ANNOYED PINOYIs it inconsistent and disingenuous for someone like me when dealing with skeptics to affirm my belief in inerrancy, but at the same time tell those skeptics that the truth of Christianity doesn't depend/hinge on the truth of inerrancy? It seems to me it's not. If I'm wrong, I'm open to correction. Also, it seems to be very useful to say that to skeptics because it deflates so much of their objections since many of them depends on the assumption of inerrancy.I find that if I can convince skeptics that Christianity could be true even if inerrancy is false, it sometimes humbles them enough to be open to the possible truth of Christianity. Or it flusters them to the point that they don't know what to say next. Or they start backpedaling or conceding various points on issues they were insistent upon just a few moments ago.Skeptics want to argue about and focus on inerrancy for various reasons.- To create a barrier and buffer to protect their disbelief.- Because to defend inerrancy inductively and comprehensively, one would have to deal with each and every possible Biblical difficulty, discrepancy and apparent contradiction. Thus strengthening their buffer. Since such debates can go on indefinitely.- It distracts from the real issue. Namely, the issue of the truth of Christianity.- In order to address all or even just the main apparent contradictions/discrepancies/errors a Christian would have to know a vast amount of knowledge, and they know most Christians aren't that knowledgeable or even have the aptitude to use that knowledge to formulate responses.So, it seems to me that by asserting that Christianity could be true even if inerrancy were false does two things. 1. It disarms to a great degree skeptics of their objections, and 2. also arms Christians with a way of dealing with both a.) their own personal doubts and b.) answering their skeptical neighbors.There are hundreds of alleged Bible difficulties. If we play into the skeptics methods, s/he can have us address every problem one by one from the smallest to the largest (in that order) in order to insulate his disbelief. Possibly saving the most difficult ones for last as a refuge/festung. Though, usually, they'll pick ones they think are really tough.
The context of this statement is Andy Stanley's position, which is similar to W. L. Craig's.
1. We need to unpack inerrancy. That's a one-word label. An abstraction. But what does it stand for? Over and above the concept of inerrancy is what it refers to. Inerrancy is an umbrella term that covers at least three or four categories:
i) Truth-claims about the past
The historical narratives of Scripture are true.
ii) Truth-claims about the future
Prophetic statements of Scripture are true.
iii) Truth-claims about morality
Biblical teaching on personal and social ethics is true
iv) Truth-claims about God's nature and intentions
What God is really like–compared to religious distortions.
But suppose the Bible is fallible in these departments. Suppose Abraham never existed. God never appeared to Abraham, to call him out of Ur. God never made a covenant with Abraham. That's pious fiction. Suppose Gen 2-3 is pious mythology. Suppose Jesus was wrong about what sins are damnable sins. Suppose Jesus mispredicted the end of the world. Suppose the Bible is wrong about the afterlife. Suppose Paul is wrong about the nature of the atonement. Suppose Hebrews is wrong about the nature of the atonement. Suppose the Bible misrepresents the character of God. Suppose God never delivered the Jews from Egypt. That's pious legend. Suppose God never made a covenant with David. That's national mythology. And so on and so forth. Is it really the case that the truth of Christianity doesn't hinge on the inerrancy of Scripture?
A fallible Jesus is much more consistent with a merely human Jesus than God-Incarnate.
Suppose the Bible does indeed contain hundreds of errors. Historical falsehoods. Prophetic falsehoods. Ethical falsehoods. Suppose Bart Ehrman's list of contradictions and blunders in the Gospels is accurate. How can the Bible be a reliable source of information regarding the big questions if that's the case?
2. This goes to divine providence. How involved is God in human history? If Biblical prophecies and narratives don't correspond to what God is actually up to, then perhaps God is more deistic. What if, in practice, we're on our own? Petitionary prayer is futile. God doesn't intercede. There's nothing to back up the inspirational stories.
3. If the Bible is inerrant, then that's reality. Should we tell people to selectively disregard reality?
4. As a Christian apologist, the onus is not on me to play by the rules of the skeptic. I don't jump when he says jump. He doesn't get to dictate the criteria. My duty is to tell him what I believe and why I believe it. I explain and defend my plausibility structure. I present the evidence that I find convincing. He doesn't set the bar for me to jump over.
If he finds my presentation unpersuasive, so be it. I'm not responsible for what he does with his life. I give my reasons. I scrutinize his objections. The rest is up to him.
