The Subjectivist Fallacy (Truth Is Not What I "Affirm")

(Bolles Harbor, Monroe)

(OK - I am on a roll this morning, attacking subjective relativism. Here's a re-post.)

I taught Logic at Monroe County Community College for seventeen years. The text I used was The Power of Critical Thinking, by Lewis Vaughn. After using Hurley's classic logic text for ten years, I'm glad I switched to Vaughn. One reason is the way he introduces the "subjectivist fallacy." (Ch. 2) Plus, Vaughn was half the price of Hurley (the cost of college textbooks is scandalous).

Have you ever heard someone say, "This is my truth and that's your truth." Or, "This statement is true for you but false for me." In logic, the truth of a claim does not depend on what a person thinks, believes, or affirms. As Vaughn says, "your believing that something is true does not make it true." 

The idea that truth depends of what individual persons believe and affirm is called "subjective relativism." To use this idea to support a claim is to commit the "subjectivist fallacy." 

This is the incoherent idea that "truth" depends on what persons believe. Truth is seen as relative to persons. If you believe dogs can fly, then that is "true for you." If I believe dogs cannot fly, then that is "true for me." Instead of truth being a matter of how the world is, it becomes a matter of what a person believes. That is false, says Vaughn, for two reasons.

First, if truth was a function of what individuals believe, then persons would be infallible. "We could not possibly be in error about anything that we sincerely believed... [But] personal infallibility is, of course, absurd, and this possibility seems to weigh heavily against subjective relativism." (51)

Secondly, and this is its biggest problem, subjective relativism is self-defeating. Vaughn writes: "It defeats itself because its truth implies its falsity. The relativist says, "All truth is relative." If this statement is objectively true, then it refutes itself because if it is objectively true that "All truth is relative," then the statement itself is an example of an objective truth. So if "All truth is relative" is objectively true, it is objectively false." (51)

Vaughn defines "objective truth" and "objective falsehood" as being about the way the world is or is not, "regardless of what we may believe about it. To put it differently, there is a way the world is, and our beliefs do not make it. The world is the way it is, regardless of how we feel about it." (50)

"Social relativism" suffers the same self-contradictory fate as subjective relativism. Social relativism, says Vaughn, seems more friendly because it poses as egalitarian. This is the view that truth is relative to societies. Because we want to respect all societies as equal, social relativism is attractive. But, like subjective relativism, if social relativism is true then "the beliefs of whole societies cannot be mistaken."

Surely that is absurd, since societies not only can be but are often mistaken. For example, some cultures practice female genital mutilation. One wants to say: this practice is wrong. A social relativist could not say this.

Further, like subjective relativism, social relativism is self-defeating. "The claim that "All truth is relative to societies" is self-defeating because if it is objectively true, then it is an example of an objective truth - and that means that the claim is objectively false." (52)

One way I've seen people commit the social relativist fallacy is by pointing out the sociological fact that "If you were born in India you'd be a Hindu." Supposedly, this debunks my exclusivist Christian worldview. One reason is that persons are culturally conditioned regarding of their religious beliefs.

But this way of reasoning is self-defeating. If we are culturally conditioned concerning our beliefs, then the social relativist is culturally conditioned to believe that all persons are culturally conditioned concerning their beliefs. If the cultural relativist was born in India he would not think this way. As Paul Copan says, "If we are culturally conditioned regarding our religious beliefs, then why should the religious pluralist think his view is less arbitrary or conditioned than the exclusivist’s?"

And, BTW, everyone has a worldview, and every worldview is exclusive. Truth, whatever it is, excludes. Truth draws lines. Yes, we ought to love all people, even, as Jesus said, our enemies. But the idea that we should therefore affirm everyone's beliefs would lead to the affirmation of evil. 

Meditate on God's Unfailing Love

Monroe court house

I begin each day by going into the upstairs office in our old home (1863), sitting in my La-Z-Boy office chair, before the large screen on my computer. 

