the Christian
response to
postmodernism
truth
the laws of logic and objectivity
•law of identity
A=A
Bill Craig is Bill Craig
•law of non-contradiction
it’s raining and it’s not raining
•law of excluded middle
A or ~A
a proposition is either true or false
there is not a third possibility
•objective
to say something is objective is to say that it is independent of what
people think or perceive
•subjective
not objective, it is dependent on what human persons think or perceive
philosophy
an introduction to epistemology
•where do you begin?
•is there an objective reality?
faith and reason
exclusive or complementary?
•Augustine
fides quaerens intellectum
•Thomas Aquinas
faith is epistemic, a way of knowing
•Henry Dodwell
blind faith [fideism]
•Alvin Plantinga
belief in God is properly basic
science
the real Copernican Revolution
•do we occupy an insignificant place and time in the universe?
you are here
3,781,782,502.403 miles away
just over 40 AU’s away
Voyager I
science
the real Copernican Revolution
•do we occupy an insignificant place and time in the universe?
[Weak] Anthropic Principle: The universe will be
observed to be amenable to the existence of
observers because otherwise we wouldn’t be here.
N=N*×fp×ne×fl×fi×fc×fL [Drake equation, seti.org]
Privileged
Planet
Kepler, H.G. Wells
Percival Lowell
Rare
Earth
nothing is
necessary for
habitability
SETI
habitability
range of opinions
everything is
necessary
A rough replica from Guillermo Gonzalez’s and Jay W. Richards’ The Privileged Planet (Washington
DC: Regnery Publishing 2004), 280.
science
the real Copernican Revolution
•do we occupy an insignificant place and time in the universe?
Anthropic Principle
N=N*×fp×ne×fl×fi×fc×fL [Drake equation, seti.org]
•does the Copernican Revolution demote or promote man’s
status in the universe?
has the universe been fine tuned for human existence?
science
fine tuning
•intelligent design
necessity, chance, or design
Richard Dawkins’ objection: “who designed the Designer?”
Oxford physicist Roger Penrose calculates that the odds of
the special low entropy condition having arisen merely by
chance in the absence of any constraining principles is at
least as small as about one part in 1010^123 in order for our
universe to exist.
stupid design? is it really design if 99.9999999999999999%
of the universe is hostile towards life?
who’s afraid of the Multiverse?
science
the real Copernican Revolution
•do we occupy an insignificant place and time in the universe?
Anthropic Principle
N=N*×fp×ne×fl×fi×fc×fL [Drake equation, seti.org]
•does the Copernican Revolution demote or promote man’s
status in the universe?
has the universe been fine tuned for human existence?
it seems that the design of the universe exalts man as
occupying a privileged space and time in the universe. the
Copernican Revolution doesn’t belittle man, fine tuning shows
that this cosmos was [most probably] designed.
meaning, interpretation, & self
there is objectivity
•texts really do have meaning. we can’t just make up what we
want things to mean.
no one who has a headache reads the label to a bottle of rat
poison and thinks, “it’s not really rat poison.” they are sadly
mistaken! you better believe the text has objective meaning!
“the color 9 weighs four dollars when it smells like justice.”
this is completely incoherent
if Paul writes the book of Romans there is authorial
interpretation. Paul is writing with intentionality with a goal of
coherent communication.
•the self is ultimately an individual. there is an ontological distinction in
persons [Imago Dei].
the biblical metanarrative: redemption of man
1.
2.
God created the physical universe of matter, energy, space, and time. He also created angels.
The most powerful being God created, the archangel Satan, chose to rebel against God’s authority and reject God’s love. Satan
enticed one-third of the angelic host to join his rebellion (see Rev. 12.1-9).
3. On Earth, God created Adam and then placed him in a beautiful, bountiful paradise, the Garden of Eden (see. Gen. 2.7-8).
4. In Eden, God created Eve and brought her to Adam (see Gen. 2.21-22).
5. God allowed Satan to enter Eden in order to test Adam and Eve (see. Gen. 3.1).
6. Satan tempted Eve first to distrust and then to defy her Creator (see Gen. 3.1-6). Eve, in turn, tempted Adam to distrust and
defy God (Gen. 3.6, 12). In their act of defiance, Adam and Eve incurred “spiritual death” (see Gen. 3.7-8; Rom. 5.12-19). They
attempted to hide from God and experienced the vastness of the gulf between his glory and their vainglory, a gap they could
never cross on their own.
