dreher on J. D. Vance of “Live Not by Lies”
Here Perhaps the most despicable feature of our political enemies is their penchant for mendacity in all of its many modes. There are so many examples. Here is one: Pelosi's Orwellian Mendacity: A STFU Moment
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Brazen Lies and Big Lies
1) Brazen lies. Here is an AI-generated definition: "A brazen lie is a bold and shameless falsehood, often told without any attempt to hide or conceal it." The AI-generated definition is on the right track, but it is not quite right: it blurs the line between a falsehood (a false statement) and a lie. A lie…
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Biden Broke his Promise, but Did He Lie? Promising, Lying, Predicting
I have no respect for Joe Biden, but a very high degree of respect for Jonathan Turley, who writes: President Biden's decision to use his presidential powers on Sunday to pardon his own son will be a decision that lives in infamy in presidential politics. It is not just that the president used his constitutional powers…
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Red World, Blue World, and the Orange Man
David Brooks, Confessions of a Republican Exile: In Red World, people tend to take a biblical view of the human person: We are gloriously endowed and made in the image of God—and we are deeply broken, sinful, and egotistical. [. . .] You belong to God; to your family; and to the town, nation, and…
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Assuming that God exists, could the atheist’s denial of God be reasonable?
I say Yes to the title question; Greg Bahnsen, glossing Cornelius Van Til, says No. Yet it should be clear even to the atheist that if the Christian God exists, it is 'reasonable' to believe in him. (Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, P & R Publishing, 1998, p. 124, fn. 108,…
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An Overlooked Argument for the Resurrection
Michael J. Kruger In my jargon, the argument is rationally acceptable, but not rationally compelling (rationally coercive, philosophically dispositive). There is no getting around the fact that, in the end, you must decide what you will believe and how you will live. In the end: after due doxastic diligence has been exercised and all the…
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‘Post-Truth’
'Post-truth' is a silly buzz word, and therefore beloved by journalists who typically talk and write uncritically in trendy ways. There is no way to get beyond truth or to live after truth. All of our intellectual operations are conducted under the aegis of truth. Read the rest at Substack.
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Politics, Lies, and Counterfactuals
Suppose I say 1) Had Jeb Bush won the 2016 Republican nomination for president, Hillary Clinton would have won the presidential election. We know, of course, that Donald J. Trump won the 2016 election. Suppose an Anti-Trumper calls me a liar for asserting (1). Have I lied? That depends on what a lie is. What…
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God, Doubt, Denial, and Truth: A Note on Van Til
Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., P&R Publishing, 2008, p. 294: "To doubt God is to deny him." I take that to mean that to doubt that God exists is to deny that God exists. The obvious objection to this is that doubt and denial are very different propositional attitudes. In…
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How to Tell the Truth without being Truthful
Multiple are the modes of mendacity. Obama, Biden, Hillary and their ilk are masters of these modes. May a pox, but no pax, be upon them. Over at Substack, a quick look at one of the modes.
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‘Post-Truth’
A buzz word much bandied about in 2016, usually in connection with Donald J. Trump. Top o' the Stack. You will learn something from this piece if you have an attention span. Too much twit-shit and your span may shrink to a point. You may transmogrify into a tweeting twit whose brain is fit only…
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Truth and Accuracy
Their difference explained at Substack.
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Notes on Kierkegaard and Truth
From a December, 1985 journal entry. …………………… Why does Søren Kierkegaard maintain that truth is subjectivity, and in the Danish equivalents of those very words? What could he mean by such a strange assertion? To rehearse the obvious: S. K. does not mean that truth is subjective or relative, varying with persons, places, times, perspectives,…
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Nietzsche on Conviction
Top o' the Stack
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The Pragmatic and the Evidential
Substack latest. On believing beyond the evidence. Immoral? Irrational?