Mr. Moderate

The postmodernist creed is defined by “incredulity toward metanarratives” and “the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation,” asking “Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?” “[A] metanarrative (sometimes master- or grand narrative) ‘is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience.’” In simpler terms, postmodernism denies the possibility of useful generalizations and also denies even the possibility of deriving any legitimate conclusions that might be drawn from bulk analysis of data. Since the end goal of scientific inquiry is all about deriving metanarratives and conclusions of that sort, it can be reasonably asserted that postmodernism is committed to the destruction of scientific thinking.

The fundamentalist creed can be summarized as a belief “that human existence is innately sinful but offers redemption and eternal peace in heaven - thus representing a belief in a universal rule and a telos for humankind.” The fundamentalist thus asserts an extremely specific and highly detailed metanarrative which the fundamentalist asserts must be believed exactly as stated without variation, in spite of the fact that many variations clearly exist. The fundamentalist similarly denies the legitimacy of scientific inquiry on the grounds that any knowledge obtained from scientific inquiry will necessarily either duplicate the metanarrative of the Holy Bible or else it will not, and in either case such knowledge is at least useless and possibly dangerous. Thus, the fundamentalist is also profoundly committed to the destruction of scientific thinking.

My personal metanarrative is predicated upon scientific inquiry as the sole possible producer of legitimate beliefs, and that the foundational belief produced by scientific inquiry is that all living things are ethically obligated to survive, and to ensure the survival of as many diverse forms of life as possible. (See HERE for more.) Needless to say, I believe that my personal metanarrative is the only sane belief system of the three I present in this post.
Continue reading ‘Competing Metanarratives’ »

When he derived his Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein unwittingly gave birth to postmodernism. Einstein asserted that, in physics, there was no privileged observation point. Every observer observed facts according to their point of observation, and differences in observation were explainable by the differences in the points from which the observers observed things.

The above idea means a lot in the context of physics. But postmodernism takes that idea and extends it in unjustifiable ways to assert that every idea is unprivileged, and that nobody has a better view of the facts of any given matter than does anybody else. At the end, postmodernism denies that objective facts even exist at all. To a dedicated postmodernist, every idea is the opinion of one person, and no person is privileged by having the “correct” idea. This leads to utter rubbish in everything written by any postmodernist.
Continue reading ‘Postmodern Religion’ »