Brad Alles

The biggest problem with Post-Modern thought is that it runs smack dab into reality. Not only do these proponents claim that you can create your own meaning to written words, but they also state that you construct your own world according to your culture and experience. According to the Post-Modernist, all of us are conditioned by our society and language, and no one is actually free to engage a universe with objectively true statements of fact. All thinking is a “social construct,” or arbitrary beliefs that we have been conditioned to accept by our culture, just like others have been conditioned by their culture.

Using the resurrection of Christ as an example, the Christians have been conditioned to believe their “truth”, just as the Muslims have been conditioned to believe their “truth.” It doesn’t matter what objective sources such as first and second century writings from Josephus, Tacitus, and Lucian, say about Jesus’ death; if the Muslim says Jesus didn’t die, then that’s true for them. The Christians have their truth and the Muslims have their own. The correspondence theory of truth, that statements correspond to the objective, real world, has no place in the domain of Post-Modern thought, where reality is subjectively constructed by human thought. This is called anti-realism.

Another example of this would be abortions and fetal homicides. When a woman is pregnant, she is able to abort the fetus and no crime is committed. However, if an attacker would kill a pregnant woman, the accused could be charged with homicide as well as with fetal homicide—the accused is charged with two murders. At least 35 states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances.

Notice how reality is constructed by the individual, since there is no truth, just interpretations by different people and cultures. If the woman doesn’t want the fetus, then no crime has been perpetrated on the baby at the abortion clinic; after all, it is simply “tissue.” But if the mother wants the child, then the criminal has killed two people; the “tissue” was a person with rights. This is an example of the contradictions we live with in this era, a reality being subjectively constructed by human thought, not objective reality. And this has great appeal to our individual desire to be free and autonomous, setting the rules for oneself.