I pull up the NIV Cultural Background Study Bible. I pick up where I left off in Psalms and Proverbs.

I have been stuck on Psalm 48:9 for several days.

Within your temple, O God,

we meditate on your unfailing love.

Something slow and deep was happening in the temple. Something repetitive, because that is what meditation does. It repeats. Over and over, again and again. It gets inside of you. You find yourself experiencing and living it.

I must do something with this verse, today.

I will meditate on God's unfailing love.

God is love. Love forms the very being of God. "Love" is an essential attribute of God. God cannot not-love. Christian Trinitarian Theism best expresses this. God is a three-personed being. God is, essentially, a being-in-relationship. God as Father-Son-Spirit makes conceptual sense of the idea that God is love. Love is relational. Love requires an "other," an object to-be-loved.

God cannot not-love me. This does not restrict God. God does not love me because there is some command external to his being he must follow. God is love, therefore all God's thoughts and actions are loving. God's love for me is genuine. When God thinks of me, he has a good feeling. God likes me. I am God's child, his son. God made me, and what he has made God calls "very good." I am deeply loved by God. Nothing can change this.

God expressed his love by coming to us, rather than making us find him. God came, in the Son, to "sozo" us; i.e., to "save" us. Love came down to rescue me. "For God so loved the world..." Michael Brown et. al. write that the New Testament usage of sozo means, "to rescue, save, deliver, preserve from danger, etc." (212) "James 5:15 in particular provides an excellent example of the holistic usage of sozo." (213) The sick person will be "raised up," forgiven, and "made well" (sozo). Sozo includes being healed, made whole, and delivered, and is applied not simply to individuals but to people groups and cultures. I am sozo-ed. I am loved, by God.

God is so loving that he does not affirm everything I think or say or feel or do. If God affirmed everything I think or say or feel or do, then the cross would be unnecessary. God's love leads us to repentance. This is an essential component of my conversion story. (Romans 2:4) Put simply, Christ died for my sins, and called "Follow me." This is love.

From God's POV love is "the greatest" of the triad faith, hope, and love. Of these three, love is the highest. Without love, the kind exemplified in the sin-defeating love of Christ, I am nothing.

Love is not impatient. Love waits. Love waits for others. Love doesn't get ahead of others. Patience is consideration. Love considers. This is how God loves me, and how I am to love others.

Love is not unkind. Love never speaks un-loving words, for that would be the antithesis of love. Love speaks kindly. Love is soft and true. This is how God speaks to me, and how I am to speak to others. This morning I read Proverbs 16:21 in the Passion Translation.

The one with a wise heart is called “discerning,” 

and speaking sweetly to others 

makes your teaching even more convincing.

Love does not envy or boast. Love is free from human hierarchies of comparison. Love does not measure itself against others. In this way, love is free. God does not compare me with others. This is how I am to love others.

Love does not dishonor others. Love looks to honor others before one's own self. Love does not go after self-honor. Love loves to see others get honor. Love is free from the need to be in the spotlight. Love does not "upstage" others. Love moves behind the curtain. I am to love others like this.

Love is not self-seeking. Love looks toward God and the well-being of others. Love puts God first, and others second. Love is satisfied with third place, or not placing at all. This is how freeing the love of God is. I am free to love others with no expectation of reciprocity.

Love is not easily angered. Love doesn't get irritated or ticked off. Love isn't irascible, petulant, or inconvenienced. Love is interruptible. God has all the time in and beyond the world for me. I have an eternity of love for others. 

Love lets go of past offenses. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Because of this, love sleeps peacefully at night. There's no bitterness or resentment in love. To forgive others is one of love's greatest accomplishments. God has gone to great personal lengths to forgive me. Thus, I forgive others, for this is the unfailing love of God.

Love does not delight in evil. There's nothing evil does that makes love happy. Love never enables evil. Nor does love partner with evil.

