Epistemology is the study of knowledge — how do we know what we think we know?
It’s a pretty philosophical question. In fact, it is the ultimate philosophical question.
Does truth exist?
If so, can we know it?
If so, how?
At the end of the day, all knowledge rests upon presuppositions. Presuppositions are just that — pre (things existing beforehand) existing beliefs (supposings — suppositions).
All thinkers must suppose — without proof I might add — that thought is a useful exercise. We suppose that our efforts of thinking move us closer toward what is true. And all this this supposes that there is a truth toward which we can think and imagine.
If one supposes or reasons to the idea that “there is no truth,” then that thinker must surrender any claims to arguing over truth unless one is just a bomb thrower; stamping one’s feet and demanding that “there is no truth, and that’s the truth!” isn’t rational or logical, it’s just a manipulation toward power. And if one discards reason and logic (as many on the Left do, simply because it may, in that moment, be an effective device toward power) then thought isn’t worth anything. It is known that logic and rationality may be discarded in the pursuit of power — thus Lies are a means to an end. But I seek Truth, not Lies. But if there is no truth, a Lie is not a lie. And if there is no truth, I ought to stop writing and thinking right now.
If that is one’s position, we have little to discuss. Perhaps we should resort to rocks and sticks instead of logic and language in our pursuit of power.
This thinker dares to pursue “Truth” and proclaim it as best as I am able.
One feminist writer acknowledges that her stream of thought leads one to intellectual nihilism; and that the purpose of thought and language and argument is and can only be the raw pursuit of power. I agree with her logic given here presuppositions (atheism at it’s foundation), but I am not an atheist.
From a theistic point of view, God is Truth and His Word is Power. So, ironically, the atheist and I are closer that initially imagined — it’s just that I have faith in God and he does not.
I presuppose a validity of rational and logic.
But even before that, because we use this English language with verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs and prepositions — all every logical — we recognize that thought is a byproduct of language, not the source of language.
Language is primary — it comes before truth and logic. It creates a framework of logic.
In the end, logic and rationality require language (which existed before mankind and was, in fact, a gift to mankind by the Creator).
All this is a rather long way to explain that we think within a pre-existing story. We exist, we possess language, we presume truth is a worth goal and seek it through logic, rationality, and discourse.
Beyond that, we are creatures of what we consume intellectually. There is no such thing as doubting everything and reasoning up from there. That’s a conceit reserved for those captive to the vanity of a truly intellectually independent thinker. None exist save God alone; only God can say “I AM.”
So we exist — we had nothing to do with that. Only the Creator is the self-existing One.
We have language — it was given to us by those we listened to as children.
This language — of which we did not choose — forms the right and left boundaries of thought.
Not all languages are equal; to be fluent in one but not the others is to be constrained intellectually within a specific range of intellectual possibilities.
Math is a language. Mathematics is different than Arithmetic. Should a person speak arithmetic, but not mathematics, that person is constrained, perfectly, by the limits of arithmetic. One may argue that from arithmetic, math can be reasoned, and from math geometry and calculus — but imagine that at one time no person spoke Calculus — there were worlds unimagined because the language for those worlds had not yet been invented.
Should we speak the language of angels we would surely know things currently unimaginable.
The limitation of knowledge to languages is not limited to languages of numbers — Romance languages (derived from Latin, hence the Rome in Romance) ascribe gender to nouns. It is not possibile to be perfectly “gender neutral” if on speaks, say, French only. And thus the conscious effort on the Left to change language in order to manipulate the right and left limits of intellectual possibilities — if one changes he and she (both which ascribe a masculine or femine identity) to xe (gender neutral) one re-creates an intellectual universe in which there is no masculinity or femininity in that moment — they are exised from existence.
Reducing language is not expansive — this limits thought. It is not rational — it is a power play. Male and female exist — to wish it away does not make it less true.
Should males and females not possess specific binary genitalia it may be that gender typing would weaken, which is the specific goal of those who change she and he into xe. Alas, reality intervenes. Without two sexes — male and female — we would not exist to think these thoughts.
What, really, if the offense of masculinity and feminity? It is the offense of power — one which to strip the male of power and accord it to the female. It is done by stating there there is no such thing as masculine and feminine; this course of action is pure power play — there is nothing observable or measurable that would support this effort. Is is the reduction of language to re-arrange a power equation — as simply as that.
There is a non-atheistic textual foundation from which our questions and thoughts are framed. That is the book of Genesis, written by Moses. The Story he tells is the framework, the narrative, within which we explore.
Others have rejected that narrative of Moses and have created their own, written by atheists.[1] Men like Marx and Lenin and some French atheists imagine a world in which no God exists and man is free to re-imagine everything. Imagine they do, and it is no surprise that we end up in different realities.
The key is to understand that both rely upon a given meta-narrative that cannot be proven — just accepted, rejected, or modified. Can one prove God exists? Can one prove God does not exist?
Can one prove anything?
Not without a language that was given.
Not without the presumption that truth exists and can be approached.
Not without believing that truth is worthy.
All these are presuppositions — items of faith.
For without faith, mankind determines that thought is meaningless.
Illogically, the foundation of thought for the French atheist is to doubt everything; this has never been possible.
My story of Truth relies upon the story of Moses — the Genesis.
Atheists have their own “existence myth,” which is a narrative of how we came to be. It is a myth/narrative which has no more ability to be proven than my own. “Evolution” presumes that life comes from non-life and that entropy works in reverse. Those presuppositions are neither logical nor demonstrable. I will grant that it is a presupposition — but those atheists would that they can criticize presuppositional thought without acknowledging their own. They imagine that they have no faith and that their priests and prophets (atheist university professors) simply speak “the Truth” all while deriding those who cling to an open and acknowledged intellectual presupposition of truth.
At best, the atheist is internally inconsistent.
At best, all I can hope for is to abide by a system of thought that is internally consistent.
And so I acknowledge faith (presuppositions) and the role of the Word/Language to create and interpret truth, rationality, and logic. I belief in Truth and seek it through Language/Word given to me by the Creator. Instead of imagining that I exist by some accident of reserve entropy, my beginning assumption is that I was Created and the Creator is the Truth.
This is where I begin. The soil from which my thoughts spring are not the writings of European atheists — rather from those of a Semitic shepherd — Moses.

[1] An atheist is not a man who does not go to Church nor is he a man who declares “God does not exist.” An atheist is a man who, by thought and action, would act, think, and write no differently regardless of his proclaimed “faith.” Christian universities are full of Christian professors who are atheists — the intellectual narrative they accept — the presuppositions of their thought — in no way leads them to different conclusions than the atheist. This is the proof of their atheism. Dressing up atheism in Christian garb is just another Big Lie.