What Is Epistemology, and How Does It Point to God?

Description and disclaimer: This two-part article explores why God’s Word, rather than a naturalistic worldview, provides the most intelligible foundation for logic, knowledge, and morality. Part One introduces these concepts, while Part Two applies them to answer an atheistic argument that says reality could be a simulation, and that virtual reality is as genuine as physical reality. Please be aware that this paper cites scholars from a variety of theological and philosophical perspectives, some of whom adopt a compromised stance on Genesis and do not reflect the views of the author or of Answers in Genesis.

“What is the basis of truth?”

When George Barna asked Americans this question in 2020, 15% said they didn’t know.1 Another 15% believed the answer lay in science, while others appealed to “inner certainty” (16%), tradition (5%), social consensus (4%), or God (42%). The remaining 5% claimed truth does not exist, although how they know this claim is true remains unclear.

By asking this question, Barna was probing Americans’ epistemology. Derived from the Greek term episteme (ἐπιστήμη), meaning knowledge,2 epistemology is a branch of philosophy that theorizes about knowledge and belief.3 The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology describes three key epistemological questions: “What is knowledge? What can we know? And how can we know what we know?”4 In other words, how can we justify our beliefs?

The divided responses to Barna’s survey question highlight our culture’s need for epistemic clarity. In response, this two-part article series introduces how a biblical worldview (rather than human reasoning) yields the best basis for justified beliefs—the most intelligible epistemological framework.

We’ll start here in Part One by looking closer at why epistemology matters and by clarifying some keywords like knowledge, belief, and warrant. Then, we’ll see how there are only two ultimate starting points for epistemology: God’s Word or human minds. Next, we’ll explore why God’s Word can provide coherent grounding for truth, knowledge, logic, science, and morality, while human minds cannot.

Later, Part Two will apply these concepts to answer an increasingly popular argument that claims (1) we’re living in a simulator and (2) virtual reality is as genuine as physical reality.

What Is Knowledge, and Why Should We Pursue It?

One philosopher defines knowledge as “a highly valued state in which a person is in cognitive contact with reality.”5 Similarly, the Merriam-Webster dictionary describes knowledge as “the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact” through accurate learning or reasoning.6 Two types of knowledge include:

1. Knowledge by acquaintance—having direct familiarity with a person, thing, or mental state.
2. Propositional knowledge—knowing about someone or something by means of a true proposition, or statement.7

So knowledge involves holding true or warranted beliefs. A belief is a proposition (statement) that a person “takes to be true,” although this belief may or may not be correct.8 Meanwhile, warrant (or justification) refers to a logically acceptable reason for why we hold to a given belief.9 For example, if no logically acceptable reason exists for believing that the statement “The planet Neptune’s core consists of frozen guacamole” is true, then this belief lacks warrant.

These topics matter because our approaches to many of life’s most consequential questions hinge on the issue of how we can know what is true. For example, how do we know the truth about what it means to be human? How do we know the truth about gender, identity, and morality? How do we know the truth about what happens after death?

If consciousness persists for eternity after death, as Scripture indicates, then our answers to such questions bear both earthly and eternal consequences. For example, an atheist who answers that being human means being an autonomous entity with absolute rights of self-determination can logically conclude that euthanasia, as an act of self-determination, is a human right. The consequences of acting on this belief may entail both earthly and eternal death. These outcomes illustrate why we must ensure that our beliefs are aimed at truth and that we possess sound reasons for holding those beliefs.

As we’ll explore soon, only a theistic worldview can ultimately justify the moral standards required to evaluate a belief’s outcome as good or bad or to claim that humans ought to pursue true belief. A biblical (but not atheistic) worldview can therefore explain why epistemology matters. This point doesn’t imply that atheists don’t seek to hold true or warranted beliefs. Atheists simply cannot show why, in a universe that supposedly originated by chance and will end in heat death, the pursuit of truth should ultimately matter.