5. Defending inerrancy doesn't entail that we must have independent corroboration for every particular claim of Scripture. Rather, we have corroroative evidence for the reliability of the source.
It's not incumbent on a Christian apologist to have an explanation for each and every difficulty in Scripture. An anthology as ancient as Scripture is bound to have many obscurities at this distance from events.
6. That said, we don't need to reinvent the wheel each time. There are prepared answers for most every objection. Some are better than others, but there's no dearth of intelligent answers.
7. You can find out in a hurry that some people are a waste of time. Sometimes there are too many layers to peel away, and they aren't listening anyway.
8. Sometimes we respond to a person on their own grounds, for the sake of argument. But that's a pressure point. It's not conceding their position. And it's just at temporary stage in the argument.
For instance, if someone says, "For all you know, we might be trapped in the Matrix!"–I can point out that even if we were trapped in the Matrix, naturalism would still be false. The Matrix only pushes the same issue back a step. One must still account for the Matrix, as well as intelligent agents within the Matrix. Some retooled theistic proofs will apply to a Matrix-like situation.
But that doesn't make the Matrix an adequate substitute for Christianity. Although I might temporarily play along with their thought-experiment for discussion purposes, that's not where it ends.
9. As I've often said, rather than starting with the perceived problems of Scripture, we should start with the problems of naturalism. Incinerate naturalism. Burn it out with a flamethrower so that people realize that they don't have that to turn to.
Preach it, Brother!
ReplyDeleteGreat points. I agree with most of it.
ReplyDelete//Suppose the Bible does indeed contain hundreds of errors.//
That's a worse case scenario that's not necessarily entailed in the ad arguendo hypothesis that Scripture may not be inerrant.
You were the one who trotted out that figure. You were the one who emphasized the never-ending objections that skeptics raise to Scripture.
DeleteYou implied that the truth of Christianity doesn't hinge on that. Even if it had hundreds of mistakes, Christianity would still be true. So a Christian apologist needn't bother with that.
I don't recall ever giving any numbers or percentages. In my mind I was thinking of the person (Christian or non-Christian) who couldn't accept the possibility that Christianity is true and that the Bible has one or very few errors or perceived irreconcilable errors.
Delete"one would have to deal with each and every possible Biblical difficulty, discrepancy and apparent contradiction…such debates can go on indefinitely…There are hundreds of alleged Bible difficulties. If we play into the skeptics methods, s/he can have us address every problem one by one from the smallest to the largest (in that order)"
DeleteBut I didn't say that all those alleged difficulties are actually errors. In fact, I believe the overwhelming majority of them have been satisfactorily answered/resolved [and quite easily]. In fact, I find the hundreds of alleged difficulties in the Skeptics Annotated Bible to be laughable. My point in that statement was regarding how long and arduous a task it would be to answer each of those hundreds of alleged difficulties in a real apologetical encounter. It was about strategy. That why I go on in the next paragraph to share the technique of challenging the skeptics to admit that INerrancy might be true if I could easily resolve his top 3 best examples of a Bible difficulty.
DeleteYou're a tiresome person to deal with. Did I accuse you of saying those were actual mistakes? No.
DeleteBut you're speaking on behalf of "skeptics" who think those are all actual errors and assuring "skeptics" that even if that's the case, it wouldn't falsify Christianity. Moreover, you've indicated that counterfactually, that's your own position as well.
AP,
ReplyDeleteSteve’s #4 is in ways a distilled version of what I wrote on the other thread, which you found so objectionable. If I’m pietistic, Steve’s 4 is simply uncaring. Neither is the case, however. God elects, so we can just worry about fidelity. (Pietistic Ron) We don’t march to the skeptic’s drum beat. If he doesn’t like ours, that’s his problem. (Direct and to the point Steve)
But I've never said we shouldn't argue for inerrancy. I believe we should. My use of the hypothesis is to undermine the non-Christian's reasons for rejecting Christianity. Not in lowering our apologetical duties. Though, it can ease them for believers who aren't that knowledgeable or have the aptitude to defend Inerrancy at the highest levels of debate.
DeleteAnnoyed Pinoy
Delete"But I've never said we shouldn't argue for inerrancy. I believe we should...Though, it can ease them for believers who aren't that knowledgeable or have the aptitude to defend Inerrancy at the highest levels of debate."
