On Sunday’s Apologetics class, I was unable to lead due to a weekend “go live” at work, but there was a guest facilitator. Here was the video the class watched:
Here are the notes that were handed out:
Truth and Tolerance – Peter Kreeft
Introduction
- Truth is “hard” Tolerance is “nice”
- In today’s society truth is relative
- “Dictatorship of Relativism”
- Democracy needs truth
- Tolerance without truth is not tolerance
- Brave New World book
- From the time of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes we have known how to define truth
- Modern man is a teenager
- The reason to be open-minded is to know truth
- If reason cannot find the truth
- Freud said “our brains are at the service of our desires”
- Civilization is based on “Let us reason together”
- If there is no truth, then we will just fight
- Truth is needed for civilization to exist
- “There is an objective truth” is a humble position
If there is no truth, then only three ways:
Emotional force
Physical force
Totalitarianism (Democracy -> Soft totalitarianism (Democracy In America book)
Let’s define Truth. What is truth?
-Truth is telling it like it is.
It’s true that I wasn’t born on Mars
-Common sense
-Naive
-Universally known
-Feelings are subjective
-Hard, impersonable, non-negotiable
-God is an artist. Man’s art is copying God’s creation.
- Common sense
- Role of faith, we believe what we are told
- We don’t repeat experiments
- Religious faith in God
- Philosophy (We are all philosophers)
- Science/scientific method (for understanding the physical universe)
Truth in Western Civilization – Greeks – “alitheia” = not forgetting
Romans – “Veritas” = rightness in thinking
Jews – “emet” = trustworthiness
Tolerance
Old meaning: tolerate evil things, but not all, eg. Not murder
Judgmental
Pragmatic, tolerate the lesser evil, eg. War
New meaning: Tolerate everything.
Being non-judgmental (Didn’t Jesus say “Judge not”)
Judge sin not sinners
Good scientists judges ideas
Good politician judges ideas
You are your actions
Homosexuality
Hate the sin, love the sinner
Transgenderism
When we condemn the sin, we are not condemning the sinners
Moral relativism in our society is mainly in one are – SEX
The sexual revolution is a philosophy
Something you do
Moral relativism -> Intolerance (doesn’t include itself)
Only with moral absolutes can there be tolerance
Like the Gnostics (we know better, and the physical world is an illusion, doesn’t matter what you do with your body)
This has overcome the motherhood instinct
Abortion is accepted
Divorce is accepted and prevalent in our society
50 % divorce rate
No society can last with family life de-valued
The Jews, Confucians, Romans, Islam valued the family
So the sexual revolution affects everybody
Moral relativism
Absolutizes the relative, eg. The Inquisition
Or Relativize the absolutes is worse
Without an Absolute/God, nothing is left (“Whatever!”)
CS Lewis’s the Abolition of Man says
Relativism changes your nature
Your heart is ripped out, humanity is abolished