{"id":803,"date":"2010-01-21T09:58:15","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T14:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=803"},"modified":"2010-01-21T09:58:15","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T14:58:15","slug":"%e2%80%9ctruth%e2%80%9d-as-a-synonym-for-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTruth\u201d as a Synonym for Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a difference between knowing and believing. Fundamentalist Christians often think that if they believe something is true, that makes it true. They might even claim that it is \u201ctrue for them.\u201d More often than not, they will even say that their view of their religion is Truth.<\/p>\n<p>I want to point out that these fundamentalists don\u2019t say that their religion is true, but rather that their particular interpretation of their religion is Truth. They are not making a claim about how accurately their religion matches up with reality, but rather that their religion is reality itself.<\/p>\n<p>This is cult-speak. It is a way to circumvent the reasoning process so that the fundamentalist need not even evaluate whether the claims actually match up with the real world. If the claims are present as a reality in and of themselves, then we don\u2019t have to observe how accurate they are or in this case aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>When someone makes a claim like \u201cthe door is open,\u201d we have to observe the door in question and see whether or not the claim fits with our observation. If the claim does match our observations, then we can say that the claim is true. We would not say that the claim is Truth.<\/p>\n<p>Christianity in general and fundamentalist Christianity in particular make claims about reality but instead of observing the world to see if those claims are accurate, they simply declare the claims as Truth. When asked to present evidence to support the \u201cTruth\u201d claim, Christians have a pocket full of failed arguments which typically play on people\u2019s emotions, ignorance, and lack of critical thinking rather than on actual evidence.<\/p>\n<p>It is one thing to say that you believe a certain thing to be the case, but are not certain that it actually is the case and another thing to claim that your beliefs are \u201cTruth\u201d without the need to justify that \u201cTruth\u201d with actually facts, observations, and evidence.<br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --><br \/>\n<a onclick=\"return addthis_sendto()\" onmouseover=\"return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')\" onmouseout=\"addthis_close()\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=dangeroustalk\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:0\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js?pub=dangeroustalk\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button END --><\/p>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=803\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a difference between knowing and believing. Fundamentalist Christians often think that if they believe something is true, that makes it true. They might even claim that it is \u201ctrue for them.\u201d More often than not, they will even say that their view of their religion is Truth. I want to point out that [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[727,9,318],"tags":[2215,84,11,704,123,307,343,2252],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}