Imagine, for one full minute, the world with every contribution from White males removed. There would be “bad things” removed” but they would be dwarfed by the “good things”. Thanks to Jordan Peterson for his contribution to our understanding of this.
What she really wants is equality of outcome and will sacrifice all other values for that one goal. Of course, that's short sighted because it will likely lead to far worse outcomes for everyone
In other words Matthew 7:6 “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, then turn to attack you.”
I was talking about history with a Postmodern friend whom I thought I knew well, and considered rather intelligent. In the midst of our conversation he made two statements which were highly inconsistent. I pointed out the inconsistency as such, and he asked me: "But, why is consistency so important?" I was, at the time, flabbergasted, not expecting the need to explain something so fundamental.
@Timothy Somerville You are confusing a useful tool with a feeling. He didn't expect his PostModern friend to be such an indoctrinated dunce. This made him feel flabbergasted. *Consistency* is one of the tools of discernment, one of the many ways that humans have judged the sensory inputs from the world in order to survive and hopefully thrive. It's been used and conserved because it was found to be a reliable way of navigating the problems and circumstances put before us. It's been with us for so long that many have classified it as "Common Sense"... but you might argue that all this is a "Social Construct" and has no relevance. I'm glad I don't live in your version of Hell.
@The Modern Stoic You need to be some special kind of snowflake to make that postulation. They are capable of making anything into an emotion and then blaming you for how they feel.
@Timothy Somerville - "Consistency is an emotion" Really ? I broke down in consistency ....I was over come by consistency ....Tears of consistency rolled down my cheeks... You have learning difficulties ...it might be a good idea to go into a desert and contemplate for a year or 2 ...
That’ll be the next one! But of course, all you have to do is ask “Is it possible for contradiction to be a social construct at the same time as contradiction *not* being a social construct? If not, why not?”
@@marscruz Well, these actually are a cognitive product, but the thing is that these are not all worthless because none is the "absolute truth" but in fact human cognitive products are of highly varying use for varying people. They will project how contradictory they are onto you and declare your objections to them a social construct, it is pure grandiose selfishness. It is like the power- and communication strategy of a mentally ill trying to convince the people that have taken him into custody continuously that he is Jesus or whichever grandiose claim he likes.
@@raymundhofmann7661 SJW: "...but, but, but, I AM Jesus!" Cop: "Yes buddy, and I'm Pontius Pilot. So be a good little Savior and put your hands behind your back."
None of you have ever read anything by a post-modernist but somehow you are all experts because you watched Jorden Peterson say something about Marx and post-modernism on youtube.
The historical parallels are sublime. Well said Mr. Hick. We need more historians and philosophers in this society, replacing biased journalism would be beneficial for everyone.
Stunned by the summary from 4:58 onwards listing the perspectives of the Sophists and its extraordinary similarity with the current perspectives of the post modernists! Nothing new under the sun, eh?
I find that the definitive delusion is not wanting the truth to be true. That forces you into all kinds of mental gymnastics to reject the truth and create all kinds of otherwise unbelievable scenarios to explain things.
liljenborg precisely! Romans 1:20 says all who claim to be atheists are “without excuse”, and their continuing rebellion (verse 21) causes their heart to be “darkened”. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 explains further that because “ they received not the love of the truth” that GOD “ shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie”. In a terrifying and ironic twist, their own LOGIC turns on them to their ruin. Great answer!
@Lady Mercy It's a useful intellectual diversion, but unfortunately it becomes a way of life when it is hijacked by the bad-faith actors to win power games in political spaces and political games in intellectual spaces. See the fiasco at Evergreen State, a few years ago. Hair splitting, semantics and goal-post moving is all that it ultimately is. And the only places it can thrive are places like academia and politics, where the standards are simply lower (or so very particular as to be mainly a racket). It's dazzling to mid-wits of a certain temperament, and tiresome to everyone else.