Hm. I'm not sure I follow how bracketing inerrancy is supposed to help "believers who aren't that knowledgeable"? Given we're talking about "believers", and given you believe we "should" argue for inerrancy, then wouldn't it be better to "argue for inerrancy" when it comes to "believers"?
I say this because it would improve their "knowledge" in the sense that the apostle Peter talks about in his second epistle, i.e., so "believers" can "make every effort to supplement [their] faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge..." (2 Pet 1:5), so "believers" can "be all the more diligent to confirm [their] calling and election" (2 Pet 1:10). In short, "argu[ing] for inerrancy" with "believers" in order to improve their "knowledge" would seem to better help "believers" build upon the foundation to "confirm [their] calling and election".
Of course, if the "believer" who isn't very "knowledgeable" thinks the apostle Peter was just talking about general moral truths or the like in his epistles, then why should such a "believer" bother to obey the specifics of what the apostle Peter has taught as long as the "believer" tries to be a good person in general? The "believer" doesn't necessarily need to be so precise and "supplement" his "faith" and "virtue" with "knowledge" etc. as long as he is trying to love God and neighbor in general?
Delete//Given we're talking about "believers", and given you believe we "should" argue for inerrancy, then wouldn't it be better to "argue for inerrancy" when it comes to "believers"? //
DeleteI never said that we should teach/instruct believers that inerrancy is false. Only to point out that Christianity's true doesn't hinge on inerrancy. That they shouldn't automatically doubt Christianity's truth merely because they find a seemingly irresolveable difficulty or aren't satisfied with the resolutions offered (since maybe someone else has resolved it satisfactorily but you haven't yet encountered it, or because the resolution will only be revealed by God after death or the next Age).
//Hm. I'm not sure I follow how bracketing inerrancy is supposed to help "believers who aren't that knowledgeable"?//
I explain that in the other post HERE.
To quote myself: //I should have said explicitly what I left implicit. It arms Christians with a way of dealing with their own personal doubts during the interim of when the questions/doubts begin in their minds and their eventually resolving those problems through greater study/research. It can help them hang on until they find answers. Psychologically speaking (setting aside the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints for a moment), many apostates (temporary or permanent) get to a place where the contradictory tension between what their minds think and their hearts desire grows so intense that they can't handle it anymore and just give up. Concluding that if Christianity is true, then there wouldn't be so many difficulties and obstacles to belief........//
CONT.
//In short, "argu[ing] for inerrancy" with "believers" in order to improve their "knowledge" would seem to better help "believers" build upon the foundation to "confirm [their] calling and election".//
DeleteBut what if offered solutions don't seem plausible to a Christian? Take for example the issue of the roosters crowing associated with Peter's denials of Christ. I'm perfectly satisfied with the type of solutions that Steve (our Triablogger) and others have similarly offered. But other younger and tender hearted Christians may find Steve's resolutions ad hoc and essentially a denial of "inerrancy" as they narrowly conceive of it. Just as we might see the solution that Peter actually denied Christ Six times as being ad hoc. They cannot in good conscience accept Steve's subtle and sophisticated definition and application of Inerrancy to the issue. So, psychologically, when push comes to shove they are forced to choose between lying to themselves to continue being a Christian, or to honestly and consistently conclude (though incorrectly) that Christianity must be false since Christianity stands or falls with the demonstrability of inerrancy. Demonstrability in the sense of always having and needing to be completely satisfied with at least one solution to every possible past, presently and futurely offered Biblical (apparent) contradiction/discrepancy/error. That approach places a professing Christian in a precarious position. Many apostates have said they couldn't continue being a Christian because they were constantly having to present resolutions to contradictions before non-Christians all the while secretly not being satisfied themselves with the solutions they were offering to others. If they were convinced that inerrancy wasn't essential for the truth of Christianity, then it couldn't be used by the devil or non-Christians as a button to tip them over the cliff into apostasy. 1. Belief in inerrancy, 2. belief in the necessity of inerrancy for Christianity to be true, 3. belief in the necessary belief and advocacy of 1 and/or 2 are all separate issues.
//Of course, if the "believer" who isn't very "knowledgeable" thinks the apostle Peter was just talking about general moral truths or the like in his epistles....//
I don't see any necessary link between what I've been saying and slipping into a moralistic (false) "Christianity". I specifically believe that we should teach, believe and defend inerrancy.
