Can a person with a modern worldview really connect with the postmodern worldview? -- Paul, Williamsvile, NY
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Greg Koukl's response:

This same question came up on Tim Challies’s blog on Monday, so I know it has broad interest. My answer to you is basically the same answer I gave him on this query.
First, I don’t think that my world view is “modern,” though I know this is a favorite challenge of postmoderns. Yes, I believe in the legitimacy of reason, but this doesn’t make me a modern just because the Enlightenment period exalted reason to idol status. Pre-moderns of all stripes—including medievals, and ancients—trusted reason not because it was a pop idol, but because it was an undeniable feature of reality. I cannot properly be called a modernist simply because I follow in their example, and I would vigorously resist that label because coming from PMs it is a way to dismiss anything I might say.
Second, I realize that the prevailing worldview among young people is a kind of reflexive postmodern relativism. They are very skeptical about truth claims and the kind of “rationality” that moderns have used to justify views that have led to oppression. But that is only a part of the story, the small part.
There is something else that is almost always missed with concerns like the one you have expressed. Bad worldviews, even if deeply believed, cannot undo reality. God has given every human being the ability to know truth about their world. Our convictions as Christians include that God exists, that this is His world, and that man is made in His image. That’s the rest of the story. If we are right, then reality turns out to be structured in a very specific way and no unbeliever can escape it. Reality becomes our ally, even with postmoderns.
Note these comments from the Tactics chapter on “Taking the Roof Off.”

When I was a young Christian, I read Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There. Schaeffer argues that Christians have a powerful ally in the war of ideas: reality. Whenever someone tries to deny the truth, reality ultimately betrays him… Although culture shifts, human nature remains the same. Ideas change, but reality does not….
Every person who rejects the truth of “the God who is there” is caught between the way he says the world is and the way the world actually is. This dissonance, what Schaeffer called the “point of tension,” is what makes Taking the Roof Off so effective. Any person who denies the truth of God’s world lives in contradiction. He says one thing, yet deep down he knows the truth….
Regardless of our ideological impulses [e.g., postmodernism], deep inside each of us is a common-sense realist. Those who are not are either dead, in an institution, or sleeping in cardboard boxes under the freeway. Knowing this gives us a tremendous advantage. The key to dealing with moral relativism, for example, is realizing that for all the adamant affirmations, no one really believes it, and for a good reason: If you start with relativism, reality does not make sense.

Unless a person is truly pathological, he cannot escape these truths even if he tries. His language and his behavior will always betray his deepest beliefs about the world. Emotions, prejudice, and bull-headedness may cause him to deny what would otherwise be obvious except when he is defending his ideological turf. But when his guard is down, every person understands that the basic structure of the world is the way the Bible says it is, at least in the broad strokes. Simply put, reason and rationality still matter, even to the postmodernist regardless of his claims to the contrary.
Recent studies (in addition to our own anecdotal experience at STR) bears this out. For example, sociologist Christian Smith in his book Soul Searching reveals that one of the primary reasons students abandon their Christian convictions is because of “some version of intellectual skepticism or disbelief.” Some typical responses: “It didn’t make any sense anymore,” “Some stuff is too far-fetched for me to believe,” “I think scientifically and there is no real proof,” and, “Too many questions that can’t be answered.”
There is no good reason, then, to think that appeals to good thinking will fall on deaf ears in an allegedly postmodern era, especially if we are sensitive to the prevailing ethos in the way we make our case. Unjustified dogmatism is out. Lecturing is out. Head banging is out. I think, though, that the tactical approach as part of the kind of ambassador model we promote at Stand to Reason is just the kind of thing that will catch people’s interest if they are fair-minded.

Great response Greg.

At the end of the day we need to be able to reconcile the things that we know, through whatever means, and our place in the world.

Any worldview, any understanding of ourselves, the world, or God that is irreconcilable with being able to know the truth, being able to discern between good and evil, or being able to find an ultimate meaning for our lives will be an insufficient worldview for self interpretation.

The Postmodern turn away from being able to "know" as a useful model for measuring self interpretation can lead to adopting the equal validity of any subjective human perspective or socially constructed narrative. Once we go there in our thought there is no reasonable basis for the measurement of truth, ethics, or value.

