# ''There is no such thing as a bare fact''



## jogri17 (Dec 21, 2010)

I hear Vantilians use this phrase a lot. Can you explain it? Defend it? How is (''2'' ''+'' 2'' ''='' ''4'') not a bare fact.


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## cih1355 (Dec 21, 2010)

The idea that there is no such thing as a bare fact means that one's worldview, belief system, or presuppositions will influence how one interprets the facts. Let me give an example. It is fact that soft tissue has been discovered in dinosaur bones. Young earth creationists consider this fact to be proof that dinosaurs did not die out millions of years ago. Do evolutionists give up their belief that dinosaurs died out millions of years ago because of this fact? No, they say, "Soft tissue lasts longer than we had thought." 

Here is another example. Another Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared to more than 500 people (1 Corinthians 15:6). An atheist would say that they were hallucinating or that there is a naturalistic explanation for that event. 

I remember listening to one of Greg Bahnsen's lectures where he said that scientific evidence, historical evidence, and so on do not prove a person's worldview. A person's worldview influences how he interprets the facts.


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## Bradwardine (Dec 21, 2010)

For a detailed discussion of mathematics from a Van Tilian perspective that uses your example of 2+2=4 see:
A Biblical View of Mathematics

Hope you find this useful.


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## jwright82 (Jan 1, 2011)

Van Tillians also mean here basically that there is not some common set of undisputed facts out there that we can base our whole apologetic on. Like Curt pointed out looking to these facts can always be interpreted differently. So it is more of linguistic thing here, of course there are independent facts out there that we all learn and all have in common but the second we try to base an entire apologetic on it we discover that these facts are interpreted by one's presuppossitions.


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## mgeoffriau (Jan 5, 2011)

I'd argue that Van Til meant something even further than merely the idea that there aren't universally-accepted, undisputed facts. From my reading, he appears to argue that a "fact" in isolation is actually _meaningless_ -- that is, it is carries no truth-content unless there is context. In other words, propositions only have meaning in relationship to other propositions. This relates, in my opinion, to his tendency to give a coherence theory of truth primacy over a correspondence theory of truth.


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## jwright82 (Jan 5, 2011)

mgeoffriau said:


> I'd argue that Van Til meant something even further than merely the idea that there aren't universally-accepted, undisputed facts. From my reading, he appears to argue that a "fact" in isolation is actually _meaningless_ -- that is, it is carries no truth-content unless there is context. In other words, propositions only have meaning in relationship to other propositions. This relates, in my opinion, to his tendency to give a coherence theory of truth primacy over a correspondence theory of truth.


 
Actually He doesn't endorse any particuler theory of truth but sort of takes the best of all of them. In philosophy it is a seriously agitating problem that we all really know there is a such a thing as truth, except Rchard Rorty, and we know certian aspects of what it is but every attempt to define just what a theory of truth has proven very problimatic. He never, to my knowledge, seemed to burden himself with that question. Since truth fro us would be "thinking God's thoughts after Him", that revealational epistomology seems to incorperate all the good of the various theories and non eof the bad. See Bahnsen's book _Van Til's Apologetic_, he discusses all of these issues there. When he is discussing "facts" he says that we should discuss a "theory of 'Facts'" before answering or engaging in facts. That is somewhat to say that with regards to worldviews, there is no fact out there that is uninterpreted. A christian and an atheist can read the book of Jonah, agree on the "facts" that the story says that a man was swallowed by a fish and lived and both interpret that "fact" in different ways. The atheist will look at that and say "how rediculas that is to believe in, what kind of rational person would believe that?" The Christian would respond with "what do you mean it is perfectly rational to believe that God could do that, He's God after all." Both are interpreting the same "facts" but from withen their respective worldviews. Does that make anymore sense? Remember Van Til painted with a very big brush, so the particulers can be somewhat lost in him. So when he says that a fact is meaningless in isolation, he is making a broad statement about how we do not leave our interpretive conceptual scheme, or worldview, at the door when investigate "facts."


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## Semper Fidelis (Jan 7, 2011)

These Questions and Answers from _The Infallible Word_ ought to shed some light. It's based upon Chapter 2, Nature and Scripture, written by Van Til:


> How is natural theology necessary?
> 
> Scripture does not claim to speak to man in any other way than in conjunction with nature. God's revelation of Himself in nature combined with His revelation of Himself in Scripture form God's one grand schem of covenant relationship of Himself with man. The two forms presuppose and complement one another.
> It was necessary in the garden as the lower act of obedience learned from avoiding the tree of knowledge of good and evil man might learn the higher things of obedience to God. The natural appeared in the regularity of nature.
> ...


One way to some it up is that there is not a genus of knowledge that God participates in as if God is external to objects or "facts" of which God and man have access unto. Knowledge is essential to God's nature and man stands in Covenant relationship to everything which God has created and revealed to His creatures.


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