On a Christian podcast I listened to recently (which shall go unnamed), the speaker was lamenting the loss of “absolute truth” in our world. Postmodernism was to blame.
But I wonder, perhaps, if that commentary is outdated by about ten years in the university world.
Everything on campus is so complex these days; I hesitate to speak definitively. But let me give it a shot:
- Most practicing Christians, Muslims and Jews believe in objective truth.
- Most atheists oriented toward science believe in objective truth.
- Postmoderns* have always denied truth. But now many in the “progressive” camp are embracing truth in the form of justice for marginalized groups. Oppression and suffering are real — this is the new objective truth on campus the last decade or so.
So now you have three major groups believing in objective truth. That seems like a lot.
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* As Timothy Keller notes, many postmoderns believe that truth is relative, situational and socially constructed — except for certain items they believe in strongly, such as gender equality. See Keller’s Making Sense of God, 178-81.
Image by Patrick Behn from Pixabay
