About postmodernism et autres...

To think, or not to think: the loss of reason in an age of information overload

By Edwin Vargas, Christian & Postmodern Theology Examiner. The order of the day in this Information Age seems to have it that information has overthrownand overshadowedreason. Or to state it a little more bluntly, the Age of Information appears to have come devoid of reason. No, reason is still here with us in this so-called postmodern world. But day in and day out, any keen observer of the signs of the times will soon realize that life in the 21st century world is to a great extent no longer guided by reason.People of the 21st century world are confronted day after day by a cultural reality brought about by the constant availability of an immense body of information in the cyberspace, many of which are also widely distributed through other hi-tech means of communication, resulting into what has been dubbed some years ago as information overload. Overloaded by information composed mainly of a variety of mixed messages of conflicting philosophical ideas imbedded in glaringimages and powerful sound bites, reason has suddenly become functionally irrelevant if not totally antiquated, as if no longer there to guide and lead us into an ordered life with a clear sense of meaning, purpose and destiny. Reason is here defined not in the Enlightenment’s sense of the term, which the Romanticists dismissed as emotionless, as a way thinking that hails and exalts the mind with no due regard for the heart. And right they were, for people during the Age of the Enlightenment, otherwise known as the Age of Reason, turned out to have worshiped Reason on account of their unrestrained passion for logical certainty. Lest we forget, this intellectual movement came into place against the backdrop of roughly 200 years of revival of classical learning in the Renaissance, the extraordinary political and social confusion of the 17th century, the relative freedom gained by the Reformation from centuries old of ecclesiastical dominance and the social disorder caused by the barbarism of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. Man was then thought to have finally found the key that would unlock the door to certainty in infallible Reason until it finally met its end in the French Revolution which, ironically, the rationalists themselves helped to bring about. But the vestiges of the Age of Reason managed to survive until our own Information Age, in between of which came a handful of movements – spearheaded by romanticism and sustained by existentialism until it came into full flower in postmodernism – that stood in protest against the elevation of reason over all other human faculties. From this point on came a new way of thinking that has so far dominated the 21st century world, a lazy attitude of the mind that has kicked reason out of the once lofty place it used to occupy during the heyday of the Enlightenment. The irony of it all is that while we have information available today right at our fingertips, we are nonetheless rendered unable to think. One’s search for meaning and purpose has never been as complicated as it is today. So that the young man of this Information Age is somewhat confused and lost, and to make it even worse, he is not aware that he is. Here then is a posture of the mind that, somewhere along the line, is lost under the shadow of unthinking, floating in the air of uncertainty in this post-certain age. Overloaded with information, it has lost its footing on a sure foundation and now operates outside the sphere of a meta narrative that, according to Christian philosopher and apologist Ravi Zacharias, provides the framework through which the particulars of life can be interpreted. Devoid of a clear sense of meaning, purpose and destiny, it potentially leads into a life that is without direction and is disposable.

References:

•Carson, D. A.
The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism.
Grand Rapids,MI: Zondervan, 1996.

.Zacharias, Ravi.
Can Man Live Without God.
Nashville, TN: W Publishing, 1994.



Postmodern atheism

By Edwin VargasChristian & Postmodern Theology Examiner Atheism, which Etienne Borne defines as “the deliberate, definite, dogmatic denial of the existence of God,” is one of the major components of postmodernism's philosophical belief system. The postmodernists, however, appear to be more subtle than many of their fellow atheists in their disavowal of the reality of God's existence. Though their denial of the existence of God is in many ways deliberate, the postmodernists are simply not prepared to admit that they are also dogmatic and definite about their own brand of atheism. What is more important to note at this point, however, is that they seem to be in full agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that the God of the Judeo-Christian theism has now become unbelievable, in the same manner that rigid rationalism and scientific empiricism of the old Enlightenment regime have suddenly become undependable and indefensible in the postmodern-infested popular culture of the 21st century world.