Epistemology also matters specifically for Christians because, as the study of true knowledge, epistemology bears significance for apologetics, evangelism, and discernment. Apologetics deals with logically defending how we can know that a biblical view is true in contrast to other worldviews. In this sense, apologetics represents a form of epistemological inquiry. Apologetics, in turn, bears implications for evangelism. Specifically, showing why biblical beliefs are warranted can remove unbelievers’ intellectual obstacles to accepting these beliefs, even though arguments themselves cannot convert unbelievers. Additionally, Scripture calls Christians to practice discernment by taking steps to discriminate between “the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 John 4:6). For all these reasons, a biblical worldview helps us understand both on practical and theoretical levels why epistemology matters.

Two Ultimate Reference Points for Truth

Diving into epistemology itself, we can start by asking, “What’s the foundation of knowledge?” According to an epistemological approach known as foundationalism, “[If] there is any knowledge or justified belief at all, then there is a kind of knowledge and justified belief that does not require inference from something else known or justifiably believed.”10 That is, some beliefs stand to reason on their own. Such beliefs are properly basic, existing as warranted starting points, or presuppositions, for our thinking. As one Christian philosopher explains, “A ‘properly basic belief’ is any belief that’s rational to hold without its being based on any other beliefs.”11 For example, we must believe in the existence of logic to argue for anything—including the existence of logic—in a logical manner.12 Another Christian philosopher aptly surmises, “Proving anything depends on having beliefs that don’t need it.”13

These concepts matter because worldviews arise from basic beliefs, or presuppositions. John Byl, professor emeritus of mathematics and astronomy at Trinity Western University, explains, “Any worldview or philosophical system consists of various presuppositions, accepted on faith, and their logical consequences.”14

The ultimate authority, basis, and reference point for truth is either the Creator or the creature, a self-existent God or a self-defining, autonomous humanity.

However, not all these presuppositions may be warranted (i.e., properly basic).15 While countless worldviews exist, Christian apologist Cornelius Van Til describes how only two possibilities can serve as the “final reference point,”16 which Barna calls “the basis of truth.” The ultimate authority, basis, and reference point for truth is either the Creator or the creature, a self-existent God or a self-defining, autonomous humanity.17 In the former case, the universe and all the facts within it derive their meaning from God; in the latter case, everything must simply “have come into being by chance.”18 As one theologian summarizes, “The basis for authority in the last analysis must be either human imagination or the mind of Christ.”19

We can refer to these two worldview foundations as “God’s Word” or “man’s word.” A biblical worldview begins from the premise that God exists and reveals himself specifically through the canon of Scripture, which serves as the highest standard for truth. Worldviews centered on man’s word, in contrast, set human reasoning, perception, experience, and emotion as the standard for judging the truth of everything else, including Scripture. The version of this worldview that we’ll examine below is naturalism, which presumes that “nothing supernatural exists.”20

Why God’s Word Provides the Most Coherent Epistemic Foundation

Which of these two reference points for truth is the most logical to accept? An efficient way to determine the answer is to identify which reference point provides the most coherent philosophical basis for concepts such as logic, knowledge, certainty, science, and objective morality.21 Such concepts are necessary on both theoretical and practical levels, serving as preconditions not only for meaningful intellectual discourse, but also for orderly, functional societies.22 Let’s take a closer look at each of these concepts.

Logic

One critical thinking textbook defines logic as “the study of good reasoning, or inference, and the rules that govern it.”23 These rules are known as “laws of logic,” which Christian scholars James Anderson and Greg Welty describe as “propositions about propositions.”24 Three prominent laws of logic include (1) the law of noncontradiction, which says “nothing can be simultaneously true and false,” (2) the law of excluded middle, which says “everything must be either true or false,” and (3) the law of identity, which says “all things are identical to themselves.”25

Anderson and Welty argue that the existence of logic requires the existence of God.26 To build this case, they first state that the laws of logic are necessary truths because “we cannot imagine a possible world” in which a law such as noncontradiction is false.27 In reply, one atheistic philosopher objects that perhaps we can imagine a possible world where at least one contradiction exists in an abstract (rather than concrete) realm.28 But can we in fact imagine this scenario coherently? The presence of a single contradiction in one possible world would contradict a strict law of noncontradiction. This outcome would render the strict law of noncontradiction false with reference to a certain possible world only by presupposing some version of the law’s truth (at least in its ability to judge itself) with reference to the same world. The argument against the necessity of noncontradiction thus serves to underscore the importance of noncontradiction as a generally applicable concept in every possible world.

