In a Post-Modern World Copyright by Norman L. Geisler 2017

In a Post-Modern World Copyright by Norman L. Geisler 2017
How to Defend the Faith In a Post-Modern World Copyright by Norman L. Geisler 2017

Apologetics Undermines the Gospel
“I suggest modern Christian apologetics subtly undermines the very gospel it seeks to defend …” (The End of Apologetics, 49). . “Apologetics itself might be the single biggest threat to genuine Christian faith that we face today” (p.12). Myron Penner “Not only can apologetics curse; it actually is a curse” (p. 9).

Outline I. What is Postmodernism? II. How to Defend Against It?
III. What are the First Principles? IV. What’s Wrong with Postmodernism?

Outline I. What is Postmodernism? A. History of Postmodernism
1. Premodern—before 1650 (Metaphysics) 2. Modern—1650 to 1950 (Epistemology) 3. Postmodern—1950 to present (Hermeneutics) Illustration: An Umpire— Pre-modern: “I call ‘em like they are.” Modern: “I call ‘em like I see ‘em.” Post-modern: “They ain’t nothin till I call ‘em.”

According to Postmodernism

B. Forerunners of Postmodernism
1. Hume’s radical empiricism 2. Kant’s agnosticism 3. Kierkegaard’s existentialism 4. Nietzsche’s atheism 5. Derrida’s deconstructionism

B. Forerunners of Postmodernism C. Contrast with Modernism

C. Contrast with Modernism
Modern Thought Postmodernism Unity of thought Diversity of thought Rational Social and psychological Conceptual Visual and poetical Truth is absolute Truth is relative Exclusivism Pluralism Foundationalism Anti-foundationalism Epistemology Hermeneutics Certainty Uncertainty Author’s meaning Reader’s meanings

B. Forerunners of Postmodernism C. Contrast with Modernism D. Nature of Postmodernism: Atheism Postmodernism is a condition where [since God is dead] “anything is possible and nothing is certain” (Vaclav Havel).

Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?” (“The Madman” in Gay Science, 125). God

“God is Dead”-- 1. Epistemologically--Kant 2. Mythologically—Nietzsche
3. Dialectically—HegelAltizer 4. Linguistically—Ayer 5. Phenomenalogically—Husserl 6. Existentially--Sartre 7. Cognitively—Wittgenstein 8. Hermeneutically—Heidegger/Derrida Note: Many of these also believe God is dead actually (2, 3b, 4, 6, 8b).

“God is Dead”-- 1. Epistemologically--Kant
2. Mythologically— Nietzsche 3. Dialectically—Hegel Altizer 4. Linguistically—Ayer 5. Phenomenalogically—Husserl 6. Existentially--Sartre 7. Cognitively—Wittgenstein 8. Hermeneutically—Heidegger/Derrida Note: Many of these also believe God is dead actually (2, 3b, 4, 6, 8b).

Jacques Derrida: Post-Modernism
The Man: A French Jew. His Views: There is no fixed objective meaning or truth in a text. Every text can be deconstructed and then reconstructed with new meanings as the reader determines. His writings: Of Grammatology (‘67); Speech and Phenomena (‘67); Writing and Difference (‘67); Limited Inc. (1970); Post Card: From Socrates, Freud and Beyond (1972); Specters of Marx (1994).

Paul-Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
Influenced by: Kant, Nietzsche, and Husserl. Died: Age 58 of AIDS. He Wrote: Madness and Civilization (1961) Death and Labyrinth (1963) The Order of Things (1966) Discipline and Punish (1975) Archaeology of Knowledge 1976) History of Sexuality ( )

E. The Result of Postmodernism: Relativism
If there is no Absolute Mind, then there is- 1. No absolute* truth (epistemological relativism) 2. No absolute meaning (semantical relativism) 3. No absolute history (reconstructionism) If there is no Absolute Author, then there is— 4. No absolute writing (textual relativism) 5. No absolute interpretation (hermeneutical relativism) If there is no Absolute Thinker, then there is— 6. No absolute thought (philosophical relativism) 7. No absolute laws of thought (anti-foundationalism) If there is no Absolute Purposer, then there is— 8. No absolute purpose (teleological relativism) If there is no Absolute Good, then there is— 9. No absolute right or wrong (moral relativism) *Objectively true always for everyone and everywhere.

