Intro to "Stuck in Our Heads"

I'm writing something for my philosophy class to read. I thought I'd share some of it.
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The idea of definite, unchangeable truth has come on hard times in some circles these days. For one thing, the Western world has seen so many developments in science these last decades that most Westerners have come to expect constant change and development. Throughout most of history, changes like these have taken place so infrequently that it was always easy to affirm that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Most cultures deeply admire the elderly, because they are the ones who have been around the longest and thus know the most.

But Western culture has seen some significant changes in these attitudes. We expect new "truths" to come and overthrow old "truths" on a regular basis. In technology, "Moore's law" expects science to shrink the size of computer circuits in half every two years. The elderly are now the least likely to be able to operate our iPods and laptops. Our children frequently go further in their education than we did and often have much wider exposure to the world than we did by far at their age. In the words of Louis Armstrong, "They'll learn much more than I'll ever know." ["What a Wonderful World"]

One of the most significant scientists at the turn of the twentieth century was initially advised not to go into physics. The one advising him thought that all the major discoveries in physics had already been made! [to Max Planck] Was he ever wrong! And the "truth" everyone knew in the early years of the 1900's was that you couldn't split an atom. After all, that's what an a-tom was supposed to be, something "un" - "cuttable." But Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved this idea wrong under a devastating mushroom cloud!

It is somewhat popular these days in some Christian circles to pinpoint the problem with Western culture as its failure to believe in absolute truth, universal truths that are true no matter who you are or where you go. Ironically, there are also plenty out there who are more than happy to deny that absolute truth exists--that there is only what is true for me and what is true for you. As usual, both sides in this debate are usually guilty of sloppy thinking.

For example, if I were to say, "There is no such thing as absolute truth," I have made a statement of absolute truth. But I cannot make a statement of absolute truth if there is no absolute truth. My statement is therefore false as I have worded it. But the fact of the matter is, it is really only in certain areas that most people don't believe in absolute truth. For example, most people do not think of math as a subject where the answers are a matter of opinion. We tend to think of 2+2=4 as a statement that is absolutely true. No one would say, "Well, 2+2 may equal 4 to you, but it equals 7 to me." It is mostly in areas like religion and ethics where we start to become "relativists" about truth, people who believe truth depends on who's talking.

By the same token, the current relativistic Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, is not just the product of evil hearts and cultural brainwashing. The world has become much smaller than it used to be. When sub-cultures--including Christian subcultures--used to isolate themselves from everyone else, it was easy to attribute differences in beliefs and practices to the "evilness" or stupidity of the other groups. But the convenience of traveling the world, not to mention the internet, has made it much harder to think this way about everyone else outside our group. Rather than being able to dismiss "straw men," simplistic caracatures of other people's ideas, now we regularly come "face to face" with others who disagree with us.

The result is real uncertainty about what is true. Students who have been raised in the church and who go to Christian colleges travel the world and find others who have completely different presuppositions and perspectives on religion and life. Faith crises sometimes ensue. Even among Christians, we get to know godly people from other churches with different Christian perspectives. We find ourselves thinking, "This person is as close to God as anyone from my group, but she doesn't believe the same things I do." One preacher has one interpretation; another has another. Who is right? Is there a right answer? A certain segment of the church today, the emergent church, has accordingly come to espouse what it calls a "generous orthodoxy," one that tries to major on the major and not worry about the kinds of things that specific groups have tended to argue (and kill) over in the past. [Brian McClaren]

So do we abandon the idea of truth altogether? It's hard to imagine that Christianity could be Christianity if we did? What about fixed and definite truths? Again, it seems like Christianity would become something else if it did. At the same time, if God is a God of truth, then surely hiding our head in the sand in the face of legitimate challenges is no good either. If we have true faith, we shouldn't fear asking these questions, at least in theory.

These are all the challenges of post-modernism, the philosophical age in which we find ourselves. It would be bad logic to dismiss all of its challenges simply because of this word, this label. There are aspects to the post-modern challenge that Christians will want to reject. But there are also aspects to the post-modern challenge that seem legitimate. This chapter is about these issues of truth that Western culture is currently facing. How can and should we think about truth in the age "after" modernism?