Well, it's more like they're saying that they don't believe truth is accessible to us, and that even if it was, it isn't important (and that the notion that this is not the case, that truth is what corresponds to reality and that any approximation that can be made should be made so that a goal can really be reached, is part of the prevailing power structure that facilitates oppression and is therefore suspect). To postmodern thinkers, the only "truth" that is remotely accessible is relative, and specifically relative to what postmodern convention says is important about a person, that being inalienable characteristics as power structures respond to them (dubbed "positionality"). Therefore, truth when invoked by others is regarded as a naive or malicious evasion from discussing systemic oppression, (specifically based on whether it runs counter to their theories - "Theory" for short, or not), but when invoked by fellow activists for the same cause, it is "true" in the sense that according to Theory, it is the closest to truth that we can get, and it challenges oppression. With that in mind: Postmodernists: we shouldn't care about "truth" when it gets in the way of fighting oppression. Me: How do you get at oppression without considering truth? Postmodernists: That question undermines my cause of fighting oppression (creating equity), therefore you're either a bad person or you've been brainwashed by the system I'm trying to fight, and therefore in dire need of my guidance. Me: What if the inequity is justified? Postmodernist: "justification" is a tool of hegemony to preserve pre-existing power-structures. Oppression can't be justified, and if you refuse to see this you need to be shut down so you can't defend the current hegemony. Me: So we shouldn't punish any murderers or thieves whatsoever? Postmodernist: Enough of this epistemic violence! SHUT UP AND LISTEN! Yes, there is a perfectly sound case to be made from postmodern theory that any and all social sanction is bad and should be done away with (you can see it in definitions of equity). It is never turned upon itself because that is inconvenient and therefore "untrue" to the "lived experiences" of "oppression" that are the closest thing to truth in the paradigm. Theory can't be broken because it's so cynical, it has to not fall into any pitfalls (right?). (Of course, there's still an implicit appeal to truth in there, to it being true that truth is not important. However, there can be no contradictions in Theory, only in what Theory criticizes. Criticizing Theory for self-contradiction is using "the master's tools" to protect the "master's house", and theorists *know* that those tools must not be *relied* upon if they are to accomplish the goal of equity (this is based on one poorly argued quote-application from the 80s). It's at this point everyone should realize that even from it's own perspective, Theory can't accomplish what it aims to do, because it disregards any and all opposition as stemming from ignorance or malice, disregards facts when inconvenient, and rejects that the reality it is trying to change (which it has psychologized entirely while training people to be psychologically unstable) corresponds to anything besides *feeling* "oppressed", meaning that the only solution is to embrace the hegemony it is fighting because when operating properly, any hegemony will make resident believers think current arrangements are fair and not to be opposed. That's on its own terms. It is only by appealing to reality that theorists can justify teaching people that they are oppressed and must fight it, that is, only by rejecting their own analysis. By teaching people that they are oppressed, Theory is in fact doing the exact thing it seeks to do away with, and there's no reason for it besides the axioms: "oppression is real. It is perpetrated by power-structures against group identities that are thus made real." (And which provide group members a positionality that gives access to truth-claims - if they don't challenge Theory, in which case they have a false consciousness.) It is best seen as an intellectual trap for critically incompetent but caring individuals. One I'd hope was set up by accident and not intentionally.
Incredibly eye opening for I have many postmodernists friends who in conversation throw logic or evidence out the window without hesitation and instead consider their feeling an obvious trump card to logic or evidence. I used to be a democrat and hardcore socialist, till one day I was studying free societies and in less then 15 minutes everything I believed came crashing down when put against logic and reason. I would hypothesize the reason people choose postmodernism is they get to believe they’re right, and that lovely feeling is simply more valuable than truth or logic, a sad clarity regarding the human mind.
Not just that they are right, but that they get to keep the hedonists lifestyle and be right. Socialism is at it's heart a way to get utopia without making the sacrifice.
Marxism doesn’t even look good on paper. It is an immoral mess. Theft and force is mandatory. How else will you redistribute property from the unwilling? Violence and force. Any Marxist Revolution will be bathed in the blood of the innocent. When your foundation is that fundamentally evil it doesn’t look good, it looks like a system built on genocide and mass murder. I wish it was only relegated to history books filed under, don’t do it again, but evil exists in this world.
Thanks Dr Hicks! Sorry if I seemed too nitpicking there. It's just that I find spelling / grammar and other sorts of errors constantly, and it gets to me sometimes. Frankly, I think your analysis is excellent. Though I am still thinking about the ultimate conclusion regarding what motivates the Left. I see contradiction ensuing in the Left's positions from the fact that they seem to move from a modernist / Enlightenment perspective, when that suits their purposes, to a postmodernist (relativist) perspective, when that suits their purposes. The two worldviews, modernism and postmodernism, are obviously incompatible. (As someone like Steven Pinker shows.) But the Left employs those two different rhetorics at will, again depending on what they want in a given context. Their real target/s, I would argue, are Christianity, and tradition (although mainly just Western tradition). That's really what harnesses them together. That's why, too, the Left now hates the US Constitution so much. It has the status of being a tradition. That's why they want to radically modify it (add to it, or subtract from it), or even eliminate it and rewrite it altogether. Of course they will use other non-Western traditions to undermine Western and Christian traditions. I am Dr Michael Carper, by the way, philosopher from St Louis University. I really enjoy your lectures and interviews. Thanks for all your hard work! Let me know if, during this time of lockdown, you would like to talk. I would love to. I have thought a lot about our current political and cultural situation. I have a paper, eg, that I gave at the University of Nebraska, on the logic of being a conservative vs being a liberal. It was very well received by both sides, much to my delight! It started a great conversation! I am trying to reach out to as many as I can. I love learning from others whose views have real coherence and integrity, such as yours. Take care.
