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Posted September 14, 2002
In Christian circles, these days, there seems to be an increasing emphasis on pre-modern
philosophy. I've come across this quite a bit on the Net, recently, in private emails at the very least. One correspondent nicely summarized his position:
I aspire to be philosophically pre-modern, believing that if there were no God, there could be no truth.
Now, I readily confess: I scratch my head when I encounter such notions. To me, truth is a function of signs. As soon as any being — animal, vegetable, or mineral — begins to use signs, truth becomes possible, as does falsity — and, if the being demonstrates a complex level of intentionality (as do many animals, of course including man), lying becomes possible, too.
From this semiotic aspect, truth is born in the world. I don't see any
intimate connection between sign functionality and the usual attributes of
God: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. (Omniscience,
of course, is about knowledge, which is to a great extent dependent on the use of signs. But no matter how expert God may be at using and remembering signs, the origin and nature of truth remains quite distinct from some expert usage of signs.)
Truth is a kind of ideal relation, a relationship entailed when we make one thing stand for something else. It is an important concept — a tool that humans can't help but use, even if it proves often quite difficult to use well — but it is on another ontological level than could be any deity.
The argument that God makes truth possible
is one of those rabbit-and-hat tricks of philosophical theology, rather like the Ontological Proof. These tricks never work, but they apparently remain very, very popular. They seem so intellectual,
so, well, wise.
But in this context, both Christians and humanists should be able to quote the Apostle Paul in earnest: those who argue in this way, while professing themselves wise, become fools
— which is surely not the goal in doing philosophy.
Or in affirming the existence of God.
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