Making all things interpretation leaves one with no interpretation worth having. Truth is the anchor of self interpretation without which all the colours are shades of grey.

But even the supposed truth that we cannot know anything seems to require a reasonably complicated understanding of philosophy, social theory, anthropology, the sciences, theology, literary theory, etc. Not knowing anything seems to require a great deal of understanding. We would need to know that we could not know before making such sweeping universal claims. Every claim that some view is not the truth or that no one can know the truth carries a mountain of presumptions about the true nature of the self and the world.

Postmodernism, in contradiction to fundamental premises, demands the clear and consistent use of reason applied to a certain understanding of the self in the world, for its analysis and explanations to be maintained.

At the end of the day, everyone really thinks they know the truth, and that of course implies that some truth is knowable.


“Know Thyself”

“Cogito Ergo Sum”

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”



Christopher Neiswonger

Mr Koukl,

That was a great answer!

Sometimes postmoderns seem more modern than the people they accuse of being modern. Do you see any continuity between modernism and postmodernism? And if so, do you ever use that as a talking point when discussing these worldviews with postmoderns?

Doug Eaton

Doug,

I do see a continuity in some ways between modernism and postmodernism. In fact, James Sire thinks that postmodernism is the last stage of modernism (see his most recent edition of The Universe Next Door).

Here's the connection I see. At some point, the modernist perspective, at least by some advocates, seems to be non-realist in that they've lost the confidence that we can have in a direct knowledge of reality. To them, our senses are only an indirect guide since we do not perceive the thing itself, but we are only aware of our "sense datum." Put simply, something stands between us and reality (sense datum). For them, this justifies skepticism about knowledge of the world as it is in itself. Postmodernists have the same skepticism and the same non-realism, in my judgment, but for a different reason. The barrier between us and reality is language. And this barrier is impregnable because whatever we consider to be reality is always something that is constructed by our linguistic group. Consequently, we must always be agnostic about the nature of reality itself and can only comment on our own linguistic constructions.

As Chris Neiswonger has pointed out (above), this view is clearly self-refuting coming from postmoderns. Essentially, they are saying that we can't know what reality is like because it's linguistically constructed, which is, by the way, what reality is like.

I do make this point when talking with postmoderns. Some get it, some don't. Those who are intent on being dismissive ignore the point or say that I'm talking like a modernist. But when I point out that their view is self-refuting, I'm not talking like a modernist at all, but rather like a human being. Reality seems to be structured in a certain way, and that includes, minimally, the basic laws of thought and reason. Even postmoderns use them in an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the laws of reason. People in every era--postmodern, modern, Medieval, and ancients--use them because they're undeniable features of the world. Whether any individual postmodernist has the intellectual integrity to admit that is another story.

Greg Koukl

You have made a powerful point, but many who are ingaged in these discussions a emotive and play hide and seek and pepper their declarations with general and specific ad hominem statements to deflect the reasoning presented to them. How do you address these folks?

And then there is the solipsist, who in some ways is a completely different animal from the regular variety of postmodernist. In a way this may be dragging you off topic, but in case it isn't, and it isn't too late in the day to do so, I hope you will answer my question.

I have a good friend who claims to be a solipsist. He's the most consistent solipsist I've ever met and is perfectly happy to live with contradiction. He has the philosophical knowledge to back up his position, at least on a surface level. In a way it is frustrating to talk with him about things because he is something of a chameleon; using reason and logic to refute viewpoints that use reason and logic, but never claiming that he believes that reason and logic are part of his worldview. It's some form of Taking the Roof Off. I can never tell if he is arguing for his views or arguing as a devil's advocate. But I'm beginning to think he is using this tactic in some instances as an excuse to sneak in his point of view without claiming it as his.

How can one move from this kind of solipsism to Christianity? How can I help affect that outcome?

Chris

Oh yes, and I quite realize the irony in this statement.

I should have registered so I can edit my posts.

Chris,

If he is a solipsist, with whom does he think he's having a discussion when you talk with him. QED.

Greg Koukl

We actually went back and forth for about two hours over instant messenger a few years back and that was the very question that began that conversation. Might be useful to try again though.

The thing about solipsism is, even if you turn out to be right, you're still just sitting around talking to yourself.

Christopher Neiswonger