"They cannot in good conscience accept Steve's subtle and sophisticated definition and application of Inerrancy to the issue. So, psychologically, when push comes to shove they are forced to choose between lying to themselves to continue being a Christian, or to honestly and consistently conclude (though incorrectly) that Christianity must be false since Christianity stands or falls with the demonstrability of inerrancy."
Delete1. This doesn't mean bracketing inerrancy is a (temporary) solution, but rather educating them on what inerrancy actually means and entails. Not what they think it means.
2. Also, if they understand what inerrancy really is, but they still "feel" this way, then it may be necessary to deal with underlying psychological or emotional issues.
Epistle of Dude, my intention is to defang skeptics and to inoculate believers. The fact is that some Christians don't have the aptitude or are too impatient to understand the nuances of inerrancy. As I said my tactic can help believers hold on till they (hopefully) do understand it, and to render the skeptics mostly powerless to oppose Christianity.
DeleteAnnoyed Pinoy
Delete"Epistle of Dude, my intention is to defang skeptics and to inoculate believers...As I said my tactic can help believers hold on till they (hopefully) do understand it, and to render the skeptics mostly powerless to oppose Christianity."
I hate to break it to you, but you're not exactly the only Christian apologist who has this "intention"! In fact, did you know that there are even some Christian apologists who wouldn't advocate bracketing inerrancy like you would who nevertheless have the exact same intentions as you do? (Gasp!) I know, right?!
"The fact is that some Christians don't have the aptitude or are too impatient to understand the nuances of inerrancy."
On the one hand, you've claimed these professing Christians are near apostasy. On the other hand, you're claiming they're "too impatient" to listen to Christians willing to attempt to explain inerrancy to them. Sounds like the problem isn't bracketing or not bracketing inerrancy!
As for aptitude, no need to think so poorly about some Christians! I know plenty of Christians of average intelligence who don't have any problems grasping inerrancy. For example, you don't seem to have any problems grasping "the nuances of inerrancy". ;)
Is the question framed correctly? Of course the truth of Christianity does not depend upon inerrancy. However, the knowledge that it is true does. An inerrant Bible is not needed for something to be true. It is needed for something to be known to be true.
ReplyDeleteB.C.,
DeleteWhy? Is God prevented from bearing witness to truth within a corpus of writings that mightn’t all be true? Can’t one savingly believe through reading a book that presents the gospel, yet without believing that everything in the book is without error?
B.C.,
DeleteThat's a problem when we use "inerrancy" as an abstract label. But that's why I discussed what it stands for.
Christianity depends on God saying and doing the things that Scripture attributes to him. You can only know something to be true if there's something to be known in the first place.
If Scripture is fallible, then those may be nonentities and nonevents. What if Scripture misattributes to God things he never says or does.
We can only know facts. Events. If Scripture is fallible, maybe Abraham is a fictional character rather than a real person. God's conversations with Abraham are imaginary. Maybe heaven doesn't exist. Maybe hell doesn't exist.
It's not like we have direct independent evidence for most of these truth-claims. In many cases, the Bible is our only source of information for the specifics.
RA, God can, but we won't know which is which. Is the presentation of the gospel the fallible part or the other elements in the book? How would you know which part is true and which part isn't? So knowledge of the truth is not possible from an errant source, even though reality stands distinct from it. So to answer your question, God can bear witness to the truth through an errant source. We'll just never know it.
DeleteYou were putting an internalist constraint upon first order knowledge. That’s what I was addressing.
DeleteAnd what you said didn't address my point. Your questions deal with whether God can bear witness to X through an unreliable source rather than can a human know X through an unreliable source. He can believe X through an unreliable source, but he cannot know it. In that sense, no source at all is necessary, nor any communication from God through any means, since the belief is just a guess in the dark.
DeleteYou’re not grasping the internalist constraint your placing on the question. That the corpus can have error doesn’t mean that the true propositions cannot be accompanied by the persuasive witness of the Spirit. Accordingly, what’s lacking from an externalist perspective?
DeleteWe know many things that can be catalogued among false things. Whether I can know that I know is not the same thing as first order knowledge.
In other words, if belief, truth and divinely persuasive warrant obtains, what would be lacking?