Classical theism according to postmodernists

For according to postmodern pragmatist Richard Rorty, classical atheism itself is as untenable as classical theism. This, at least, is the postmodernists' general assessment, as classical atheism by definition operates according to the dictates of the Enlightenment's own version of objective reality – that is, the reality, so-called, that everything that exists in the universe consists of matter, energy, time and space, and nothing else. For the postmodernists, the central point of the issue is not only that the existence of God is unverifiable in the material universe. For them, the very notion of objective verifiability is all by itself dubious, and for that reason, it must not be given any space whatsoever in the postmodern universe. This explains the reason why leading postmodern thinkers like Jacques Derrida, MichelFoucault, and Rorty himself resort to play post-structuralism’s language game and operate according to the epistemological notion of indeterminacy and ambiguity, if only to get rid of issuing absolute statements in reference to the non-existence of God. Unlike their fellow atheists, most especially the proponents of the so-called new atheism like Richard Dawkins,Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Samuel Harris, the postmodern atheists, according to Rorty, treat “moral and scientific beliefs as tools for achieving greater human happiness, rather than as representations of the intrinsic nature of reality.”

Unbelief

Regardless of their differences, however, both the postmodernists and their fellow atheists meet at the same dead end of the road called unbelief. On the one hand, the Enlightenment-oriented atheists' unbelief surfaces in their absolute denial of God as they positively affirm the major tenets of Darwinian evolutionism. Unwilling to seriously consider the availability of evidence and the tenability of arguments that point to the reality of God's existence, they created theirown god after the image of the autonomous self and erected its monument in the secular modern city of man. The postmodernists' unbelief, on the other hand, is hidden beneath their pretension of agnosticism, their defiance of absolute, objective reality and deliberate refusal to committhemselves to any transcendental point of reference. They would rather consign themselves within the bounds of radical relativism instead of subjecting themselves to universal truth principles, or resign themselves to meaninglessness instead of living within the parameters set forth by an absolute moral law that is only possible if God indeed exists. This reminds the Christian believer of the words of the apostle Paul in the New Testament book of Romans: What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (Rom. 1:18-21 NIV). Here then is the very essence of unbelief, whether of the classical or postmodern form, whether atheist, deist or polytheist. It proceeds not from the unavailability of evidence about the truth of God but from the willful suppression of it by human wickedness.

References:

Borne, Etienne.
Atheism.
New York: Hawthorn, 1961.

Noebel, David.
Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews
(2nd Edition). Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Press, 2006.

Rorty, Richard.
Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought In Twentieth-Century America.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Zacharias, Ravi.
Can Man Live Without God?
Nashville, TN: W Publishing, 1994


From the Enlightenment to postmodernity: a brief historical sketch part 4

RELIGION & SPIRITUALITYDECEMBER 28, 2009 BY: EDWIN VARGAS

Coming alongside the new social rearrangement brought about by the postmodern milieu is the rise of a highly technological global society that has not only produced for our own advantage a greatly improved socio-physical environment but also carries with it a new culture of its own to govern the day. “The introduction of new technologies,” says Christian philosopher and theologian Douglas Groothuis of Denver Theological Seminary, “reflects previous philosophical trends, reinforces these trends in novel ways, and sparks the creation of new ideas and patterns of culture.”

Such an arrangement brings with it a transitional principle that applies to the replacement of the ancients' oral tradition by its scribal counterpart; the scribal tradition by the printed book; the text of the printed book by the voices of the radio; the voices sent through radio-waves by the images of the television; and in our case today, the television by the cyberspace, a great deal of which are now being mixed together and for the most part governed by the latest fad.

Replacing the utopians of the Enlightenment-modern era, digitopians of these so-called postmodern days - equipped with the latest and most technologically advanced gadgets readily available at their fingertips - have now entered the scene in a far wider global proportion to paint for us a new picture of how the future should look like. What they have to offer oftentimes find their expression in sci-fi television series, blockbuster movies and video games. Yet of greater importance for us Christians to consider in this regard is the fact that technology has been nearly deified by not a few, as media and social critic Neil Postman puts it,

"… in the sense that people believe technology works, that they rely on it, that they are bereft when denied access to it, that they are delighted when they are in its presence, that for most people it works in mysterious ways, that they condemn people who speak against it, and that in the born-again mode, they will alter their lifestyles, their schedules, their habits, and their relationships to accommodate it. If this be not a form of religious belief, what is?"