@@michaelcarper2185 Thanks for the response. I didn't know if you would get a notification of my response to your message due to the 3 month gap, but you did. I've sent you an email and I'm looking forward to reading your paper. P.S. I would recommend removing your email address from the previous comment now that it's served its purpose, but that's your call.
Yes. If they claim truth is a function of power, and words are a rhetorical weapon used in the interest of power, why wouldnt they be playing their own game? It also perfectly explains why they keep accusing us of things so alien to our own motives - since they see the world through that game, they presuppose that we must be doing the same.
Right... they tell on themselves all the time, it's all projection of their own perversions and their horrible worldview. "Everything is racist and sexist, nobody is really normal, everything is a power struggle, everyone is just selfish and wants to dictate will to power, bla bla.." That's THEM. That's THEIR stupid thinking.
Their own words are their psycho constructions, their ideas from mental institutions. And their truth is a falsity working contrary to common sense. Nuff said. Don’t waste your time going deeper. Ignore and detour from them when u meet one.
TLDR: Postmodernists see their contradictions but are literally irrational (they reject the use of reason to arrive at conclusions). Francis Schaeffer made the astonishing prediction of modernity in his book "Escape from Reason" all the way back in 1968. Though, he was an astute thinker and assessor of ideological consequences, so its not really a huge leap given what was going on in those days.
I’m on the verge of buying that book following your mention, though I see Schaefer was Christian, which is a fundamentally superstitious belief system. Is that book therefore coloured with assumptions about the supernatural?
@@EmperorsNewWardrobe Supernatural in the historical sense is that which is higher than a material essence. It is widely believed that things such as consciousness is immaterial. Do you think you are conscious? If so, Schaeffer may be able to speak to you in meaningful ways. If not, then no communication is possible with you.
@@EmperorsNewWardrobe I would say you are conflating the information with that which is encoding it. When I speak my vocal cords move air, but you can't determine what I mean by the air movement alone. The content of information is immaterial even if it uses the material to transport the message.
Do not agree with Professor Hicks on his view of Nietzsche and the Nazis. But I find his thoughts on Post Modernism clear, succinct and quite helpful. It’s very difficult to debate someone with Post Modern views. As they often throw out entirely Logic and Reasoning. This lecture gave me some footholds to use next time I find myself in conversation
In a postmodern art exhibition there was once a house built upside down as some sort of fundamental protest against the norms of western capitalist society. The doors, windows, roof everything was upside down, but the ultimate inconsistency / hypocrisy was that the house though upside down was still built on a council approved regulatory concrete foundation.
Embracing contradiction in the attempt to conceptualize contradiction can lead to wisdom (i.e. Zen), but trying to reconcile contradictions in belief leads to harm and chaos.
It's really human pride. It requires humility to admit you're wrong, which is difficult to do when your whole identity is wrapped up in an identity of being enlightened and more educated that others (as academics love to brag about), and therefore are the fountain of TRUTH! Throw in a moral righteousness of "saving humanity" by any means necessary and the ends justifies the means-and voila! Post-modernists! Having grown up a lefty, and with many members of my family Democratic party members (Union president, AFL-CIO organizer, Dem party chair, Teamster lawyer), there is no reasoning with them anymore, and that started with Obama. Really liked him at first, but then his character was revealed. Started arguing against him, and guess what? I'm RACIST!! Funny thing is, I was one of 3 whites at a HBCU in the deep south back in the mid 1970's. Yet, my critical thinking about Obama got me labeled a KKK member. And it's only gotten worst, hasn't it?
Very smart talk. One small complaint. The guy seems to be still stuck seeing most sexism as directed at women. While men are the ones who seem to be dying and in actual distress.
The low number of upvotes on your comment speaks volumes. Anyone want to talk about how Johnny Depp was hospitalised while in Australia and why every single media outlet is remaining silent? That’s a measurable fact. FYI- Johnny was beaten repeatedly. Amber admitted it and admitted Johnny never hit her... not one media outlet will cover it ... and never will. Every act of DV by a woman is covered up. And there’s a lot of it!