Love does not rejoice with falsehood. Love rejoices with the truth. Love doesn't throw a party when "1+1=3." Love loves light, not darkness. Love has no shades of gray. Love draws lines. Love uses words like 'wrong', 'right', 'true', 'false', 'good', 'bad'.

Love always protects. Love is responsible for the other. Love shelters. Love takes a bullet meant for the beloved. Love is a shield. God's love has built a fortress around me.

Love always trusts. This is because love trusts in God. Love is not naive because of this. Love doesn't trust an ax-murderer with an ax, but trusts that God is greater than he who is in the world.

Love always hopes. Love expects, therefore love prepares. Because God's love dwells in me, I am prepared to love others, unfailingly.

Love always perseveres. Love never gives up. Love never fails. Love hangs in there. Love stays. Love scores 100%, every time. Love wins.

Love is the thing that will last. Love ever-lasts. Love remains when others depart. 

Faith and hope are great things, but love is greater. Faith and hope are manifestations of love. Love is the genus, faith and hope are species; love is the genius, faith and hope learn at love's feet.

We are to love one another. The mark of a Jesus-follower is: "See how they love one another." When love is instantiated the revolution has begun. I have been marked by God with his love.

I am to love those who are against me. I am built to love my enemies, while not affirming their behaviors. Love doesn't get more radical than this. This is the "Mt. Everest" of love; love's summum bonum. When love displays itself this way the earth trembles, the heavens open, jaws drop, eyes open, and skeptics reconsider.

If I love Jesus, then I keep his commands. One of his commands is: Love your enemies. Here logic kicks in. The technical term for this is modus ponens.

1. If A, then B.

2. A.

3. Therefore, B.

Such as:

1. If it rains, then the ground gets wet.

2. It is raining.

3. Therefore, the ground gets wet.

Such as:

1. If I love Jesus, then I keep his commands.

2. I love Jesus.

3. Therefore, I keep his commands.

I love God, I love others, and I love my enemies. Just as surely as rain causes the ground to get wet.

Within your temple, O God,

we meditate on your unfailing love.

How to Live with One Another

- From James van Yperen, Making Peace: A Guide to Overcoming Church Conflict

Microaggression Complaints Arise from a Culture of Victimhood

 

                                                              (Briarwood Mall, Ann Arbor)

I am a Detroit Lions fan. 

The Lions won a few games this past season. After one of their rare wins, I posted this on Facebook: The Lions win again!

One person asked, "What do you mean, again?"

My response was, "Well, they've won before."

But another person attacked me, accusing me of supporting Marxist socialism because I watched the Lions game. (Yes, this really happened.) I removed their response.

They were hurt, wounded, by my statement. Call this a microaggression. 

I am now reading The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars, by Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning. They write:

"Nothing determines whether [a] is a microaggression other than [a person's] reaction. Sociologically, a microaggression is not a kind of statement someone makes or a kind of behavior someone engages in; it is a label that someone else attaches to a statement or behavior. The labeling of something as a microaggression is thus a moralistic behavior, an act of defining right and wrong, and we want to make sociological sense of it. (P. 33. Emphasis mine.]

Where does this new moral culture come from?

"Microaggression complaints arise from a culture of victimhood in which individuals and groups display a high sensitivity to slight, have a tendency to handle conflicts through complaints to authorities and other third parties, and seek to cultivate an image of being victims who deserve assistance. This new moral culture, we shall see, differs sharply from other moral cultures—such as cultures of honor, where people are sensitive to slight but handle their conflicts aggressively, and cultures of dignity, where people ignore slights and insults. The current debate about microaggressions arises from a clash between dignity culture and the newer culture of victimhood." (P. 39)

I picked this book up because it is highly recommended by Johnathan Haidt (The Coddling of the American Mind.)

For My Former students of Payne Theological Seminary

What a privilege for me to have taught at one of the nation's oldest black theological seminaries, Payne Theological Seminary 

Here are some of my Payne spiritual formation classes.