Political analyst Stephen Monsma adds,

This drive for human autonomy and mastery apart from God and his will manifest itself in what we call technicism. Technicism reduces all things to the technological; it sees technology as the solution to all human problems and needs. Technology is a savior, the means to make progress and gain mastery over modern, secularized cultural desires.

Lest we follow those Christians who have branded this trend rather too quickly as something that signals the advent of the Antichrist who is now building his kingdom in the high-tech world, perhaps it would be of great help for us to understand that technological advancements, left in themselves, are but a result of a rather sub-conscious human response to what Reformed theologians call as the Cultural Mandate (i.e., God's command to Adam to "cultivate the earth" - Gen. 1:28), a natural expression of the Imago Dei that is still there to be found in every human being (Gen. 1:26-27) however corrupted and deformed in the Fall (Gen. 3).

What is important for us to see in this regard, however, is the present inclination of the human heart, the value that it pays for technology, and behind it, the current operations of the spirit of the age in these so-called postmodern days. It behooves us to cultivate deep spiritual discernment and vigilance on our part, a sacred and solemn duty we cannot afford to do without being theologically oriented enough. Sadly, due to a widespread attitude of theological snobbery now taking its toll among an increasing number of Christian ministers today, even among those who identify themselves with evangelicalism, such a theologically oriented approach to faith, life and ministry does not characterize, at least at this point in time, a great proportion of early 21st century Christianity.

References:

Groothuis, Douglas. The Soul in Cyber-Space. Grand Rapids, IL: Baker, 1997.
Monsma, Stephen. Responsible Technology. Grand Rapids, IL: Eerdmans, 1986.
Postman, Neil. The End of Education. New York: Knopf, 1995.


Ces textes sont mis en ligne par cet âne qui se mêle de tout, mais qui partage aussi beaucoup... Aux lecteurs et passants de se faire une idée de tout ce qui est proposé ici. Il y a un fil. Ce fil, enfin c'est ce que l'âne postmoderne souhaite faire comprendre, est qu'il se trouve dans une certaine simplicité des choses, cette simplicité que l'on peut qualifier d'essentiel, qui est le fondement de la vie, et de tout, se situe dans la transmission et le DON, le discret et l'invisible, invisible bien visible, pour qui sait voir, sait comprendre, sait s'émerveiller... Mais, dans cette postmodernité qui nous étonne, est-ce que les hommes, finalement, sont les mieux placés pour parler de l'Essentiel? De simplicité? De transmission? De DON?... Où sont les femmes postmodernes reliées à l'essentiel, capables de "décrire" ce tout et cette harmonie qui est ce tout?

Il y a des femmes qui le peuvent. Pas toutes. Beaucoup se sont laissées emporter par les sirènes du consumérisme et de la vanité.

Mais prenons l'écrivain Christiane Singer par exemple, par exemple son petit livre, "Où cours-tu? Ne sais-tu pas que le ciel est en toi? (2001). Je lis à la page 44:

Que veut dire ce noeud? Ce noeud que, dans le commentaire talmudique, Dieu porte dans la nuque quand Moïse l'aperçoit de dos.

Le noeud exprime le mystère du monde créé. Rien n'est ni linéaire, ni causal, ni prévisible.

Le noeud nous dit: prends soin du monde et de tout ce qui te rencontre. L'inattention te coûterait cher, te ferait rater les plus grands rendez-vous. Tu ne sais jamais à quoi le fil que tu tiens est relié de l'autre côté. A l'autre bout.

Chaque inconnu qui te rencontre peut être le messager des dieux.

"Exercez l'hospitalité en tous temps car beaoucoup d'entre vous, sans le savoir, ont hébergé des anges!"
(Saint Paul - Lettre aux Hébreux 13:1)

Il existe des E-communicants... Ce sont des postmodernes qui n'ont pas coupé le fil...ou qui le réparent, qui remettent les choses en place, les points sur les i, qui cherchent la justice et la vérité... Cet âne en est un. Nous sommes au chapitre mais où va donc cet âne?