Granting that laws or rules such as noncontradiction apply everywhere, Anderson and Welty further note that these laws are immaterial. They don’t occupy a physical location and can’t be spoken of as having physical properties.29 These authors argue that as necessarily existing propositions, the laws of logic are mental constructs that must stem from a necessarily existing mind—God’s. The atheistic philosopher cited earlier disagrees that the laws of logic are mental constructs.30 But even if they are not, the presence of immaterial laws of logic that necessarily exist everywhere implies that an immaterial, transcendent basis for logic necessarily exists everywhere, pointing to the God of the Bible. As Jason Lisle explains, “Since the God of Scripture is immaterial, sovereign, and beyond time, it makes sense to have laws of logic that are immaterial, universal, and unchanging.”31

Belief in naturalism thus comes at the cost of losing a philosophical foundation for universal laws of logic.

By grounding logic in the mind or nature of God, a theistic worldview provides a self-existent, objective, universal foundation for logic. Naturalism, however, gives rise to the view that logic doesn’t exist in an a priori way or that “logical and mathematical truths are a byproduct of our linguistic conventions.”32 In other words, naturalism can’t give logic and math an ascertainable basis in objective, external reality beyond mere human ideation. Belief in naturalism thus comes at the cost of losing a philosophical foundation for universal laws of logic.

Knowledge, Certainty, and Science

Another cost is the loss of a basis for knowledge and certainty. Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that possessing knowledge means holding warranted beliefs, which in turn requires that our cognitive faculties be functioning properly.33 However, belief in naturalism precludes knowing whether our cognitive faculties are functioning properly, for two reasons. First, saying that our cognitive faculties are functioning properly implies that these faculties are supposed to work a certain way.34 However, naturalism resists such assumptions about end purposes (teleology), which points to an intentional design plan—and therefore, a Designer.35^, 36

Second, how can we know our cognitive faculties are reliable if they resulted from mindless evolutionary processes?37 Darwin himself once confessed in a personal letter, “But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.”38 Van Til elaborates on this problem by asking, “Anyhow why should one ‘rational being’ who had become rational by Chance, seek to lord it over another ‘rational being’ who also had become rational by Chance? In a world of Chance there can be no manner of self-identification and there can be no system of truth.”39 Plantinga comments that although various naturalists try formulating arguments to assuage “Darwin’s doubt,” the damage has already been done: “Once I come to doubt the reliability of my cognitive faculties, I can’t properly try to allay that doubt by producing an argument; for in so doing I rely on the very faculties I am doubting.”40

A similar dilemma arises from considering that, for worldviews based on man’s word, humans inductively piece together beliefs based on information derived from sense perception. Using information from our senses to try discerning whether we can trust the information from our senses represents arbitrarily circular reasoning. As Christian philosopher William Alston argues, “[We] inevitably run into epistemic circularity when we seek to show that any of our basic ways of forming beliefs is reliable.”41 This circularity precludes the possibility of certainty if the only basis for truth is human perception and cognition. In contrast, a biblical worldview retains the possibility of certainty by stating that God, the source and foundation for truth, created a logical cosmos and designed humans in the imago Dei with properly functioning capacities for knowledge.42 By providing this basis for both knowledge and logic, Christian theism further supplies a cohesive philosophical foundation for the practice of science.43

Morality

The forgoing discussion presupposes that logic, knowledge, and science are good things that humans ought to pursue. But why should we believe that these (or any other) things are good or that any action ought to be done?44 In other words, what philosophical basis enables moral truths to exist and be knowable?

A biblical worldview readily answers this question by pointing to God’s perfect character as the self-existent, unchanging basis for objective moral truths.45 Moreover, humans can know these truths because God (1) created us with faculties for perceiving them, as Romans 2:15 indicates, and (2) discloses specific moral rules through special revelation. A biblical worldview also explains why we both can and should follow these rules. Namely, although we cannot, as fallen humans, be morally perfect, God’s Son offers himself as a means of atonement for our immorality and empowers us to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). A Christian worldview motivates moral living out of both love for Christ (John 15:23) and reverent fear of God, who will “repay each person according to what he has done” (Matthew 16:27). God’s Word thus offers both philosophical grounding and practical rationale for morality.