And, if you are interested, click the link below to see books that have helped me understand black spirituality. 

African, and African-American Spirituality: A Select Bibliography

Here are some of my former classes - blessings to you all!

Hoping Beyond Death

(Our dog So-Fee, and me)

If there is one thing that is certain, it is taxes. But there is something more certain than taxes. One day I will die. Death is more certain than taxes. 

I think about death. One result of my conversion to Christ fifty-two years ago was a greater awareness of death. Being a philosophy major helped me. "Death" is a big-time philosophical theme. 

How we think about death influences how we live today. Heidegger told us that life is best lived in light of one's death. The death of Socrates, as told by Plato, is philosophically famous as a example of a good life and a good death. 

Attending a theological seminary and becoming a pastor meant I would be called into life-and-death situations, some of which ended, of course, in death. 

I have done many funerals. I did the funerals of my mother, my father, and Linda's mother and father. My infant stillborn son David never got a funeral because of the crazy circumstances surrounding his expiration. I have done funerals during this season of COVID. When you minister at a funeral you deal with death. You meet with people whose loved ones are gone.

I have cried at the death of loved ones. I cried when we put our dog So-Fee "to sleep." That was one of the hardest things I have ever done. We loved her so much! Driving her to the veterinarian's office as when she was dying was, for me, ridiculously painful. The fact that she trusted in us, in me, but could not be communicated to, made the situation harder. It made me angry. Angry... at death... at the fact of death.

For several years I was the pastoral chaplain at the Mid-Michigan Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Lansing. This was Sparrow Hospital's "HOPING" group. HOPING: Helping Other Parents In Normal Grieving. David was pronounced dead in this hospital. 

My loss of David made me, in some way, "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." Once or twice a year I would speak, representing HOPING, to parents who lost their children in the hospital. That was intense. It feels intense as I write about it.

I never forget these things. I do not want to forget them. I cannot and should not forget that death is still with us. In times of death, when walking through the valley of the shadow of death, some people think and reflect. Not all, but some. 

I once did a funeral where friends of the drug-overdosed  deceased were having a tailgate "party" in the funeral home parking lot. Alcohol was their drug of choice for dealing with grief. They staggered into the funeral service having failed to "drown their sorrows."

Every death as a God-opportunity. Worldviews kick in at funerals. People weigh things, evaluate things, deal with incomplete things, unsaid things that should have been said, the experiential finality of death, and with their own mortality. All these are thematic in the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. 

At a funeral I share how forgiveness is possible in Jesus, and how in his resurrection we have hope beyond the grave. As I speak I see people who are listening, who are HOPING. Some who live in denial come out of that dark closet and stand, for a while, in the light. In that moment they are looking for some hope, as before them stands the Hope of the World.

How do I handle death? I like what Thomas Merton said after one of his healthy meditations on life's mortality: "The important thing is simply turning to [God] daily, preferring his will and mystery to everything that is evidently and tangibly "mine."" (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander) Note the quotes around the word "mine" since, obviously, we own nothing in this earthly life. This includes other people. Even we are not our own.  

I'm going to die. 

You are too. 

But Christ has been raised. 

Therefore, I have hope, and you can, too. I choose to live in the light of that eschatological hope and connect with "Christ, the HOPE of glory."

***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Jesus and the Currency Exchange

 

                                          (My grandson Levi, with two of our Redeemer kids.)

This morning, in my alone-time with God, I continue slow-reading through the Gospel of Matthew.

I'm in chapter 21. Verses 12 and 13 read,

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “ It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘ My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’ 

I clicked on Craig Keener's commentary (NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible). And I learned something I had never thought of.

"If merely prophesying the temple’s demise could stir the temple authorities to hostile action (Jer 26: 11; Josephus, Wars 6.300– 9), it is not surprising that within a week of this incident Jesus was executed. Because Passover pilgrims came from all over the ancient world and each locality had its own special currency, money changers were necessary before people could buy sacrifices in the temple. Those who traveled from far away could not bring their own sacrifices, but would have to buy sacrifices at the temple. The issue is not the service provided but the location, as verse 13 makes clear. Jesus was not interfering with the massive tourist trade or other merchants outside the temple; his concern was with the distraction in the temple courts." 