7. God took away the Tree of Life and ejected Adam and Eve from Eden. Having experienced spiritual death, they and their
descendants would also suffer a physical death (see Rom. 5.12-19). Their labor and relationships involved intensified pain,
work, and wasted time (see Gen. 3.16-19). Note that ejection from the garden is an act of grace.
8. God gave humanity a written moral code to complement the one already placed within the conscience of every person (see
Rom. 2.14-15). These moral laws served to define goodness and expose the evil within every human heart, proving to all
individuals their inadequacy to deal with and conquer their own propensity for wrong doing.
9. At the precise moment of His choosing, the Creator of the universe confined Himself to human flesh, allowed Himself to be born
of a woman, and grew up to manhood in a global crossroads, Israel. He lived there for more than thirty years. Jesus of
Nazareth, fully God and fully human, served as a living, breathing example of moral perfection. He revealed His deity not only in
words but also in expression of his power over all the forces of nature. Then through His death on a cross, He made atonement
for all humanity’s moral failures, all passive and active defiance of God. In rising bodily form the dead, He showed His sacrifice
had been accepted and proved the tangible reality of a realm beyond the cosmos, even beyond physical death.
10. After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, God sent his Holy Spirit to personally indwell individuals who humble receive Christ’s
payment and forgiveness in place of their own best efforts and worst deeds (past, present, and future), turning away from selfrule and submitting to God as the first and final authority in life (see Jn. 16.5-15; 1 Pt. 3.21; Eph. 1.13-14). The Holy Spirit
begins the process of transforming that person’s mind, heart, and character to bring that person into a deepening and widening
relationship with God (see. Rom. 12.1-2).
history
we can know the past
•a common core of indisputable facts exist
i.e. the date of the Declaration of Independence
•it is possible to distinguish between history and propaganda
•it
Postmodern relativists can’t even deny this. Brian Fay reports,
“Postmetaphysical metatheorists as much as any know the difference between
propaganda and genuine history; they can recognize the ideological blindness
which sanctions revisionist histories bent on denying the existence of the
Holocaust, can identify the ways Soviet historiography was contaminated by
Stalinist political correctness, can criticize not just the conclusions but the entire
of racist
(suchhistory
as Nazi Aryan history).”
ispractice
possible
to historiography
criticize poor
i.e. Immanuel Velikovsky tried to rewrite history on the
basis of worldwide catastrophes caused by extraterrestrial
forces in the fifteenth, eighth, and seventh centuries B.C.
Brian Fay, “Nothing but History?” History and Theory 37 (1998): 84.
postmodernism
a myth of reality
•postmodernism is self-refuting, “there are absolutely no
absolutes.”
•postmodernism is only relative to religion and ethics, not
science.
“I must emphasize another important point, which has
been frequently misunderstood. I am not suggesting that the
laws of physics can be anything we want them to be, that
they are merely “cultural narratives,” as has been suggested
by authors associated with the movement called
postmodernism.”
Victor Stenger, God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books 2008), 131-132. [when arguing for the laws of physics to be necessary]
postmodernism
a myth of reality
“Having read this [comments on methodology and particle
physics], please do not assume that the doctrine of
postmodernism is being promoted here. Science is
decidedly not just another cultural narrative… Peoples in all
but the most primitive societies now utilize science. While
we might consider science another “cultural narrative,” it
differs from other cultural narratives because of its superior
power, utility, and universality.”
Victor Stenger, God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books 2008), 39.
postmodernism
a myth of reality
“[Such] a church… will become… impotent to stand against
the powerful forces of secularism that threaten to bury
Christian ideas under a veneer of soulless pluralism and
misguided scientism. In such a context, the church will be
tempted to measure her success largely in terms of
numbers—numbers achieved by cultural accommodation to
empty selves. In this way, … the church will become her own
grave digger; her means of short-term “success” will turn out
to be the very thing that marginalizes her in the long run.”
J.P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind, 93-94.