Secularism vs. secularism - Biblical Christianity wins! Will postmodernism, multiculturism and cultural relativism help bring about the defeat of Darwinism and atheism?

Jesus said, "Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand."

Two important questions:

1. Is postmodernism a secular philosophy strongly influenced by atheism and agnosticism?

2. Will postmodernism in some ways help bring about the defeat of Darwinism and atheism/agnosticism?

What is postmodernism?

PBS defines postmodernism thusly:

A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.

Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characterisitic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philospher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism "cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself."

Since postmodernism has an inherent skeptical outlook, no doubt it is a philosophy promoted by individuals who are also atheists and agnostics. For example, the postmodernist philosopher Jacques Derrida said: "So when I say “I rightly pass as an atheist” I know that because of everything that I’ve done so far, say in terms of deconstruction and so on and so forth, I’ve given a number of signs of my being a non-believer in God in a certain way, an atheist".

Obviously, postmodernism and biblical Christianity are totally incompatible and postmodernism is a hindrance to Christian evangelism in many respects. However, could postmodernism ultimately prove to be a greater drag on evolutionism and atheism as a whole?

How postmodernism will help defeat Darwinism and atheism

Professor Eric Hoffman in an academic paper entitled Shall the Righteous Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century wrote:

Ethnicity and race may succumb to liberal modernity, but committed religious populations cannot be assimilated to liberal secularism fast enough to compensate for their demographic advantage in a world of plunging fertility and growing migration. In the end, it is a battle between religious fertility on the one hand, and, on the other, religious decline through the 'assimilation' of religious offspring into secularism. This paper argues that the weakness of secularism and a widening secular-religious fertility gap points toward a religious victory...

The principle of tolerating and 'celebrating' diversity is a corollary of postmodern relativism which opens up space for antimodern religious 'diversities' to take root. If they are demographically-powerful religious movements like Islamism or evangelical Chrisianity, they will exploit this weakness to progressively erode the hegemony of western secular humanism....

In the Europe of tomorrow, immigration and religious fertility will increase the proportion of committed Muslims and Christians, many from the developing world. It may seem fanciful to imagine a moral conservatism uniting white and nonwhite Christians as well as Muslims against 'secular humanists'. However, a version of this process has occurred in the United States, and it can be argued that the cocktail of cultural relativism, secular exhaustion and demographic change is even more potent in Europe than America. The division between native ethnic groups and immigrant groups is currently more important in Europe, but as the Muslim and religious Christian minorities grow, they will become as important for conservative politicians as the religious Hispanics of America whom the Republicans have so assiduously courted. At some point, it will make more electoral sense for European conservatives to appeal to a trans-ethnic coalition of moral conservatives than it will to stress anti-immigrant themes and ethno-nationalism. The liberal-left will find it extremely difficult to craft a defense of secularism given its investment in cultural relativism, the exhaustion of its secular religions, and its laissez-faire attitude to demographic change.

Standing back from the fray, we can think of demography as the achilles heel of
liberalism.

In our next post, we will look more deeply into matters through looking at European and Western World evolutionism and atheism.

In the meantime, if you haven't read these post yet, I would suggest doing so:

UK and biblical Christianity:

Biblical Christianity is rising in the UK

France and evangelical Christianity

French scholars say evangelicalism is likely the fastest growing religion in France

Immigrant evangelical churches are a fast growing movement in France

Sweden and evangelical Christianity

The leaning tower of Swedish belief in evolution

Swedish creationists are being contacted about the Question Evolution! Campaign due to help from evolutionists!

Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias on postmodernism



Related resources:

Question Evolution! Campaign

15 questions for evolutionists

Responses to the 15 Questions: part 1 - Questions 1-3

Responses to the 15 Questions: part 2 - Questions 4–8

Responses to the 15 Questions: part 2 - Questions 9-15

Graphic credits:

Crooked house, public domain: http://www.clker.com/clipart-16078.html