I thought of returning to the U.S. after being out of country. Sometimes, I still was carrying foreign money. So, I would go to the currency exchange.

That's what was set up in the temple area.

The currency exchange was a good thing. To locate the exchange in the temple courts was not a good thing. Because those areas were holy, set apart for praying.

The Wounds We Carry

 

                                                                  (Lake Erie, Monroe)

Linda and I are currently reading two books together. One is The Five Languages of Apology: How to Experience Healing in All You Relationships, by Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas. Very good!

The second book is Tim Keller's The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God. (I will preach on "The Meaning of Marriage" at Redeemer, on Feb. 28.) Excellent!

Today Linda wanted to read a section from Keller's book to me. After hearing it, I thought - I am going to post this section on my blog. Here it is.

THE WOUNDS WE CARRY (from Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, pp. 59 ff.)

There are many reasons that we cannot see our self-centeredness. One of the main factors that hides it from us is our own history of mistreatment... All of these experiences can make it extremely difficult to trust the other sex, while at the same time filling you with dep doubts about your own judgment and character. "Woundedness" is compounded self-doubt and guilt, resentment and disillusionment...

[Woundedness] can prevent us from doing the normal, day-to-day work of repentance and forgiveness and extending the grace that is so crucial to make progress in our marriages. The reason is that woundedness makes us self-absorbed.

This is not hard to see in others, of course. When you begin to talk to wounded people, it is not long before they begin talking about themselves. They're so engrossed in their own pain and problems that they don't realize what they look like to others. They are no sensitive to the needs to others. They don't pick up the cues of those who are hurting, or, if they do, they only do so in a self-involved way. That is, they do so with a view of helping to "rescue" them in order to feel better about themselves. They get involved with others in an obsessive and controlling way because they are actually meeting their own needs, though they deceive themselves about this. We are always, always the last to see our self-absorption. Our hurts and wounds can make our self-centeredness even more intractable. When you point out selfish behavior to a wounded person, he or she will say, "Well, maybe so, but you don't understand what it is like." The wounds justify the behavior.

There are two ways to diagnose and treat this condition. In our culture, there is still a widespread assumption of basic human goodness. If people are self-absorbed and messed up, it is argued, it is only because they lack healthy self-esteem. So what we should do is tell them to be good to themselves, to live for themselves, not for others. In this view of things, we give wounded people almost nothing but support, encouraging them to stop letting others run their lives, urging them to find out what their dreams are and take steps to fulfill them. That, we think, is the way to healing. But this approach assumes that self-centeredness isn't natural, that it is only the product of some kind of mistreatment. That is a very popular understanding of human nature, but it is worth observing that it is an article of faith - a religious belief, as it were. No major world religion teaches that, yet this is the popular view of many people in the West.

But this view of things simply doesn't work. A marriage relationship unavoidably entails self-denial, even in the most mundane day-to-day living. It is impossible to have a smooth-running relationship with even one person, let along two, always feeling that his or her desires should have preeminence because of all he ir she has been through in life.

The Christian approach begins with a different analysis of the situation. We believe that, as badly wounded as persons may be, the resulting self-absorption of the human heart was not caused by mistreatment. It was only magnified and shaped by it. Their mistreatment poured gasoline on the fire, and the flame and smoke now choke them, but their self-centeredness already existed prior to their woundedness. Therefore, if you do nothing but urge people to "look out for number one," you will be setting them up for future failure in any relationship, especially marriage. This is not to say that wounded people do not need great gentleness, tender treatment, affirmation, and patience. It is just that this is not the whole story. Both people crippled by inferiority feelings and those who have superiority complexes are centered on themselves, obsessed with how they look and how they are being perceived and treated. It would be easy to help someone out of an inferiority complex into a superiority complex and leave them no better furnished to live life well."

