apologetics, logic and justice

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

I was reminded recently about the classic logical fallacy of post-modernism — the refusal of all meta-narratives functions itself as meta-narrative and before you know it PoMo will eat itself. Now, I have no argument with that — the logic works. But somehow the latent post-modernist in me doesn’t find it a very satisfying line. We can also consider the description by Curtis Chang of a conversation he had (discussed in Engaging Unbelief):

After an hour of lengthy debate, I thought I had maneuvered him into admitting a critical inconsistency in his logic. All my apologetics textbooks assured me that this represented a decisive accomplishment. Surely I had “won” a significant battle!

[My conversation partner] contemplated his inconsistency for a moment, shrugged and replied, “Yeah, well, so what? … Who’s to say that your logic isn’t all made up? Who’s to say that everything isn’t just made up?”

It seems like the logic isn’t the key issue. Perhaps we get a clue as to what is from the classic definition of post-modernism from Lyotard:

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives.

and the comment by Derrida that

De-construction is justice.

Postmodernism isn’t formed as a logical alternative, but is essentially a distrust of the big stories. At heart it is a justice thing. (Yeah, ‘Whose justice?’, thank you Prof.MacIntyre , but we’ll press on.) As has been pointed out often, it’s a distrust based on seeing the injustice that the meta-narratives bring — oppression of minority views etc.

Look at the current attacks on religion. Some might have a pop at issues of rationality and belief, but most of the issues are the apparent controlling nature and forcing of views, etc.

If you read Dan Kimball’s excellent ‘They like Jesus, but not the church”. The complaints against the church are primarily in this kind of category — it’s judgmental and negative, etc., etc.

So, while the logical problem is important, maybe it is not the correct point of contact. More on that anon…

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Permalink | October 8th, 2007

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