Well I agree with you, I Hick's was talking about how the left sees the world more then his own beliefs. Sexism isn't actually a thing. Hear me out. Marxism divides people into 2 groups and labels one the oppressed and one the oppressor. They roles have to be immutable. Gender is obvious as we already have 2 groups and women have a history of being oppressed. But because it is immutable they can't view sexism as going both ways. So gender differences are all viewed as oppression even when they are privileges. Traditionally women take the last name of men. This could be a plus as men are expected to keep their last name even if they don't like it. Women get to choice their last name through who they marry. But this view is never taken and instead it is viewed as a women giving up her name. Both perspectives could be true, but only one is allowed because only one fits the marxist narrative. Or the draft. Women not having to be draft is a privilege. So that fact is ignored and the female soldier is idolized so that more men on the battlefield is also just the oppression of women. But many gender differences are not a bad thing. Imagine a room that you can only enter if you are the correct gender, and even worse ever building must have this room. Sounds sexist until you realize this is a bathroom. We all have lots of situations in which sexism is a positive. So by what standard do we declare some of them sexist and others required? And by what standard do we say other civilizations in the past were wrong about their gender roles? (I have a standard myself. I think most of history has actually had some standard, right or wrong. But I don't think most people in the modern day have anything more then feelings to decide this.)
Yes Chris, it’s Gary Krishna They destroy everything to attain representation , representation of their fragmented personalities reflecting back at them.
Part of his logical argument is that the PhDs can’t possibly be that stupid - after all, they have a PhD. I would counter with ... “but they don’t”. They don’t have a PhD in math or physics. Indeed, they don’t even have a PhD in English or history. Rather they have a PhD, granted to them, by other PhDs within the same discipline that is devoid of logic. i.e. they are not thinkers but people who just want to belong. I think we see this in the global climate change “scientists” who have perverted the fundamental scientific process to include manipulating data, recording false data, generating data from models and using it as real data, etc. They all have just accepted these perverse practices. Here again, the global climate change scientists are giving PhDs or credentials to other global climate change scientists. It is a classic example of group think.
@Twenty Faces vaccine deniers do not deny science either. They just question the additives to vaccines, and the need for herd immunity. The science is open to debate, but by labeling different points of view, as deniers, you in fact are not doing science anymore, it's propaganda and bullying.
He also is assuming they are being honest. Do they really think all cultures are equal, or do they just say this to pander and use as a club against their adversaries? Are they like the white liberals who speak at length about racial equality, but insist that only white people can fix the ills of black society?
Postmodernism is a "stalemate" goal oriented mentality in chess game. They know they can't win because they know they don't have it (the truth), yet they don't want to loose, so what they do is always looking for a draw. Gin,
I recently heard it described like this: "Arguing with a liberal is like playing chess with a pigeon. They knock over all the pieces, shit on the table, and then strut around as if they've won."
What surprises me is that something like Zen, is anti-logic, but it still accepts that words and definitions function in human society even though reality can't be accurately defined with words. Post modernism is like just having a lobotomy and rejecting all reason, but with nothing behind why or what replaces it. It's just rubbish and people make careers out of this.
Hicks should be a million times more we’ll known than Jordan Peterson. He communicates with so much more clarity, and precision. He also uses the appropriate tone of voice and emotion Peterson’s tone and emotion most of the time makes me not even hear what he is saying, and think that he’s nuts
His philosophical ideas are great . His understanding of psychology maybe not so much. He assumes very high intelligence in these humanities professors. He is setting off from the wrong foot here. You don't have to be intelligent to get a humanities masters or PHD, you just need to pick the right subject and viewpoint. If I wanted an easy pass on a humanities PHD I would choose a thesis subject like "Proving the response to COV19 affects women in a disproportional way and thus proving muh patriarchy is alive and well and attempting to regain power" I doubt leftists in the UK would read more than the title and introduction before gleefully passing the writer of it. Seeing as leftists run every humanities dept in the UK I guess this tittle or a more academic variant of it would pass easily.
One could actually make an intresting study about how woman are more affected by covid-19 in regards to the additional time they have to spend with childcare and then comparing this to the additional time men spend with childcare and see if there are actual gender diffrences. So your idea is not to bad after all, although a little bit sloppy formulated.
Whenever I find an apparent contradiction in someone's view, I don't give them any benefit of the doubt and assume I understand their position better than they do. I'm so insecure that I can't risk properly understanding my opponent (what if they're right? What if I'm wrong?). So I straw man them, and don't bother meaningfully engaging with what they actually say and think. I'm just interested in reinforcing what I already think, rather than getting at the truth.
And when you have studied Kantian and Post-Kantian for decades and find a REAL contradiction, what do you do? Blanking out, so your friends and collegues won't think you've started to think independently?
