Apologetics and Evidence

“Those are just Semantics… You are just Playing Word Games.”  Have you ever been accused of this? Why are they word games? Are we just spewing out sounds from our mouth that have no meaning? At this point, when someone is accused of playing words games, if the accusation were true, they might as well be shouting gibberish (unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing).  When one makes the flippant claim after you try to show him or her the truth through logic , that you are playing word games, or that you are just discussing semantics (“pffft” followed by an eye roll), these actually are words with meaning. More frequently than I would like to admit, I hear the misapplied accusation of “semantics” or “word games” used as an argument in order to dismiss what was said before the accusation. The thing is, when someone says this, you can simply ask him what he means. Often, he will just tell you that you are playing with words. Here is how to show him that he is misunderst...

Jesus said, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” ~John 18:37-38.   About 20 years ago, I was discussing theology and Christianity with a shop owner of musical instruments in Nanuet, NY. In the end, he asked the same question that Pontius Pilate did in the Biblical quote above. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the answers that I do now, and I wish I could go back to the time of that conversation. The question, “what is truth?” is a great question, and the answer to it is easier than one might think. I first heard of this discovery in several different works from Norman Geisler [1] and J. P. Moreland . [2] Together, their writings on truth sparked a fire in me to memorize the Three Fundamental Laws and what they mean. Before I get to the Three Fundamental Laws of Logic, I think it is appropriate to show what makes the ability to know the truth so valuable. For starters, Jesus says that “knowing the truth will set a person fr...