Contemporary Challenges to the Pursuit of Truth

In our current cultural climate, a growing problem is not so much the abandonment of belief in truth, but the absence of a commonly held basis upon which to discern between competing truth claims. This problem goes far beyond the rejection of established scientific paradigms, to the inability to agree on truth claims of any kind, even objective observational facts. Without a shared reality, there can be no shared pursuit of truth rooted in observations of a real universe. There are thus no common criteria by which statements about the world, and events in that world, can be judged. This lack of agreement on how to evaluate truth claims, and the divisions that result, is a cause for concern in both the secular and Christian communities.