WorldviewU - Postmodernism Overview


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	Postmodernism Worldview category: atheism or theism Description - Why Learn About Postmodernism? - Primary Beliefs - Well Known Adherents - Well Known Works - Postmodernist Media - Key Terms Description Postmodernism is a worldview that developed in the second half of the twentieth century. It developed in response to modernism, which relied on reason and science as the answers to the world’s problems. Postmodernism has a disdain for capitalism and the pervasiveness of the media. Postmodernism is not a religion, but a worldview. It has no central authority, single spokesperson, headquarters, or organization. In postmodernism, each person interprets life and decides between good and bad on the basis of his own perspective. Therefore, individual experience and perspective serve as postmodernism’s foundation and are its source of truth. Why Learn About Postmodernism? "So this is the root of the various reasons to learn about postmodernism: the culture is changing and postmodern ideas are driving the change."¹ Primary Beliefs "Premoderns [those who lived during the medieval period] placed their trust in authority. Moderns [those who lived after the medieval period] lost their confidence in authority and placed it in human reason instead. Postmoderns kept the modern distrust of authority but lost their trust in reason and have found nothing to replace it. This is the crux of postmodern thought."² View of God: At its core, postmodernism is atheistic. However, some Christians have embraced postmodernism. Thus, they incorporate some aspects of postmodernism with a belief in God. The movement known as the "emergent church"is primarily postmodern in nature. View of Ethics: Relativistic (there is no absolute truth); morals change to fit the needs of society and the needs of the individual. There is no absolute right or absolute wrong. Instead, if it feels good (for me), it’s right; if it feels bad (for me), it’s wrong. Cultural relativism – the belief that truth and morals are relative to each culture. Well Known Adherents Jean Baudrillard Jacques Derrida Michele Foucault Jean-Francois Lyotard Brian McLaren – Pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Maryland; known for his model of the "emerging church"; member of the Emergent Village board of directors; author of several books. Richard Rorty Well Known Works A New Kind of Christian, Brian McLaren Postmodernism in the Media Mona Lisa Smile – a 2003 Hollywood Movie starring Julia Roberts Seinfeld – TV sitcom series Key Terms Anti-Realism: "The belief that reality is subjectively constructed by human thought."³ Deconstruction: "A means of textual criticism that considers a text open to the reader’s interpretation and laden with hidden bias, assumptions, and prejudices."⁴ ¹Heath White, Postmodernism 101 – A first course for the curious Christian, BrazosPress, Grand Rapids, 2006, p. 14. ²Ibid, p. 41. ³David Noebel, Understanding the Times, Summit Press, Manitou Springs, 2006, p. 121. ⁴Ibid, p. 120.
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