http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-23-santorum-excerpt_x.htm

I realise now that materialism and empiricism are interchangeable…and my curiosity and too much time in front of a computer this morning has lead me to believe that it’s a term used in philosophy - but i haven’t come across it in political philosophy, geography, sociology, law etc. Interesting. Another reminder of how lingo can blind.

materialism and empiricism can be interchangable

Rev sorry as the above posts indicate it easy to mix both up even when your trying to be clear… one of my pet likes is the debate of Christianity against scientific materialism.

A bit off track I know, but I’m just curious!!

And I said before, and meant again for materialism to be taken as the scientific understanding that all that is true is what we can actually see and test. Not economic materialism, but the materialism that says that all that is true is observable.

rev

“I am more post modern than modern”

and i would have a liberal dash of both in me… but it is my aim to rid myself of the world and follow and be like Christ…

“I do not deny universal truth, and the fact is I know of know post modern that does, they just believe than not all truth is universal, and there is relativity involved.”

if you don’t deny universal truth you are not truly postmodern.

i don’t believe everything that proclaims to be truth is true for everyone either.. never have never will

it is true ‘for me’ that i prefer chocolate over vanilla but that may not be true for you.

but this is a different order of truth that there is a God who has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ and is going to call all to account for themselves one day… as far as postmodernism goes this is truth relative to the holder only and we should not presume to say that this is something that others should have to believe for themselves .. its a chocolate v vanilla question

“I find it quite funny that you would say I deny anything about God,”

when i said “and if you do you have denied the existence of God or the truth of Gods moral purpose etc.” i didn’t specifically mean you rev but more generally anyone that says they adhere to postmodernism/modernism and actually understands what they are saying are by definition denying God. You don’t campaign for the labour party by joining the conservatives.

if there is any truth in the life and existence of Jesus Christ .. something that all humanity needs to take into account irrespective of culture sex beliefs race history (i am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but through me) then modernism/posmodernism along with evolutionary materialism gnosticism polytheism hinduism islamism are necessarily false.. lies.. garden paths that lead you away from the truth

there is nothing that we need from these beliefs - they cannot add anything to Christianity - that does not mean they have no truth whatsoever but all truth is God’s truth..

“I have never heard you rail against materialism, nor the precepts of modernism.”

i copied this from my own web site that i know you have visited either ’shellybeach blog’ or ‘jesus loves white trash’

“money is a strange thing.. we werent meant to have money - it is a human construction designed to deal with our relationships with each other separate from God.

God designed us to share his creation but in our rebellion we want to own his creation and be master of it ourselves and money helps us do that.

Money is not a neutral thing… it is more powerful than sex,power, material things, position, fame etc because money offers them all… good things can be done with money of course but as humans we are (in our natural state of rebellion) unable to do the right thing with it separate from God’s grace… it is only ever through Gods grace that i will ever do any good with what i have.”

there… spoke against material/consumerism

who am i
what is my purpose
what went wrong
where do i go from here

these questions are answered by the Christian worldview in a complete and non contradictory way

and the thing is whether your a stay at home mum, dying of cancer in hospital, running the country or starving in africa .. we all have a lifelong quest to answer these questions… as Christians we believe that we have answered these questions… the problem the church faces is how do we get our answers across to our neighbours when (in one sense) they seem to be speaking another language?

I believe God transcends time and space and therefore exists to our understanding in paradox, which is the denial of modernity. God is both part of us, and seperate to us. He sustains the universe, yet indwells us. Ect.

So I find post modern thought to be much closer to Christ than modern thought. I have never heard you rail against materialism, nor the precepts of modernism.

I do not deny universal truth, because universal truth is a person, not a concept. I find it quite funny that you would say I deny anything about God, I stand by Jesus and a more literal truth of His life than many of the “fundies” on this sight.

rev

I’m not saying that any world view other than Christianity has no truth in it at all.. I am saying that ultimately and fundamentally they contradict Christianity and as such are irreconcileable

“God alone is the truth (Jesus I guess) - we have glimpses of part of that truth. The way we explain what we understand to be the truth is a version of the truth.”

But if we have 2 different versions of the same subject (ie God) and one affirms his existence (Christianity) and the other denies his existence (materialism) both cannot be true.

Postmodernism does not trump the law of non-contradiction

God does not trump the law of non-contradiction

Rev

“why then do you spend so much time and energy fighting against what is only a part of one particular world view?”

i don’t. this is not the only string i comment on nor is it the only conversation i have. Just ask Janet about our conversations on scientific materialism that we have had in the past. I do however think that this is a (if not THE) biggy that our culture faces… i believe that consumerism/materialism have its roots in postmodernism/moral relativism and that we should be battling this as strongly as we can..

George Barna has said

“Almost everyone in the U.S. believes that truth exists. However, a large majority of both adults and teenagers, Christian and non-Christian, contends that there is no absolute moral truth. More than two out of three adults and more than four out of five teenagers argue that truth is always relative to the individual and the circumstances. While most of these people describe themselves as followers of Christ and say that the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings, they nevertheless believe that truth is based on feelings, experience or emotion.

“This is one of the great deceptions of our age,” Barna pointed out. “Embracing relativism under the guise of Christian faith facilitates comfort with sin. By claiming the authority to determine right from wrong, we crown ourselves the kings and queens of reality, yet we have no such authority and we constantly pay the price for the arrogance of believing and acting like we are in control of our destiny and experience. What an affront it is to God for us to claim His name and protection but to resist His moral truths on the basis of human feelings.”

“I actually believe that within a Christian world view, there are aspects of postmodernism, and modernism”

I believe that Christianity holds the truth and is the world view that answers the questions of life as Jesus would answer them.. i would re-word your above statement… ‘within postmodernism and modernism there are aspects of Christianity’… but even so they are both fundamentally ‘anti-God’

“And communicating within both of these world views the truth of Jesus, is of primary importance.”

This is my point… if you are a modernist or postmodernist you cannot by definition be Christian.

If you are postmodernist you have a worldview that necessarily is anti God and you would be basically denying yourself. you may as well say that you are trying to communicate the truth of Jesus from within Satanism.. in fact i think you would have a better time as Satan knows that God exists and that truth is absolute for all people in all cultures.

Being or communicating from within something means that you have taken on the primary tenets of a belief system, if you have not done so then you can’t call yourself a modernist or a postmodernist. and if you do you have denied the existence of God or the truth of Gods moral purpose etc.

The concept that we should be communicating the truth of Jesus from ‘within’ these systems is absolutely baffling… you may as well say that you will become a homosexual so that you can witness too the gay community ‘from within’

i really hope that that was just poor word choice rev.

understand them yes, be loving and graceful yes, but if we join the postmoderns and deny the existence of universal truth then you have nothing to offer…