{"id":2742,"date":"2021-01-21T14:58:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T14:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/01\/21\/how-are-god-and-truth-related-new-and-improved\/"},"modified":"2021-01-21T14:58:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T14:58:14","slug":"how-are-god-and-truth-related-new-and-improved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2021\/01\/21\/how-are-god-and-truth-related-new-and-improved\/","title":{"rendered":"How are God and Truth Related? (2021 Expanded Version)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By my count, there are five different ways to think about the relation of God and truth:<\/span><\/p>\n

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1) There is truth, but there is no God.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) There is truth, and there is God, but God is not the ontological ground of truth.<\/span><\/p>\n

3) There is truth, there is God, and God is<\/em> the ontological ground of truth: truth ultimately depends for its existence on the existence of God. There is truth only because<\/em> there is God. (This 'because' signifies a relation that is neither empirically-causal nor merely logical. Call it the relation of ontological grounding.)
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4) There is no truth, because<\/em> there is no God.<\/span><\/p>\n

5) There is God, but no truth.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ad (1)<\/em>. This is the view of  many if not most today. There are truths, and among these truths is the truth that God does not exist.  This, I take it, is the standard atheist view.  The standard atheist does not deny that there are truths; he presupposes that there are and that they are absolute. It is just that one of these truths is that there is no God.
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Ad (2)<\/em>. This, I take it, would be the standard theist view among analytic philosophers.  There are truths, and one of the truths is that God exists. Consider a philosopher who holds that God is a necessary being and who also holds that it is necessarily the case that there are some truths. Such a philosopher would have to hold that the existence of God is logically equivalent to the existence of some truths. That is, he would have to hold that, necessarily God exists if and only if truths exist. But this philosopher <\/span>would deny the truth of the subjunctive conditional, If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then truths would not exist either.<\/em> That is, he would deny that God is the ontological ground of truth.
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Ad (3)<\/em>. This is the view that I am inclined to accept, were I to accept a view.  Thus I would affirm the subjunctive conditional lately mentioned. The difference between (2) and (3) is subtle. On both sides it is held that both the existence of God and the existence of some truths are necessary, but the Augustinian — to give him a name — holds that God is the ultimate 'source' of all truth and thus of all intelligibility, or, if you prefer, the ultimate 'ground' of all truth and intelligibility. Therefore, if, per impossibile<\/em>, God were not to exist, truth would not exist either.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Ad (4)<\/em>. This is Nietzsche's view.  Tod Gottes = Tod der Wahrheit.  <\/em>The death of God is the death of truth.  By 'truth' I of course mean absolute truth which cannot be perspectival or in any way relative.  Truth cannot be relative, as I have argued many times. 
<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ad (5)<\/em>. I have the impression that certain post-modernists hold this. It is a view not worth discussing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I should think only the first three views have any merit.  <\/span><\/p>\n

But each of the three has difficulties and none of the three can be strictly proven.<\/span><\/p>\n

A. I will argue against the admittedly plausible first view by arguing for the third view.
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Among the truths, there are necessary truths such as the laws of logic. Now a truth is a true truth-bearer, a true proposition, say. (There are different candidates for the office of truth-bearer; we needn't list them here.) Now nothing can have a property unless it exists. (Call this principle Anti-Meinong<\/em>). So no proposition can have the property of being true unless the proposition exists. By definition, a necessary truth is true in every metaphysically possible world. It follows that a necessarily true proposition exists in every possible world including worlds in which there are no finite minds.  (I assume, plausibly, that there are such worlds.)
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But — and this is the crucial move in this reasoning — a proposition is a thought-accusative that cannot exist except in, or rather for<\/em>, a mind.  Thus there are no truths in themselves that float free of minds. Now if there is no God, or rather, if there is no necessarily existent mind, then every mind is contingent. A contradiction ensues: there is a possible world W such that, in W, there exists a thought-accusative that is not the thought-accusative of any mind.  For example, the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12' is true and exists in every possible world including those worlds in which there are no minds.  This contradiction ensues on the assumption that there is no necessarily existent mind.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore, there is a necessarily existent mind. "And this all men call God."<\/span><\/p>\n

If the argument just given is sound, then (3) is true, and (1) is false.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are the ways an atheist might respond to the argument for (3):
<\/span><\/p>\n

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a) Deny that there are necessary truths.<\/span><\/p>\n

b) Deny that truth is a property of propositions.<\/span><\/p>\n

c) Deny Anti-Meinong<\/em>, the principle that whatever has a property exists.
<\/span><\/p>\n

d) Deny that propositions are thought-accusatives; accept some sort of Platonism about propositions.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But each of these denials involves problems of its own. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By my count, there are five different ways to think about the relation of God and truth: 1) There is truth, but there is no God. 2) There is truth, and there is God, but God is not the ontological ground of truth. 3) There is truth, there is God, and God is the ontological … Continue reading “How are God and Truth Related? (2021 Expanded Version)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}