Actually, I can say that science helps to contribute to morality. We would not have known how AIDS was spread if it were not for science. Safer sex and abstinance would not be promoted as much if not for that.

I imagine that they’d have been promoted just as much. The Church was pro-abstinance long before AIDS. And in the absence of evidence, people always seem to guess that disease is related to morality, anyway. Back in the Middle Ages, the most common strategies to treat the plague were increasing church attendance, outlawing profanity/blasphemy, and encouraging couples to get married. As the clergy reported, they succeeded on each of these except for actually stopping the plague. How would things have been different if someone had been there to explain how disease spreads? Would they have cleaned up their open sewers and started washing their hands, or would they have decided that singing more hymns was the better way to go?

We also learned from the age of Enlightenment. It was not all bad.

No, indeed not! As I said, postmodernism is not anti-modernism. I like penicillin and airplanes and TiVo as much as the next guy.

Actually, I can say that science helps to contribute to morality. We would not have known how AIDS was spread if it were not for science. Safer sex and abstinance would not be promoted as much if not for that. A condom would still be thought of a means pregnancy prevention, when it helps to prevent more than that. Though not fool-proof of course.

Science gives us the tools, but it doesn’t give us the wisdom to know how to use them. The same technology that can power a city can also blow it up. The same power that can cure diseases can also create biological weapons. It’s like that line from Jurassic Park “You were so concerned with whether you could that you never questioned whether you should.” Or what MLK said, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” I’m all for science, but it seems we need something more than just science to achieve wisdom.

I don’t think you have to read a book full of dense critical theory, though, to see that technological progress is currently linked to a ruthless economic system. We are told that the loss of certain things is the “price of progress.” But there’s usually not a lot of discussion of what an acceptable price might be for a particular packet of “progress”. And those who end up paying the highest price are usually not consulted at all.

We’re seeing this kind of thing all the time where I live – in a small rural town that is slowly being overtaken by the Chicago suburbs. Every time a new cookie-cutter subdivision, temple to consumerism (i.e. strip malls), or landfill goes up we’re told that it’s just the “price of progress”.

I can’t see how those things go together, but then I’m a rationalist, too. Myth and reason together seem very illogical.

Horkheimer & Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment

Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity. Men pay for the increase in their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator toward men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them. The man of science knows things in so far as he can make them. In this way their “in itself” becomes a “for him”. In this transformation the essence of things is revealed as always the same, a substratum of domination.

So, it’s a kind of inversion of Arthur C. Clarke’s observation that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.”

Horkheimer and Adorno were writing the above in 1944, as refugees from Germany. So the idea that the Enlightenment had a tragic flaw, “reason’s disease” – the desire for power – was pretty clear to them.

I don’t think you have to read a book full of dense critical theory, though, to see that technological progress is currently linked to a ruthless economic system. We are told that the loss of certain things is the “price of progress.” But there’s usually not a lot of discussion of what an acceptable price might be for a particular packet of “progress”. And those who end up paying the highest price are usually not consulted at all.

Mike C said,

May 23, 2007 at 10:38 am

If you noticed my quote, Spong said it was. He even says it in his book “Why Christianity Must Change or Die”. You’d have to read his books to understand.

I’ll do that. I have one on my list, but I’m not sure how soon I can get to it.

Great! I highly recommend “Why Christianity Must Change or Die” and “A New Christianity For A New World.” You may also find his artcles on Beliefnet interesting.

We also learned from the age of Enlightenment. It was not all bad.

The postmodern person looks at all of this and concludes that the Modern claims of inevitable scientific and moral “progress” are nothing more than a myth – and that while science and Enlightenment rationalism can certainly provide us a lot more toys with which to entertain and/or destroy ourselves, it is incapable of providing us with the ethical or spiritual resources to attain its own utopian ideals.

Actually, I can say that science helps to contribute to morality. We would not have known how AIDS was spread if it were not for science. Safer sex and abstinance would not be promoted as much if not for that. A condom would still be thought of a means pregnancy prevention, when it helps to prevent more than that. Though not fool-proof of course.

We would not know what contributes to cervical cancer in women, if not for science. Again, we go back to safer sex or abstinance. So in that respect the more we know, the more we can reinforce some ideals. However, I do not agree with the Religious Reich’s idea of promoting abstinance only. Teenagers have a tendency to not listen and follow their natural urges, too immature to control themselves. So, it is important they at least know that condoms make sex safer, but not safe.

