At one time or another we have all heard the comment that what we believe “may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.” In his article, Francis Beckwith provides a humorous but instructive way to respond to that oft-used comment.

He said: “Several years ago, after a pick-up basketball game, I got into a discussion with one of my teammates about a book I was reading on the Christian philosophy of religion. When I mentioned that the book claimed that a Christian may have rational warrant for his theological beliefs, my teammate, a committed believer in reincarnation, responded, ‘That may be true for you, but that’s not true for me.'”

We have all heard someone say something like that before. So let’s rejoin Francis Beckwith and hear how he handled it. He said: “Puzzled by that response, I replied, ‘Is it true for both of us, or just true for you, that what may be true for me is not true for you?’ Quickly losing confidence in his coffeehouse aphorism, he said he didn’t think it right that I was trying to push my religion on him.”

“I, of course, was suggesting that he was trying to push his religion, in particular, his religious epistemology, on me. . . . In other words, under the guise of openness and tolerance, he was, without my consent, dictating the epistemological terms under which I could announce my religious beliefs to others.”

Francis Beckwith is using some big words here, but essentially what he is saying is that phrase “it may be true for you but not for me” is actually pushing a particular philosophy of knowledge. So it is indeed ironic that his basketball teammate then retreated to saying that Francis Beckwith was trying to push his religion on him.

Without realizing it, his teammate was more dogmatic then he even realized. I think he ended up learning some philosophy and apologetics on the basketball court.