All Absolute Value Died with God
“Without God and the future life? How will man be after that? It means everything is permitted now” (The Brothers Karamazov, NY: Vintage, 1991), 589.

No Moral Law-Giver, No Moral Laws
“I knew myself alone, utterly alone in the midst of this well- meaning little universe of yours I was like a man who’s lost his shadow. And there was nothing left in heaven, no right or wrong, nor anyone to give me orders” (Sartre, The Flies, in No Exit and Three Other Plays).

Huxley Supports Sexual License
“The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom” (End and Means, 272).

Outline What is Postmodernism? The Root: Atheism The Fruit: Relativism

Outline I. What is Postmodernism? II. How to Defend Against It?

Outline How to Defend Against Post-Modernism? Defend Founationalism
A. Definition: Foundationalism is the view that there are fundamental self-evident first principles which form the basis of all knowledge.

Outline What is Postmodernism? What is Foundationalism? A. Definition
B. Difference: 1. Foundationalism: Truth is based in self-evident First Principles. 2. Postmodernism: There are no self- evident First Principles of knowing (Anti-Foundationalism).

Outline A. Definition 1. Deductive Foundationalism--Rejected
What is Postmodernism? What is Foundationalism? A. Definition B. Difference C. Distinction 1. Deductive Foundationalism--Rejected a. Statement: All truths are deducible from self-evident first principles) b. Proponents (Spinoza/Descartes) 2. Reductive Foundationalism--Neglected a. Statement: All truths are reducible to (based on) self-evident first principles b. Proponent (Thomas Aquinas)

1. Deductive Foundationalism
A. Its Operation (like Euclidian Geometry): a. Begins with self-evident axioms. b. It deduces all truth from these axioms. Its Problems: a. Not all axioms are necessary (Different axioms are possible). b. Necessary axioms are empty (They yield no knowledge about reality). 1) “All triangles have three sides” (does not tell us there are any triangles). 2) “All husbands are married” (does not tell us there are any husbands).

2. Reductive Foundationalism
Every statement not evident in itself must be evident in terms of something else. But there cannot be an infinite regress of non-evident statements.* Hence, there must be first self-evident statements in terms of which non-evident statements are known to be true. *An endless regress of explanations is an attempt to explain away the need for an explanation.

C. S. Lewis: Need for First Principles
“You cannot go on ‘explaining away’ forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it…. It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see” (Abolition of Man, 91)

Outline I. What is Postmodernism? II. What is Foundationalism?
III. What are the First Principles? A. First Principles Defined (in Reductive view) 1. A self-evident statement, or-- 2. A statement where the predicate term is reducible to the subject term. a) Every contingent being has a cause ) Contingent means could not-be. 2) But non-being can’t cause being (# 5). 3) Hence, every contingent being has a cause

B. Some First Principles Listed
1. Law of Existence: “Being is” (i.e., Something exists. e.g., I do). 2. Law of Identity: “Being is being” (B is B). 3. Law of Non-Contradiction: “Being is not non-being” (B is not non-B). 4. Law of Excluded Middle: “Either Being or non-being” (Either B or not B). 5. Law of Causality: “Non-being cannot cause being” (Non-B --/ being). 6. Law of Analogy: “An effect is similar to its efficient cause” (B--->b). 7. Therefore, God exists (i.e., a first, uncaused Cause exists that is similar to us (His effect);

III. What are the First Principles? IV. What’s Wrong with Postmodernism? A. It can’t be thought consistently B. It can’t be spoken consistently C. It can’t be lived consistently

A. It can’t be thought consistently
“If there were an infinite regress in demonstration, demonstration would be impossible, because the conclusion of any demonstration is made certain by reducing it to the first principle of demonstration” (Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, 244).

Every attempt to deny first principles uses them in the very denial. a. “Nothing exists” implies something exists (namely, the person denying it). b. “Being is not being” assumes that the term “being” is identical to itself, otherwise the negation would not be of the same thing. c. “Contradictories can both be true” assumes that the contradiction of that statement can not be true.

A Self-Defeating Statement
“I don’t exist.” “Then who said that?”

“Opposites can both be true.” “Is the opposite of that true?”

