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One of the most dangerous philosophical ideas that has ever made inroads into our modern society is the idea that in a pluralistic culture truth can no longer exist.
Pluralization may be a noble idea, but its fundamental precept--that all ideas are equal--does away with truth. Naturally, it also leads to contradiction, and ultimately to hatred. Wherever pluralism and its cousin relativism have been enforced within any society, they have fostered disunity, which breeds hatred.
Isaiah foretold a coming society some years distant from his own environment where truth under king Manasseh would be rejected in favor of politically correct posturing.
"So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey"
(Isaiah 59:14-15)
This could just as well apply to our current situation.
In order to understand what dangers such a principle heralds for our own society, it is important to unpack the concept and expose its weakness. Ravi Zacharias shows us how we can challenge and prove the weakness of the argument.
Two kinds of logic?
Ravi refers to two kinds of logic, an argument used often by philosophers. The theory is that eastern cultures use a dialectic ("both/and") system of logic, where two opposing ideas can both be true, while Western cultures use the law of non-contradiction (an "either/or" system of logic) where you have to choose one idea or the other. The typical philosopher will insist that if western societies will only switch to the both/and system then they can look at an apparent contradiction and accept it readily. Ravi's response is a classic. He summarizes the viewpoint of these philosophers and exposes the absurdity of their own logic. By their own logic they insist that we either use the both/and system or no system at all. They are using the western system of either/or with which to prove the both/and!
Relativism essentially tells us that a condition can be true and false at the same time, depending on each person's world view. How can an ordered society ever emerge from such an absurd premise?
In the movie "Contact" based on a novel by the late atheist Carl Sagan, a scientist is forced to admit that something which has changed her life forever is impossible to prove "scientifically." She insists that others must accept the experience she went through on faith alone, with only legal-historic evidence as proof. While the movie tries hard to support relativism (it tries to support the idea that "we each have our own truth") and to attack Christian beliefs, it ends up asserting that truth is truth, regardless of how others feel about it.
Truth remains a constant, even if only one person--or nobody at all--actually knows what happened.
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