DeleteI do grant you, there’s little use for such knowledge in this regard. Without inerrancy, good luck settling disputes in the church.
DeleteMy point was very narrow.
Belief in what? Belief in knowledge? I'm not arguing whether someone can have a belief in a true proposition that is accompanied by erroneous ones. I'm arguing that one cannot know which is which, and therefore, the ability to know what one should believe and what one should not is impossible. It is just a guess. What gospel is one to believe? Which parts are error and which parts are accurate. And what is the Spirit? Whatever I believe that happens to be one of the accurate propositions is the Spirit guiding me and whatever I believe as false isn't? How do I know which is which? Again, the truth of the gospel, and the fact that one might stumble upon it, or be led to it, is irrelevant to whether one can know that any of it is what God has communicated as true. If you use first order knowledge to refer to questions of belief, then it isn't addressing what I am saying. If you understand all knowledge to be a belief confirmed by a reliable source, then knowledge is impossible without it. I'm arguing the latter. So it has nothing to do with what can be persuasive and bring one to belief. We can come to beliefs with or without the Spirit of God. It has to do with what can bring one to knowledge, i.e., a confirmed belief. An errant source is incapable of communicating the latter (whether first order or second order knowledge). Hence, what is lacking is the ability to know what is true and the distinction between Christian knowledge based on a reliable source verses belief that has no reliable basis.
Delete"Without inerrancy, good luck settling disputes in the church."
DeleteBut why can't someone conclude the same thing about the gospel itself? Which gospel is true?
I think you might also be changing the question to, "Can God save someone apart from their believing inerrancy?" That, of course, is a different question.
DeleteI’m just repeating myself.
DeleteLet me take another approach. Prior to the church receiving the canon as we know it, was Paul inerrant? Peter? James? No. Were their words to be received as such? No, not all of them. They were fallible sinners. Yet some things they wrote and said were infallible revelation, yet coming from an errant men. Errant sources as you’ve put it. Could anyone know anything they relayed, or was knowledge dependent upon the reception of the canon? If knowledge was possible, then we’ve established that errancy needn’t be an obstacle for one knowing things.
Most of what we know I would suspect comes from errant sources (as you use the term). What’s not in error is the belief and the warrant, when knowledge obtains, that is. And that’s the only point I’m making.
"Errant sources as you’ve put it."
DeleteYou're conflating an agent (i.e., an apostle) that has the possibility of being errant when something is produced from himself with the source (i.e., God) which has no possibility of error, producing revelation which would have no possibility of error. Are you arguing that the apostles mixed the two together whenever they gave revelation from God or wrote a text based on that revelation? Where would be an example of apostolic teaching that is mixed with human error and divine revelation, or are you just guessing? Knowledge would not have been possible if they mixed error with truth. Hence, the prophets and apostles usually identified that they had the Spirit of God and were speaking "thus says YHWH." The Scripture is a "thus says YHWH," and so if that is mixed with error, we are without the ability to know anything about God, the gospel, Jesus, knowledge, etc.
We don't actually know anything from errant sources. That's where you're missing me. You only know what you do from those sources because you have it confirmed by a fully reliable source. Otherwise, it isn't knowledge. It is belief. What would be the possibility for a warranted belief without knowledge? There has to be a reliable source in there somewhere to measure the rest. Hence, errancy is a massive obstacle for one knowing things.
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DeleteI began writing another post but have decided against it.
DeleteI think there is a failure to acknowledge the amount of assumed knowledge that goes into conversations like this. The entire idea that one can be led into truth via the Spirit is all derived from presupposing the reliability of those teachings in Scripture. Such knowledge is only possible from a reliable source, and an errant source isn't reliable. It would have to be confirmed by a source that is. So I'm wondering if those arguing in favor of Craig's/Stanley's view would argue that what is truly reliable is the witness of the Spirit. And at that point, how does one discern between the spirits? Our knowledge of Christianity, and therefore, that which directs us to true belief, rises and falls on biblical inerrancy.