1. Every attempt to deny first principles uses them in the very denial. 2. Relation of logic and God. a. Ontologically (order of being)—God is the basis for logic (logic follows from His rational nature). b. Epistemologically (order of knowing) —Logic is the basis for knowing God. Note: God is the basis for logic, but logic is the basis for our knowledge about God. The statement “Logic does not apply to God” is given as a logical (non-contradictory) statement about God!

First Principles Lead to God
Jonathan Edwards 1. Something undeniably exists (e.g., I do) (#1). 2. Nothing cannot cause something (# 5). 3. Therefore, something eternally and necessarily exists. 4. A personal, intellectual, and moral being undeniably exists (e.g., I do). 5. Hence, a personal, intellectual, moral, eternal, and necessary Being exists (i. e., God does).

Famous Former Atheist Anthony Flew
“It is simply inconceivable that any material matrix or field can generate agents who think and act…. A force field does not plan or think. So…the world of living, conscious, thinking beings has to originate in a living Source, a Mind” (There is a God, 183). Anthony Flew

III. What are the First Principles? IV. What’s Wrong with Postmodernism? A. It can’t be thought consistently B. It can’t be spoken consistently

“I can’t speak a word in English.” “Didn’t he say that in English?”

“Words cannot express meaning.” “Then what do these words mean?”

“There is no objective truth.” “Is this an objective truth?”

“There is no objective view of history.” “Is that an objective view of history?”

“There is no objective interpretation.” “Is that an objective interpretation?”

Problem with Postmodernism
As It aims at something else,-- --It kills itself!

Answering an Objection
Objection: Postmodernism is not making any truth claims. Response: Then why write books?

The Claim to Make no Truth Claim
“You can argue with a man who says, ‘Rice is unwholesome’: but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, ‘Rice is unwholesome, but I’m not saying this is true.’ I feel that this surrender of the claim to truth has all the air of an expedient adopted at the last moment. If [they]…do not claim to know any truths, ought they not to have warned us rather earlier of the fact? For really from all the books they have written…one would have got the idea that they were claiming to give a true account of things. The fact surely is that they nearly always are claiming to do so. The claim is surrendered only when the question discussed…is pressed; and when the crisis is over the claim is tacitly resumed” (Lewis, Miracles, 24).

III. What are the First Principles? IV. What’s Wrong with Postmodernism? A. It can’t be thought consistently. B. It can’t be spoken consistently. C. It can’t be lived consistently.

C. It can’t be lived consistently
“All men constantly and consistently act as though Christianity is true…, Modern men say there is no love, there is only sex, but they fall in love…. Actually —every moment of his life—he is acting as though Christianity were true and it is only the Christian system that tells him why he can, must, and does act the way he does” (He is There and He is not Silent, 70-71).

Atheist Admits His Need for God
“I reached out for religion, I longed for it, it was the remedy. Had it been denied me, I would have invented it myself… I needed a Creator….” (Words, 102). Jean Paul Sartre ( )

Atheist Albert Camus: “For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful” (The Fall, 133).

Nietzsche: To an “Unknown God”
“Unknown one! Speak. What wilt thou, unknown-god?… Do come back With all thy tortures! To the last of all that are lonely, Oh, come back!… And my heart’s final flame --Flares up for thee! Oh, come back, My unknown god! My pain! My last--happiness!” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part Four, “The Magician”).

Agnostic Bertrand Russell
“Even when one feels nearest to other people, something in one seems obstinately to belong to God...--at least that is how I should express it if I thought there was a God. It is odd, isn’t it? I care passionately for this world and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all?” There must be something more important one feels, though I don’t believe there is.” Letter to Lady Ottoline

Marx is Dead! “God is Dead; Marx is dead, and I am not feeling too well either” (Time cover, European edition, 1978).

Friedrich Nietzsche “I hold up before myself the images of Dante and Spinoza, who were better at accepting the lot of solitude. Of course, their way of thinking, compared to mine, was one which made solitude bearable; and in the end, for all those who somehow still had a “God” for company.... My life now consists in the wish that it might be otherwise…and that somebody might make my “truths” appear incredible to me…” (Letter to Overbeck, 7/2/1865).

Hume Couldn’t Live His Skepticism
“Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds [of doubt], nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of the philosophical melancholy and delirium…” (A Treatise on Human Nature 1.4.7). David Hume (d. 1776)

Hume Couldn’t Live His Skepticism
“I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse…; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther” (ibid ).