God’s Word thus offers both philosophical grounding and practical rationale for morality.

In contrast, attempts to arrive at justified ultimate standards for morality from the basis of man’s word ultimately fail. Two noteworthy examples of such attempts include the ethical frameworks known as utilitarianism and Kantianism. According to utilitarianism, a “moral” action is whatever obtains the greatest happiness for the most people.46 But utilitarianism doesn’t explain why happiness is ultimately good. Nor can utilitarianism rule out achieving the “greatest happiness” by means of committing atrocities.47 Kantian ethics, meanwhile, defines a “moral” action as one that a reasonable person could “will that it should become a universal law.”48 But Kantianism runs into theoretical problems of justifying why these standards of reasonableness and universalizability are good, along with practical problems of reasonable people disagreeing about which actions are universalizable.49

Still another approach to ethics known as moral essentialism assumes that objective moral rules merely exist as abstract, immaterial objects.50 But how can humans know these rules? While moral essentialists may answer that we can reason our way toward morals by considering what is teleologically “good for” various organisms,51 moral essentialism doesn’t ultimately explain why we ought to pursue these goods, especially when organisms’ interests clash.52

Upon reviewing multiple such secular attempts at grounding objective morality, Greek Orthodox philosopher H. Tristram Engelhardt summarizes the problem as follows: “An appeal to any particular moral content begs the question of the standards by which the content is selected, an appeal to a formal structure provides no moral content and therefore no content-full moral guidance, and an appeal to an external reality will show what is, not what ought to be or how what is should be judged.”53

For such reasons, atheist Michael Ruse rejects the possibility of finding philosophical justification for objective morals. Ruse states, “So how then do I justify my substantive ethical beliefs? I claim simply that there is no justification! I think the substantive ethics, claims like ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ are simply psychological beliefs put in place by natural selection in order to maintain and improve our reproductive fitness.”54 Thus, the loss of morality joins the loss of logic, knowledge, certainty, and science as the price for naturalism.

An Argument for God

The trouble is that any argument based on naturalism must borrow concepts such as logic, knowledge, and morality to be intelligible. These arguments apply the laws of logic to contend that we can have warranted knowledge of the tenets of naturalism and that we ought to believe these arguments.55 But naturalism provides no philosophical foundation for the warranted use of these concepts. Theism, however, does. For these reasons, Van Til argues that the best response to the view that human experience determines reality is to show that this view defeats itself.56 Van Til summarizes,

How then is the Christian to challenge this non-Christian approach to the interpretation of human experience? It is only if he shows that man must presuppose God as the final reference point in predication. Otherwise he would destroy experience itself. It is only if the non-Christian is shown that even in his virtual negation of God he is still really presupposing God. It is only if the non-Christian is shown that he cannot deny God unless he first affirm him; unless he is shown that his own approach throughout its history has been shown to be destructive of human experience itself.57

In other words, the possibility of argumentation itself stands as an argument for God. In these ways, the quest to seek what Barna called “the basis of truth” becomes a cogent case for theism.

Summing Up

So far, we’ve examined a few ways that God’s Word, as opposed to man’s word, yields the most intelligible epistemic framework. We unpacked what epistemology, knowledge, belief, and warrant are and examined how a biblical worldview can explain why epistemology matters. Namely, God’s Word provides the justified moral standards required to evaluate a belief’s outcome as good or bad and to claim that humans ought to pursue true beliefs. Unlike naturalism, a biblical worldview also provides the ultimate grounds for logic, knowledge, certainty, science, and morality.

In Part Two, we’ll apply these concepts to engage with an atheistic argument that claims that we may be living in a simulation and that virtual worlds are genuinely real worlds. Meanwhile, we can rest assured that a biblical worldview offers a valid answer to Barna’s essential question, “What is the basis of truth?”