Charter 77 "Truth prevails for those who live in truth." Russian proverb "One word of truth outweighs the entire world." Jesus "...and the truth will set you free."
Truth is essential for a good life, for freedom.
1. Two companion crises to the crisis of truth: (i) crisis of character (who a person is when no one sees except God), (ii) crisis of ethics (Shirley Jackson's The Lottery; "Today, it is worse to judge evil than to do evil, so confound is the ethical confusion"; Nietsche's will to power)
Designer Personality
2. Two arguments for those who believe
in truth but have grown careless about it: "Without truth, there is only
manipulation" (Picasso); "Without truth, there is no freedom" (Isaiah
Berlin; "freedom from, freedom for")
3. Two arguments for those skeptical
about it, have no interest in it:
Peter Burger "to relativize the
relativizer"; they don't apply relativism to their position; there is
clarity in consistency; any thought can be thought, any argument can be
argued; there are some thoughts that can be argued but not lived;
A.J.
Ayer's Verification Principle - all claims must be verified through the 5
senses or they're non-sense; but the Verification Principle itself
could not be verified through the 5 senses, so the Principle is
nonsense.
Point to the Signals of Transcendence. Atheist: "There is no
god", an absolute (not relative) position; they are not saying as a
true relativist, "There is no god for me, there may be for you."
4. Two challenges that truth to bring
to all of us: People try to shape truth to their desires; the sharper
the minder, the slipperier the heart; Aldous Huxley: "decided" (not
"discovered") the world has no meaning.
Triangle of First Principles: Freedom requires virtue, which requires faith, which requires freedom...
Basil Mitchell's Parable of the Resistance Fighter
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