Episode Details

References: (1) “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom. (2) Roughly stated, modernism affirms the existence of ABSOLUTE TRUTHS. Postmodernism affirms the POLAR OPPOSITE: the nonexistence of absolute truths. (3) The fact that postmodernism has SUCCEEDED in uprooting modernism within an entire culture is therefore a NOTEWORTHY ACHIEVEMENT, a feat that NO OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM or religion had previously been able to accomplish. Almost everything, especially issues in the realm of moral and social VALUES, are being RECONSIDERED from the postmodern RUBRIC. Many of the conclusions now being drawn in the CONTEXT of postmodernism DIFFER markedly from the previously drawn conclusions of modernism. (4) For those unfamiliar with the term, METHODOLOGICAL NATURALISM is the human endeavor of explaining everything in terms of NATURAL CAUSES and natural causes ONLY. (5) The new conclusions emerging from within PM have shocked many people. Rather than assimilating into the new morality, some people, including Christianity itself, have begun to form a new COUNTERCULTURE. Like the OT prophets they are foretelling the impending DOOM upon Western culture unless culture turns back, repents from its DALLIANCE with PM and once again proclaims the existence of absolute truth, all is LOST. (6) Though modernism affirms Enlightenment’s idea where REASON is EXALTED, but the REAL CRUX of the issue is that SUPERNATURALISM is DENIED. (7) Can you imagine a world without measurement or weight, a world without system standards of any kind? Think what would happen if there were no alphabet, no metric system, no currencies, no time measurement. Imagine if 1+1 didn’t equal 2. A world without standards is — rather — a world in which there are many standards defined by PERSONAL PREFERENCES, however the person sees fit. (8) Even the most avowed secularist and relativist is likely to agree to certain MATHEMATICAL LAWS or physical laws are reliable across time and cultures, such as the PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM, Newton’s LAWS OF MOTION, or the law of GRAVITATION ATTRACTION. But all the same people will contradict themselves and say there are NO ABSOLUTES. They will say that morality cannot be considered absolute and unchanging. Our culture has gone from having a decidedly defined understanding of right and wrong to adhering to a “WHATEVER GOES” worldview. Moral RELATIVISM rules the day now. (9) The second of the 3 dissenters is Charles Darwin. In 1859 he added insult to injury with his monumental book, “The Origin of Species.”Darwin undermined the CHRISTIAN VIEW of God as a creative and moral authority. (10) The Bible says, “Wisdom is justified by all her children” (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:35). Let’s consider the children of Darwin’s theory of evolution. If a loving, almighty God made man, then human life is VALUABLE and SACRED. But if Darwin’s theory of evolution is true, then we are simply the product of TIME AND CHANCE, and there is NO MORALITY and NO INTRINSIC WORTH of human life. (11) Darwin’s evolution frees sinful man to do as he wishes — and to whom he chooses. Darwin himself understood this. He wrote in his Autobiography that one who rejects God “can have this RULE OF LIFE, as far as I can see, ONLY to follow those IMPULSES AND INSTINCTS which are the STRONGEST or which SEEM TO HIM to be the best ones.” (12) It was Darwin’s theory — carried to its logical conclusion — that led to the death 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and the untold deaths of Christian people at the hands of German Nazis. This is episode 276.