It is also not psychologically condusive to have anarchy either. Social Darwinism was not the best way to improve society. We learned from that, so utilitarism is not always the best policy to make the majority happy. Anything that oppresses people is not a good thing, just because it makes the majority happy. There are exceptions to the rule “The greater good of the majority outweighs the greater good of the one.” Even Tuvok went back to save the one at the risk of his own life.

If you noticed my quote, Spong said it was. He even says it in his book “Why Christianity Must Change or Die”. You’d have to read his books to understand.

I’ll do that. I have one on my list, but I’m not sure how soon I can get to it.

Regarding Postmodernism, I’m glad to see you read through all those quotes. It is many things, not all of which I endorse. However, reading through those critical quotes it seems that many of them either don’t really understand postmodernity or else were deliberately mischaracterizing it. For instance, “post-” is not the same as “anti-”, so post-modernism is not anti-modernism. Again, it’s a both/and approach rather than an either/or. It’s not a rejection of rationality or the individual, but it is a rejection of the claim that rationalism or individualism are the only appropriate ways of viewing the world. Postmodernism tends instead to be more communal and more open to diverse ways of knowing (i.e not just “reason”, but also through emotion, intuition, story, myth, image, etc.)

Postmodernity, as it’s simplest, is a skepticism towards absolute truth claims. Truth, rather, is a construct of cultures, individuals and societies. It resists the absolutizing and totalitarian tendencies of “metanarratives” (like Communism, Capitalism, Fascism, Christianity, Enlightenment Rationalism, etc.) that oppress the Other by claiming that its view of the world is the only valid one. In contrast postmodernity, similar to the point I was making in my fifth post, affirms that there are many different types of rationality and therefore many different ways of looking at the world.

It was actually born in response to World War II and the atrocities that came out of it, as well as many of the other ways that Modernism, science, and the so-called “Enlightenment” project has served to actually be a curse on society rather than a blessing. Keep in mind that the age of Enlightenment has also been an age of oppression, totalitarianism, colonialism, environmental destruction, nuclear war, mass genocide, biological warfare, scientifically caused disease (e.g. cancer), unsustainable habits of consumption, corporate exploitation and the widening gaps between rich and poor. The postmodern person looks at all of this and concludes that the Modern claims of inevitable scientific and moral “progress” are nothing more than a myth – and that while science and Enlightenment rationalism can certainly provide us a lot more toys with which to entertain and/or destroy ourselves, it is incapable of providing us with the ethical or spiritual resources to attain its own utopian ideals. The critics you quote say that postmoderns have given up on the Modern project prematurely, but after the horrific and bloody legacy of the 20th Century (not to mention our current misguided crusade to bring the great Enlightenment ideals Democracy and Capitalism to those “un-enlightened religionists” in Iraq) I see little evidence to suggest that Modernity will actually succeed if we just “give it a little more time”. Do we just keep giving it more time until it runs our entire civilization into the ground?

Anyhow, sorry for the rant, but you can tell that I’m just a little skeptical about whether Modernity has really been so great for our society as its proponents claim. Of course, the solution is not just to reject Modernism wholesale, but to attempt to keep the good while moving beyond the excesses and absolutisms, and perhaps also recovering some of the babies of the past (like story and myth and healthy faith) that the Enlightenment threw out with the bathwater of superstition and blind faith.

I don’t know, maybe we come from two different worlds or ways of thinking.

That’s very likely. That’s usually how the cultural difference between the two is described.

I think they just used different categories back then. The Hebrews had a different way of slicing up the animal world than we do (since ours are based on Aristotelian categories). It’s just a matter of how you define the words.

This is true. They did catagorize a lot of things and various people differently back then.

My exhusband insisted teh Bible was inerrant. I said, “Ok you believe a bat is a bird?” He said, “No, a bat’s a mammal.” Ah, but the Bible says a bat is a bird.

I think they just used different categories back then. The Hebrews had a different way of slicing up the animal world than we do (since ours are based on Aristotelian categories). It’s just a matter of how you define the words. If your definition of “bird” is “any flying creature” then a bat is a bird.

My exhusband insisted teh Bible was inerrant. I said, “Ok you believe a bat is a bird?” He said, “No, a bat’s a mammal.” Ah, but the Bible says a bat is a bird. He didn’t believe me until I showed him. Then I ran him down a whole list of things like that. He can’t believe it the Bible is wrong and still thinks the Bible is the best thing since fire.