How to Fail Well

(Monroe County)

We all fail. I have. I will.

How we handle our failures depends on our self-image. A healthy self-image allows us to fail well. An entitlement attitude causes us to fail poorly.

John Townsend writes:

"You need to learn to fail in healthy and redemptive ways, because fail you will. People with a healthy and accurate self-image don’t have a big problem with failure." (Townsend, The Entitlement Cure: Finding Success in Doing Hard Things the Right Way, p. 132)

Here, writes Townsend, is how failure is handled by someone with a healthy self-image.

1. They experience disappointment.

2. They lean on God. "I need God's help and wisdom in this."

3. They find support. They talk with friends who have healthy self-images.

4. They learn. "What was my contribution to the problem? What do I need to change?"

5. They adapt. "It's time to swing the bat again and try things a different way."

"That’s how it should work when we fail. Since failure, and even repeated failure, is simply a given in life, then over and over again we go through these five steps, and each next time we fail well and at a higher level." (Ib., pp. 132-133)

The entitled person struggles to fail well. Townsend says they have two self-images, an external one, and an internal one. Then external image appears confident, even arrogant. The internal self-image of the entitled person is insecure and afraid. 

"Above all," writes Townsend, they are "risk-averse." "The entitled person is deathly afraid of taking a risk and failing... So he postures about his specialness, but he never gets anywhere because he remains frozen in his ability to take normal risks that everyone has to endure to get anywhere. His internal self-image says, “I can’t do this and I can’t try.”: (Ib., p. 133) 

Townsend counsels the following to help the entitlement person.

1. Understand that you are loved by God, not because of your competence, but because you are God's child. God loves you, by grace, not performance, success, or failure.

2. Try new things. No one does them well at first. As you struggle, even fail, keep the first point before you; viz., God loves you.

3. Practice, learn, get advice, fail, and adapt.

4. "Gradually, you begin doing things better. Now the self-image says, "I am loved, and I am competent."

Townsend concludes,

"This is what works. Love precedes confidence, but confidence can’t exist outside of failure and adaptation. When your self-image aligns with what is real and true about you — in other words, how God sees and experiences you— it works for you and not against you." (Ib., pp. 134-135)

***
My two books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Pastoral Leaders - Beware of the Superman Mentality

In Exodus 18:17-18 Moses' father-in-law Jethro sees Moses doing too much. Jethro says:

What you are doing is not good.

You will surely wear yourself out,

both you and these people with you.

For the task is too heavy for you;

you cannot do it alone.

Moses' leadership flow chart looked like this:

Moses has taken on too much! Just like some pastors. If they don't have a Jethro in their life this will end in disaster. 

Ruth Haley Barton identifies some of the symptoms that might manifest themselves when a pastor-leader is dangerously depleted and may be functioning beyond human limitations.

• Irritability or hypersensitivity. 
• Restlessness.
• Compulsive overworking. Bryan Robinson writes: "Workaholism is an obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifests itself through self-imposed demands, an inability to regulate work habits, and an overindulgence in work - to the exclusion of most other life activities." (In Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, p. 104)
• Emotional numbness.
• Escapist behaviors.
• Disconnection from one's identity and calling.
• Not able to attend to human needs.
• Hoarding energy.
• Slippage in our spiritual practices.

Barton writes: "If even a few of these symptoms are true for you, chances are you are pushing up against human limitations and you, too, might need to consider that "what you are doing is not good" for you or for the people you are serving." (Ib., p. 106)

Many leaders have a Superman mentality, which is "a grandiosity that we indulge to our own peril." (Ib., 108)

Pastoral leaders who take my spiritual formation courses know that the antidote to spiritual depletion is returning to their first love which is Christ, and a committed life of praying, solitude, and quietness before God.


***
My book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God  can help you overcome overworking.