Post-Modernism Is Dead, Jesus Is Alive

“These are exciting times. When I finished the Epilogue to Darwin on Trial in 1993, I compared evolutionary naturalism to a great battleship afloat on the Ocean of Reality. The ship's sides are heavily armored with philosophical and legal barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with 16-inch rhetorical guns to intimidate would-be attackers. In appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and that leak widens as more and more people understand it and draw attention to the conflict between empirical science and materialist philosophy. The more perceptive of the ship's officers know that the ship is doomed if the leak cannot be plugged. The struggle to save the ship will go on for a while, and meanwhile there will even be academic wine-and-cheese parties on the deck. In the end, the ship's great firepower and ponderous armor will only help drag it to the bottom. Reality will win.” –Phillip E. Johnson in an article, “How to Sink a Battleship: A call to separate materialist philosophy from empirical science.”

I could never accept the curious suggestion by modern philosophers that the meaning of life breaks down to my own personal preference. That's never how life has been. Reality has never transformed to my preferences. In fact life is quite particular, it doesn't listen to me, about what I want from it, instead it is quite absolute in it's constants. It's quite unchanging, despite my random emotions and thoughts. So I knew instinctively from the very outset that the meaning of life would have to be in relation to an absolute, or set of absolutes.

Post-modernism asserted that there was no truth, no objectivity, and no meaning in life. Deconstruction was central to post-modernism, pulling apart ideologies and belief systems to address presuppositions. Deconstructionism led to a movement in architecture to build building with intentional fragmentation, distortions, and random flaws. Of course in the construction of those buildings, do you think they could scramble the foundation? No. Otherwise the building would collapse. Much is the same with post-modernism. In ripping apart everything and declaring it's meaninglessness it destroyed itself.

You see, when one asserts that there is no truth, all one need do is reply, "Really? Is that true?" (Road-runner tactic) You see, they've destroyed their own foundation and contradicted themselves. Should we take their word for it? Is everything meaningless except for their writing on the subject? You see, this worldview is systemically contradictory. It goes nowhere. It makes no sense. Whenever the post-modernist writes on a topic, they temporarily elevate themselves above their own philosophy of meaninglessness to describe truth statements about a truthless worldview. Contradictory in the extreme.

I knew instinctively that absolutes were necessary. But not just necessary, but that absolutes existed everywhere, they existed in math, in science, in the natural world, in society, in the solar system, in my backyard, they existed everywhere! So how could I believe pop relativism?

Eventually that led me to the idea of the existence of God. It led me to look at the vast complexity of the universe, space, time, and the Earth. I found myself quite amazed by the harmonious complexity. This search for God eventually led me to the cross, to Christianity. Because again if absolutes exist, standards, systems, complexity, then there must be a supreme designer of those systems.

“The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is “something behind it all” is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.” –Paul Davies, internationally known British astrophysicist and author

As a noted commentator Os Guinness has stated, or was it Gary Habermas? Anyway, one of them said that "History is absolute, archaeology is absolute, math is absolute, your bank account is absolute, scientific laws are absolute, why then would philosophy and religion suddenly have to be relative?" Of course this should've occurred to any school child instantly. Unfortunately in the west we seem to have educated ourselves into imbecility. But I've begun to wonder if there is not a psychological issue at hand with post-modernism and relativism. Perhaps it is really quite simple: "If there is no God and no moral accountability then I can sleep with whomever I want to. I can do whatever I want to do. I can screw over anyone I want to. I can make life all about me. I don't want God to exist, therefore he does not exist." Could it really be so simple? Perhaps it could. The anger and vitriol toward a God atheists say doesn't exist explains it all to me quite clearly.

“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation, a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.” –Czeslaw Milosz, "Discreet Charm of Nihilism" (The New York Review of Books, November 19, 1998)