Jesus said, "...I came into the world for this, to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice."
In response to this, Pilate rhetorically asked, "What is Truth?"
Many of us are asking the same question, "What is Truth?" For the sake of this discussion I would like to provide a simple definition of the words true and truth. Actually, this is not my definition. I found them in the Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth edition):
true - in accordance with fact or reality
truth - the state of being the case: the body of real things, events and facts: actuality the property of being in accord with fact or reality.
reality - something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily.
As Christians, these simple definitions capture what we mean by the word truth. The presentation of Christ and his ministry in the gospels is put forth by witnesses who reported what they had seen. Obviously, because they all had different perspectives they wrote those perspectives in the gospels. Yet the essential truth is reported by all. Do different perspectives mean that one or more of the perspectives are untrue. No! Just because something is viewed from a different perspective does not make either view untrue. They all report that Christ came to this earth to reconcile mankind to God.
The Apostle Paul was well aware of this meaning of truth. That is why he wrote "...if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without substance, and so is your faith." We are bound by the truth. It is what defines us as Christians.
Edmund Husserl identified three world views:
We are committed to seeing the world as it really is. What I mean by this is that the world exists of itself beyond our opinions and conceptions of it. If we die, the cosmos is still there and it remains what it is. This objective existence Husserl called the "thing in itself". We look at the world through our senses and we formulate ideas and conceptions of what the world is based on the stimuli that our senses bring to our brains and then using our thought processes, we make a semblance of what we think the world is. Our conceptions are further modified by the opinions of others, whether in writing or expressed orally. So, the cosmos may be everything we think or it may be none of the things we think about it.
We have learned in the course of our walks through life that not everything is what it seems. Although we generally hold scientists and scientific research in the highest esteem, we have learned that sometimes these same scientists are not the dispassionate objective researchers we took them to be. Instead, we have discovered that they have vested interests or we see them wielding their research as a philosophical ax they feel compelled to grind. We must make sure that we do not surrender or melt before "scientific proofs" which are ultimately based on metaphysical commitments.
If scientific truth is based on the definitions given above, then we are in agreement with the scientific view of truth. When we find ourselves in disagreement, it is not about the world as it really is, but rather, the world as an atheistic/agnostic scientist sees it based on his preconceived ideas and commitments with which they disallow or dismiss anything that might entail a supernatural explanation. Obviously, not everything is of a supernatural explanation. However, there are aspects of our universe which would seem to point to such an explanation. To dismiss something on the basis of preconceived notions or metaphysical commitments, would be to cut ourselves off from what may be truth about that particular subject.
As Christians, we must always hold ourselves open to truth, yes, even to truth that could ultimately disprove Christianity. Many scientists are not this intellectually honest. By committing themselves to finding explanations that do not include God or purposely exclude God, they may very well be cutting themselves off from the "Truth". For Christians to be willing to stand by our commitment to truth, we must recognize that not evething said in the name of Science or even of truth is valid. We must scrutinize every aspiring claim to see if it truly represents the world as it really is.