Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: FALSE (04/15/21)
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TITLE: Paradoxical Ponderings | Previous Challenge Entry
By Samuel Kane
04/20/21 -
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Those were the closing words of one of the most unjust trials this world has ever seen.
But what is truth? It is a question which has puzzled philosophers for millennia. What is truth and what is falsehood?
Surely a statement must be either true or false. It cannot be both, and it cannot be neither; for if it were either both or neither then it would violate the very concept of truth.
Yet consider the statement: “this statement is false.” Such a statement must simultaneously be both true and false because in being one it has automatically become the other. Can such paradoxes exist? Do they disprove the very concept of truth? Can a concept be disproven if the idea of truth does not exist?
What is truth?
If the statements are contradictory, then surely some of them must be false.
“Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.” (Mark 14:56)
Had the trial been just, these witnesses would have been torn apart in cross examination. If the trial had been just then these lies would have been completely disregarded as false.
Yet if statements are contradictory, does that really mean that they are false?
Take this example.
1) “One grain of sand is not a heap.”
2) “One trillion grains of sand are a heap”
3) “Adding or removing a single grain of sand will be such an infinitesimally small change that it will make no meaningful alteration to the nature of the heap.”
4) “If someone were to gradually add or remove individual grains then each stage would not change the nature of the pile of sand.”
5) “Therefore, one grain and one trillion grains are both simultaneously a heap and not a heap.”
Does this contradiction mean that truth and falsehood do not exist, or simply that we do not understand the topics we are discussing?
After all, what constitutes a heap? Where do we draw the line, and is it a line which is wise to draw? Is it right to make such bold statements about ill-defined continua when we do not truly understand them?
What is truth?
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without wisdom?” (Job 38:2)
Perhaps we simply do not know. Perhaps we are not only unknowing, and not only unable to know, but not allowed to know. God is the ultimate creator, but he did not create us as ultimate beings. There are things that our limited human comprehension simply cannot grasp because that’s the way he designed us.
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29)
Maybe it is not our place to understand such things, but rather to have faith that God does understand them, and he will continue to care for us as he has done since the dawn of time.
“What is truth?”
Those were the closing words of one of the most unjust trials this world has ever seen.
The truth is that Jesus was put to death for a crime he did not commit. The truth is that his disciples did not understand the purpose for his death, but that God did. The truth is that God turned the enemy’s evil for good. The truth is that through his death, we might be saved; and while we may not fully understand it, we must have faith in that truth.
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