Dr. Mohler titles one section of his 2-10-17 Briefing “Are American universities equipped to defend the truth, or one of the reasons truth is so disputed?” It uses a NY Times opinion piece “American Universities MustTake a Stand”, by Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, as a starting
point. Unfortunately, Dr. Mohler dismisses the article itself as partisan. Then
he says,
“What I found really interesting in
the article was certain language that is shocking ... in its own context....
President Botstein in defending the university says that one of the purposes of
the American university is,
“The honoring of the distinction
between truth and falsehood.”
Now that’s really helpful to see.
Unfortunately, the American college and university over the course of the last
generation has been doing just about anything within its power to subvert the
very existence of objective truth or the knowability of truth and fundamentally
the distinction between truth and falsehood.
.... the major blame comes in
the explosion in the academic world in the 1980s and 90s known as
postmodernism. The postmodernists argued for the relativity of all truth.”
This is a familiar theme for Dr. Mohler and other
conservative Christians, but it is a highly distorted and misleading
description. Perhaps Dr. Mohler’s own academic background and position leads
him to forget the very great role science and engineering departments play in
universities. Add to that education in medicine and business. None of these
great academic enterprises have been touched by postmodernism. They are all
devoted to the highest standards of scholarship, which, as Leon Botstein says in
the article, dictate “respect for the rules of evidence, rigorous skepticism
and the honoring of the distinction between truth and falsehood.” This also
applies to the vast majority of work in the arts, humanities, and social
sciences. It was only these fields which were touched at all by the pernicious
academic fad of postmodernism, which denied objective truth, cutting the ground
from under its own feet. But
postmodernists, I believe, were never more than a small minority in any of
these fields. Postmodernism has negligible influence on most of what happens in
universities today. On the contrary, respect for careful reasoning based on
evidence is the governing ethos.
And that is the source of the unease voiced in Botstein’s
article, because Donald Trump – the birther, the fount of falsehoods about
every subject from the crime rate to crowd size to voter fraud to vaccine
safety to global warming to the threat of terrorism from refugees – is the antithesis
of respect for truth and the rules of evidence, let alone that crucial check on
false beliefs, “rigorous skepticism.”
When the importance of the difference between truth and
falsehood came up, Dr. Mohler chose to focus on one of his favorite myths – that
American universities have “been doing just about anything within [their]...
power to subvert the very existence of objective truth or the knowability of
truth and fundamentally the distinction between truth and falsehood” – and to
ignore the very real, imminent threat to respect for the distinction between
truth and falsehood now occupying the Oval Office. Perhaps Dr. Mohler is afraid
of backlash from his constituency.
Something ironic about this fixation on postmodernism is
that Christians themselves have availed themselves of its tactics. Christians
believe in objective truth, including scientific truth. But when rigorous
scientific investigation reveals something that conservative Christians don’t
want to believe – like the great age of the earth or the evolutionary origin of
our species or the non-occurrence of a worldwide flood – the truth of science
is relativized: it is not science that is telling us this, but "scientism" – just
another worldview. But conservatives part with postmodernists in that they “know”
that there is one and only one absolutely true worldview, their own.
Some liberal Christians are more postmodern. For them there
are no Christian truth claims. Christianity is not the kind of thing that is
true or false. It is a narrative that gives life meaning.
Another irony: as an atheist, I share more with conservative
than with liberal Christians. I agree that Christianity makes truth claims,
and, as Dr. Mohler affirms, “If they are not true, then Christianity offers no
hope.” They are either true or false; there is no middle ground, I agree. But as
an atheist, I believe they’re false.
You make some good points and seem like an honorable person. But what I believe Mohler meant in the last paragraph of your quotes of his, refers specifically to sociocultural truth not scientific truth.
ReplyDeleteAlso, evangelical Christians and political conservatives come in many shapes and sizes with respect to "Origins" belief systems, so even though you've been quite careful in portraying the bases of your concerns, you need to be even more careful. Reductionism, over-generalizations, and stereotyping is where many arguments begin.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, westr. You have the honor of being the first commenter on this new blog. I apologize for such a prolix response to your succinct comment. I'll break it into several parts.
ReplyDeleteYou say that when Mohler spoke of postmodernism's claim of "the relativity of all truth", that he meant sociocultural, not scientific truth. I agree that would make most sense, since when relativism comes up in conversation, it generally has to do with moral relativism, and that is the area in which Christians are most keen to assert their knowledge of absolutes. However, I have two reasons for disagreeing with you: 1) what Dr. Mohler actually says, and 2) what the article he was responding to was about.
