Are you Positive?

In my previous two entries I employed the postmodern “hermeneutic of suspicion,” applying it to the space program and medical community. Next time I’ll apply it to the evangelical theological community… just for fun.

Do you remember the title of this Hitchcock film?

Both of the aforementioned communities have a starting point, they assume that their presuppositions and foundations are “right,” by which they justify their pursuits and expenditures. 

As a matter of fact, during the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, the scientific community was dubbed as the final arbiter of Truth. How did that happen?

It all began not with, "I doubt, therefore I might be," but with cogito ergo sum — "I think therefore I am"

Modernist ideology declared REASON as authoritative because REVELATION as interpreted by the Roman Church had become lethal (see entries 13, 23 Jan & 10 May '06). Modernism's promise was: Science working through Institutions will create Utopia on earth for the autonomous Individual. 

If it was all for the autonomous individual why are the men bowed, subservient to the goddess of Progress?

August Comte (1798-1857) affirmed that the “scientific or positivist spirit will, by an invincible law of progress of the human spirit, replace theological beliefs or metaphysical explanations.” 1 

There was therefore no longer place in the public sphere for subjective opinions. Positivists believed that human knowledge “could be totally objective and, therefore, true in the absolute sense” 2 ; it was without bias. 

Positivism presupposed that “humans always act rationally.” 3 

Or as Descartes put it, “it suffices to judge well, in order to do well.” 4

August Comte, the French father of sociology, sought to move toward a “religion of Humanity.”

Modernist Man had vehemently and violently rejected the Roman Church’s interpretation of reality and placed His faith in His own Reason to discover Truth. Human Reason co-opted the Catholic Church’s claim to infallibility. 

Humans will act logically, preached the new Man. 

Progress is inherently good, taught the new priests — university professors. 

The real world is material, announced the new apostles — the scientists.

Thus, there was great optimism at end of the 19th century. The  20th century was to be a century of peace, the crown of all centuries where technology, transportation, medicine, progressive understanding of history would end human strife. 

“There will be war no more!” was the mantra. Humans would no longer exploit other humans. The 20th would be the century of elevated human reason. Reason, not revelation, would finally rule. And it did. 

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, declared, “God is dead.” Nietzsche’s superMan was a new kind of creator. Zarathustra himself warned, “but all creators are harsh.” 6

This is the Superman that was expected at the beginning of the 20th century 

This is the superman, in line with Nietzsche, that actually showed up

The reign of Human Reason caused the greatest collective bloodbath in the history of mankind. The Modernist superMen — Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Tito — led by Human Reason (these men clearly rejected religion and God) wielded ideology, technology, transportation, medicine, and a progressive understanding of history to create highly efficient means of killing other men before they could die from the diseases that modern medicine could not heal.

Donald Shriver points out that from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries, 34 million people were killed in wars. Yet in just one century — the 20^th “Century of Peace” — 107,800 million people were killed in warfare. 7 

Alexandre Solzhenitsyn summarized: “The most optimistic century ended as the most cannibalistic.”

Modernist Secular Man's evil geometrically surpassed that of religious men

CONCLUSION 

Believers need to acknowledge crimes done in the name of Christ. People really were tortured and killed in the name of Christ. Jesus predicted that this would be done by men who “neither knew the Father nor me” (John 16:2-3). 

But the Secular & Scientific Institutions that promulgated Humanism & Modernism are also guilty of the same crimes (on a greater scale) as the Church that they were allegedly rescuing people from: unjustly claiming to be the spokesmen for Truth, perpetuating itself at other’s expense, guilty of atrocities such as experiments done on human beings, torture, rape and mass murder. 

QUESTIONS

If the Roman Church and guilty believers should acknowledge their crimes, should not Modernist Man do the same? 

If Man always acts logically and people today reject the Church because of the Crusades and the Inquisitions, should they not also reject Science, technology, Secularism and Humanism  which are culpable in the extreme? 

In light of these things, how is Modernist Secular Man more trustworthy than pre-Modern Religious man?

Enter Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault… the postmodernists.

1 translated from «La pratique de la Philosophie de A à Z», 355.

2 Paul Hiebert, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, 98.

3 Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 49. 

4 René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, 50.

5 Paul Hiebert, Missiological Implications of Epistemological Shifts, 3, 11.

6 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, 116-117.

7 Donald W. Shriver, Jr. An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics, 65.