You’d think, of all things, truth ought to make sense. And coherence theory says that it ought to make sense in places other than my own head. Other people are counting on me to not spit things out that they can’t make heads nor tails of. So Coherence theory (and one does’t require a lot of defining here to see what they’re up to) tries to make it so that others can use what I say. Truth is a symbolic expression of something that is expected to reflect reality, but it’s also expected to fit in properly with a complete world view shared by everyone so it’s actually useful to someone other than me. We all look at the world with certain assumptions. For something to be true, it has to contribute to the world view in such a way as to verify it, or at least agree with it. If I were to say that my dog just recited the Gettysburg address, you would very likely say that this couldn’t be true because it doesn’t fit in with any of our current scientific understandings of dogs, recitations or the Gettysburg address. Yes, I know someone out there is going to say, “But your dog might have done that,” but that person is just being argumentative and doesn’t really believe it.
Religious people are very comfortable at this kind of understanding of truth because many religions have been around for a long time and they are pretty complete systems all by themselves. Many account for our existence, the existence of moral good and evil, and provide some reason for the way the world has turned out. Many have creation stories and predictions of how the world will end. Many have theories as to how time works and how people ought to relate to one another. For something to be true, it has to correspond to reality which is, itself, a reflection of this system.
Of course, this can get complicated. For example, our contemporary scientific world view is one of those underlying systems that we might use to evaluate truth. One often hears comments like, “You can’t scientifically prove that God exists.” Yes, but does that mean you can’t prove that God exists, or does it only mean you can’t prove it scientifically? If you subscribe to Coherence theory it may amount to the same thing. If science is the world view that truth must correspond to, then nothing can be considered true unless it contributes, or at least agrees with, scientific method.
Religion suffered a pretty big shock in 1859 when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. It argued that all life forms evolve from lower life forms and improve over generations by adapting and passing on positive traits to offspring. It was a powerful theory that explained a great many things without requiring any kind of God and it quickly became the system that statements were expected to agree with in order to be considered true. It still is. And it was such an attractive world view that it even Christian Churches began to change what they thought was true to fit. Today, religions that still believe a personal God created all things in six 24-hour days are considered fringe, even though a substantial number of Christians and a majority of Muslims would call themselves Creationists. The battle over creationism in schools is fierce. Why? Because if truth on all matters are expected to be coherent with an underlying system, accepting evolution as the underlying system changes a lot more than where we came from.