1) Dr. Mohler frequently attacks what he calls “the academic elites.” He views the world in terms of a clash of worldviews. The cultural and academic elites, occupying the high ground in Hollywood and the universities, are aggressively pushing a moral revolution that Christians must resist. But the underlying issue, I believe, is not really morality, it is authority. A naturalistic worldview claims science as its authority. Christianity claims the Bible.
Postmodernism explicitly sought to undermine the very ideas of truth and objectivity, which of course is anathema both to secularists who hold a scientific worldview and to fundamentalist Christians who believe they know with certainty the absolute truth. (Namely the Bible, the literal word of God.) So postmodernism, which has been popular in some corners of academe, is a convenient whipping boy. But I think it is ultimately just a distraction.
Dr. Mohler said in this Briefing, “The Christian understands that Christianity itself is based upon the understanding that truth is not only real but is knowable by divine revelation,” and “Unfortunately, the American college and university ... has been doing just about anything within its power to subvert the very existence of objective truth or the knowability of truth....”
There is a much greater threat to Christian certainty than a faddish and paradoxical postmodernism. It is modernism itself, beginning with the scientific revolution. As the president of Bard said, “the highest standards of scholarship” demand “respect for the rules of evidence [and] rigorous skepticism....” These are modern norms of objectivity, which prevail preeminently in our research universities. Christianity’s truth claims– I would say as an atheist – don’t come close to meeting the standard demanded in any respectable secular academic field. Their chief source of evidence, after all, is unsupported hearsay. But, more modestly, I might amend that to: the challenge to Christianity posed by secular norms of objectivity is very serious. And those secular norms have very high prestige, since they have given birth to the very successful institution of science.
Science has changed the very idea of what it is to know. All scientific knowledge is provisional, and weighted by probability. Absolute certainty for non-analytic truths has no home there. This might seem to an old fashioned Christian like a subversion of the very idea of truth and its knowability, but this new (as of the scientific revolution), provisional kind of knowledge, is extremely powerful, and may be the best that humans are capable of.
The only truth that is really important to Dr. Mohler is the absolute truth of Christianity, and he knows that that truth is not at home in modern secular academia. Not only not at home, it is threatened. That, I think, is why he speaks so disparagingly of the academic community, professing to be shocked that a college president would honor the difference between truth and falsehood. He doubts Bard’s faculty even knows the meaning of “truth”! I think that is because he believes academic elites are mired in falsehood, since they deny Christian truth as well as its knowability.
2) The NY Times article that Mohler was responding to with such shock was not seeking to protect respect for truth in “sociocultural” academic fields. Again and again, Botstein spoke of the scientific mission of universities, which he feared the Trump administration threatens:
ReplyDelete“An astonishingly large percentage of graduate students and professors in science today are foreigners and immigrants.”
“If a more practical argument is required, think of the consequences for the quality and future of our colleges and universities, and their highly prized superiority in science and engineering.”
“Moreover, what will become of the major government agencies of scientific research, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation? Will their research agendas be manipulated to fit Mr. Trump’s view of reality?”
“What, then, are we, the leaders of our institutions of higher education, to do when faced with a president who denies facts, who denies science? Is it best to stand by when he repudiates climate science and revives the credibility of discredited theories about autism?”
“Nevertheless, the key to the astonishing success and international superiority of the American university, particularly in science and engineering, has been its resilient commitment to freedom and nondiscrimination, and its respect for truth, no matter how uncomfortable.”
It was this plea for respect and protection of our colleges’ and universities’ core values and their valuable mission to advance knowledge that Dr. Mohler chose as an occasion to attack academia’s respect for and even belief in truth. He sees Christianity as locked in conflict with these institutions over who has authority to say what truth is and how it is known.
Finally, to respond to your second point, it is well taken. I realize that even conservative Christians take a variety of positions on origins. However, I had Dr. Mohler’s views in mind, which I learned from a very remarkable YouTube of a lecture of his called “Why Does the Universe Look So Old?”. He completely fails to answer the question, and doesn’t even address it until the last few minutes of the lecture. I think he might not admit what you claim, that true Bible-believing Christians can have a variety of views on origins: there is only one true view, the Bible’s literal word. Weaken on that, and all is lost.
I admit that I am not very knowledgeable about the varieties of Christian belief. For instance, I used to think that belief in the gospel took faith. And faith, I thought, was less than certainty, and admitted the possibility of doubt. But Christians like Dr. Mohler seem to be committed to absolute certainty. They think they have it. They think they know. Perhaps they also think they need certain knowledge to be saved. I don’t know. Perhaps the need for certainty is not dogma, but a personality trait. Something like Trump’s need to always believe that he is the greatest – he wouldn't know who he was if it weren't true.