Peggy Noonan is right. At some point, in some moment, all of us must admit that something remarkable has happened to American culture. Mrs. Noonan, a former presidential speechwriter, recalls that this moment came for her during a high school graduation in the early 1970s. A young girl walked across the stage to received her diploma. The girl was obviously pregnant. Noonan recalls that her first impulse was admiration for the girl's grit and determination against social disapproval. "But," recognized Noonan, "society wasn't disapproving. It was applauding." As she reflected, "Applause is a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother, not good for us."
To this the Christian Church would say far more, but the great danger today is that many Christians are seeing the same evidence, and saying far less. A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us. The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture.
Reflecting on the changes experienced by America over just the last half-century, John Howard of the Rockford Institute described the end of World War II as "a half century and a whole civilization ago." We know how he feels. Looking back on the America of 1945, it does look like a whole civilization has passed.
The evidence is overwhelming. Moral relativism has so shaped the culture that the vast majority of Americans now see themselves as their own moral arbiter. Truth has been internalized, privatized, and subjectivized. Absolute or objective truth is denied outright. Research indicates that most Americans believe that truth is internal and relative. No one, the culture shouts, has a right to impose truth, morality, or cultural standards.
In the courts, revisionist legal theories and psycho-therapeutic issues have replaced concern for right and wrong. Justice has become a political argument, not a societal standard. Righteousness is rejected as a concept, a relic of an older age of a common morality, nuclear families, and Victorian dreams. The discourse of a revealed morality commanding right and forbidding wrong is as out of place in contemporary America as a log cabin on Wall Street.
The most influential sectors of society are allied in furthering the process of social disintegration. Television and mass culture have so shaped the American consciousness that many citizens are now intellectually unable to sustain a serious moral conversation. Those who attempt to engage the American people in a serious moral conversation are met with immediate dismissal or -more worrisome still - blank stares.
The arts are increasingly decadent, portraying violence, pornography, and banality as high culture. In the academy, deconstructionism and other purportedly post-modern theories have largely destroyed some disciplines and thrown others into incoherence. The search for truth has been abandoned in favor of political arguments over rights and privileges.
Looking within, Americans have adopted a therapeutic worldview which has transformed all issues of right and wrong into newly created categories of authenticity, self esteem, codependencies, and various psychological fads which basically tell us that we are victims, not responsible moral agents. A cult of self-worship has developed, substituting a search for the inner child in place of the worship of the transcendent God. Continue >>
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Especially one who is attacking current scientific knowledge not because he has evidence supporting a better explanation, but because he doesn't like what he thinks are the social consequences?
HAWK49: Like I told seedplanter, I know that you know how to lie about Humanists, you don't have to keep demonstrating. But perhaps you can explain to me why a quote from an IDer who isn't even a biologist is supposed to have any credibility on the subject of evolution?
Curious commentary from a humanist whose objective truth foundations are virtually non existent.
Wolfgang Smith: On the one hand there is scientific truth, a bona fide knowledge of a special kind; but that knowledge is accompanied in practice by a syndrome of philosophic assumptions which are generally mistaken for scientific truths. It became clear to me, moreover, in light of the metaphysical traditions, that these scientistic beliefs (as I call them) tend to be spurious, and deleterious to our spiritual well-being. I became convinced, in fact, that the spiritual and moral decline of modern civilization--our estrangement from spiritual reality--is due in no small measure to the scientistic (humanistic) world-view which has been foisted upon us in the name of science. I therefore made it my business to detect and expose the principal scientistic dogmas affecting contemporary civilization.
IE: Can you give an example of a prominent scientistic belief?
WS: As a major example I would mention the Darwinian theory of evolution, which (contrary to official belief) is not in fact a scientific hypothesis corroborated by empirical facts, but a philosophic tenet masquerading in scientific garb. As one molecular biologist has put it, Darwinism is ultimately "no more and no less than the great cosmogenetic myth of the twentieth century." The genre of scientistic myth, however, is not limited to the sphere of biology; it is to be found even in the physical domain. When it comes to psychology and the social sciences, moreover, it appears that myth actually predominates
It's hilariously ironic that this article denounces post-modernism while including the words "Christian truth" in the title. Since when is truth Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, or whatever? The truth is the truth. The hypocrisy of Christians moaning about a supposed lack of objective truth is sickening when you realize that under an objective standard, Christianity has no evidence for its central truth claims. Christians only want objective truth if it comports with what they already believe, and if it doesn't, all you hear is a chorus of "but you can't prove it isn't true" and "I believe the bible because the bible says so!"
This kind of sneering at non-Christians for behavior Christians exhibit in spades is called projection. Or more directly, self-serving dishonest hypocrisy.
canadianchristian;
You're right that the majority who call themselves Christians should be redirected back to Christ and scripture. Most don't have a clue what the Bible says regarding God's will and therefore can't discern the truth for the lies, unfortunatley. It will be interesting to see how much outrage is raised over the blatant revisionism of Obama's claims regarding homosexuality and abortion as being condoned by the Sermon on the Mount. Pray for the remnant to be bold for Christ and pray for another great awakening for both our nations.
God Bless
Unfortunately this is the reality of living in Canada also, this article is a wake-up call for all those quasi-christians who won't stand up for the truth, you will some day have to face ALMIGHTY GOD and give an account for you're failure to uphold GOD'S WILL. I don't say this to condemn you-but to point you with love back to CHRIST our REDEEMER who died for you my backslidden brother's and sister's repent of your sin and pray for forgiveness from GOD, may HE bless you all.