Living on a Shadow of a Shadow
“I survive morally because I retain the moral code that was taught me along with the religion, while I discarded the religion…. You and I are living on a shadow…. But what will happen to our children…? They are living on the shadow of a shadow” (Chicago Sun-Times 8/24/75 1B).

"What's Wrong with Humanism?"
The British Humanist Magazine charged that Humanism is almost "clinically detached from life.“ It recommends they develop a humanist Bible, a humanist hymnal, Ten Commandments for humanists, and even confessional practices! In addition, "the use of hypnotic techniques--music and other psychological devices--during humanist services would give the audience that deep spiritual experience and they would emerge refreshed and inspired with their humanist faith..." (1964).

Hymns for Postmodernists
“The wise man built his house upon the sand.”

Hymn for Postmodernists
“My hope is built on nothing less than Jean Paul Sartre and nothingness”!

Hymns for Postmodernists
“My hope is built on nothing less than Jean Paul Sartre and nothingness”! “Open my eyes that I may see, More of my own subjectivity. Help me, Derrida, ever to be All absorbed in uncertainty. Then I’ll know what it is to be Lost forever in postmodernity.”

Atheists Evaluate Atheism
Durant: It is a “shadow of a shadow.” Nietzsche: It is not “bearable.” Camus: It is “dreadful.” Sartre: It is “cruel.” Hume: It leads to “delirium.” The Main Point: Postmodernism is not only unthinkable and unspeakable, but it is unlivable.

Atheist Albert Camus: “Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man” (Camus, The Rebel, 147).

Pascal: God-Sized Vacuum in Heart
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him… though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself” (Pascal, Pensees # 425).

Former Atheist Francis Collins
Real Needs Call for Real Fulfillment “Why would such a universal and uniquely human hunger [for God] exist, if it were not connected to some opportunity for fulfillment?... Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well there is such a thing as water” (The Language of God, 38). Dr. Francis Collins Former Atheist Francis Collins

Freud: Theists Create the Father
“What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes.” As for “religious doctrines,” “all of them are illusions and insusceptible of proof” (The Future of an Illusion, 49-50). Sigmund Freud ( )

“Indeed, there is a coherent psychological origin to intense atheism” (p. 3). “Therefore, in the Freudian framework, atheism is an illusion caused by the Oedipal desire to kill the father (God) and replace him with oneself” (p. 13). Vitz: Atheists Kill the Father!

Sartre Dismissed God "I had all the more difficulty of getting rid of him in that he had installed himself at the back of my head.… I collared the Holy Ghost in the cellar and threw him out; atheism is a cruel and long-range affair; I think I've carried it through. I lost my illusion” (The Words, ).

But God Did Not Dismiss Sartre!
“I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here” (National Review, 11 June, 1982), 677.

The Solution to Postmodernism?
Thomism

The Cure for Postmodernism is--
The Vaccine of Thomism Administered by the Angelic Doctor

Other Baker Books

“Should old Aquinas be forgot and never brought to mind.”
Evangelicals need to stop singing: “Should old Aquinas be forgot and never brought to mind.”

As the New Dictionary of Christian
. As the New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics puts it, “There is logic and rationality, because we are created in the image of God…. So, even though our [post-modern] opponents might insist that a rational argument cannot operate upon them,…we can still have confidence that our rational arguments can affect their minds. Even if the popular wisdom tells us that no one will be convinced by propositional apologetics, that the only thing people will react to is stories, Christians know that propositions can be convincing. We believe in a God who communicates both through propositions and history” (see K. R. Birkett article on “Christian Apologetics,” 31).

Conclusion Question: How can we defend the Faith in a Post-modern world? Answer: The same way we do in a modern world? By logical arguments based on first principles that come to logical conclusions. We fight bad reason with good reason, not with no reason.

Response: What reason have we to believe in Penner’s view. None
Response: What reason have we to believe in Penner’s view? None! “Rather than arguing for the superiority of postmodernism, I assume postmodernism as a starting point and try to make this standpoint intelligible.” (p.14) 1) But if so, then there is no way to adjudicate conflicting views. 2) It has numerous self-defeating claims (e.g.): a. We can’t know objective truth. b. Truth does not correspond to reality.

In a Post-Modern World Copyright by Norman L. Geisler 2017

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