DeleteSaving faith presupposes some things, like trusting God when we cannot connect all the dots. To build one’s evangelistic effort on the acceptability of ripping pages out of the Bible whenever something doesn’t square with our sensibilities is poor procedure. For one thing it places man above God’s word. My wife’s cousin mocks throwing the babies on the rocks. Negotiable? How about some of Jesus’ miracles? Which ones? How much of the Word may be rejected, and how doesn’t such a posture bring into question the credibility of one’s profession? Is the strategy to get the skeptic saved and then trust that once he has the Spirit he might believe the non essentials?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete“My approach goes along similar lines. Pointing out to the non-Christian that, logically speaking, God hypothetically could have used a fallible Revelation to reliably and sufficiently convey the message of salvation.”
Allowing that (a) God could have done x and (b) granting room for one to believe that he actually did x are significantly different ideas. The incarnation could have occurred without a virgin birth. Moses could have been given the law without all the drama of the burning bush. May we believe those counterfactuals, or may we only believe in the hypothetical nature or potentiality of such things? The difference should be apparent. One pertains to how things might’ve been. The other to how things are. Counterfactuals, in what they contemplate, are false. A logical possibility that’s not true needn’t be. It seems as though you’re allowing for belief in what’s false on the basis of the truth of the possibility.
“He wouldn't require inerrancy as a necessary component in ordinary human communication, why require that of God?”
To expect men to err in discourse is not the same thing as setting oneself up to be judge over God’s word. We should encourage the former while discouraging the latter.
Aside from all that, if you believe in election, then why the willingness to check inerrancy at the door?
//granting room for one to believe that he actually did x are significantly different ideas.//
DeleteI'm not advocating people believe Biblical errancy. Just the opposite. I advocate believing and defending INerrancy, but also realizing that the truth of Christianity doesn't hinge on an absolutely error free Bible. That one or a few errors doesn't destroy Christianity with one fell swoop.
//It seems as though you’re allowing for belief in what’s false on the basis of the truth of the possibility. //
I think the most consistent reading of Scripture is to hold to Inerrancy. However, I don't think Scripture itself completely rules out the possibility of error within itself. All the classical passages in defense of Inerrancy not withstanding. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that there are absolutely no errors in Scripture. Even John 10:35 is in the context of theological teaching. It doesn't specifically and explicitly address error in every possible sense, category or area in Scripture. It implicitly does so, and therefore I think it's most consistent to interpret Scripture to be teaching its own Inerrancy, but I don't think that's a logically *necessary* inference. Even the church fathers didn't all hold to proto-inerrancy. Some scholars argue (rightly or wrongly) that Calvin may not have believed in our modern conception of inerrancy. Or even that he believed in errancy (i.e. there are errors in the Bible that can't be chalked up to scribal error).
//Aside from all that, if you believe in election, then why the willingness to check inerrancy at the door? //
I don't think I'm doing that. There's a difference between saying Inerrancy is false [which I'm not saying], and saying Inerrancy might not be true [or at least our modern conceptions of inerrancy and infallibility]. The Bible is true to the degree and in the sense in which the Sovereign God wants it to be. That Sovereign God hasn't explicitly and exhaustively explained in what senses and to what degrees it is. There's also a difference between saying 1. inerrancy is important, important to believe and is the natural most likely reading of Scripture, and 2. to say that inerrancy is absolutely essential to believe and essential to be true for Christianity as a whole to be true.
“I'm not advocating people believe Biblical errancy.”
ReplyDeleteCorrect. You’re positing that apologists ought to overlook objections to inerrancy in order to get to the important stuff, the essential gospel. Let’s not concern ourselves whether the credibility of the gospel hinges at all upon inerrancy, or whether to overlook inerrancy confirms the unbeliever in his desire for salvation in his autonomy, his desire to judge God’s word rather than to submit to it.
Exactly how does an unbeliever submit to God's Word if he doesn't know what God's Word is? Which part of the Bible is God's Word and which part is the human error? What allows for his autonomy is to think that he can judge God's Word and reject any part of it because he concludes that it is error by his own human beliefs to the contrary.
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DeleteMy previous post is a trajectory of AP’s position. The “Let’s not...” part was to show the wrongheadedness of such thinking. I was condemning it, not upholding it.
DeleteI see. BTW, did anyone make the distinction between the truth claims made by the Bible as inerrant (i.e., what Steve addresses above) and details that function, not as truth claims in and of themselves, but as language used to communicate the truth claim (e.g., something phenomenological like a flat earth)? I've seen in some of the comments on this and the other thread that there may be a conflation of those two. I would wholeheartedly reject the former, but affirm the latter.
Delete