There is actually a way to unify the contradictions into a solid world view. I spent a lot of time talking politics with a guy that was smarter then me and a self declared communist. The only problem is the way you unify these contradictions is exactly what Hicks said in the video. Straight from a communists mouth I have heard this idea that words are just tools to assert power over others and that objective truth does not exist. A very woke star wars show explained it perfectly. "It's not about good or bad. This is about power, and who is allowed to use it."
I’m working on competing another university degree (I have several). Gives me good perspective. There was never this concentration of people who believed in flat earth that we know of. Academia on the other hand...
Walter B You missed by point. I compared Postmodernism with flat earth believers. Postmodernists never back anything they say with empirical evidence. They only test of a Postmodernist idea is if other postmodernists like them.
The absolutism and dogma are definitely the core of their ideology. The relativism is a shield against criticism. It's the same as a religious fanatic screaming "God makes it true."
He definitely took Kant and Kierkegaard out of context at 2:33 - their true arguments were substantailly deeper - not just choosing faith iver reason and knowledge. That really shortchanges two tremendously influential thinkers. Kant examined reason for it’s internal structure, while Kierkegaard saw the complementary nature of faith and reason, that reason must in a sense crucify itself on things it cannot grasp (he was applying it to the incarnation but it can apply about every huge question - why is there something rather than nothing, etc). He also saw it as the *glorification*, not the *defeat* of Reason that it could come to know its limits. Really encourage you to read more into it - found this excerpt that hints at Kierkegaard’s actual argument: books.google.com/books?id=aGEtGhl-gEAC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=kierkegaard+crucified+reason&source=bl&ots=sE-OaZf4uv&sig=ACfU3U2N_fCr0O3GusQ28ldDeQGbOZDJcg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjSwa721bjqAhUBl3IEHUYBCqYQ6AEwCnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=kierkegaard%20crucified%20reason&f=false
I AGREE with the postmodernists that A) we do not have access to a final, eternal. complete truth, but DISAGREE with the postmodernists that therefore B) every interpretation is as good/ valid/ viable as any other, and that therefore, C) all we are left with is a nasty, ugly, anything-goes battle for power among ephemeral, socially-constructed interest/ identity/ racial groups. Some interpretations/models/maps simply and easily work better than others. That's what the sciences and technologies, businesses and societies are constantly trying to figure out as we go along, as we learn, improve, grow, as our purposes and paradigms and pretexts evolve. Every model we come up with is provisional but there is an ineffable reality, a LOGOS, a TAO, outside of our human-all-too-human conception that tells us "this works and that doesn't, this works under these conditions, this works for this amount of time", etc. Not all airplane designs fly, not all airplane designs fly as well under various weather conditions, not all airplane designs are as fuel efficient, etc. Not everything works. Mother Nature won't let us get away with just anything. Not everything is sustainable. Not everything survives. Not everything is viable. Behind all the academic postmodernist verbal-gymnastics hogwash, there is an evil cabal - WEF, etc. - that is out for world domination and believe that the best way to achieve that is by rendering societies and individuals as chaotic and confused, traumatized and afraid, weak and worried, as possible, create a specter of increasing "danger" from each other and from the "outside", "Russia! Russia! Russia!", etc., so that confidence and clarity and resistance collapses and we are relived to be ruled and used by them like farm animals. The nightmare is finally over. The pain finally stops. We finally have "safety" in our conceptual and physical pen. They don't care about Communism or Socialism, Trotskyism or Leninism, Liberalism or Capitalism, or any ism, they cynically use them as tools, Psychiatry, Pharmaceuticals, Entertainment. All they care about is that their cabal gains absolute political and bureaucratic, financial and psychological control. A feudalism 2.0, if you will. Hell on earth.1984. Brave New World. The fist thing they have to do is to ridicule and get rid of the "superstructure" of Christianity and Islam and Hinduism, etc., any loyalty higher than to their mundane political structure. Get rid of individualism, family, community, love, loyalty, beauty, rational thought, etc. Lost people looking for a Messiah. They want to be viewed as gods with nothing above them. But as the wise American philosopher and former heavyweight boxing champion of the world Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face." It ain't gonna work, baby. Tradition is too strong, reality too stubborn, love of liberty conquers all. The immune system kicks in. Life takes wings.
The idea that every interpretation is equal is pretty stupid, and antithetical to their academic elitist framework, so I'm surprised they use that. The reality is that a blind person's interpretation of a visual event is likely not going to be as valid as a seeing person's interpretation. However the blind are oppressed, so therefore their interpretation is more valid. That's the leftist/post-modernist belief, the blind leading the seeing, because oppression.
One reason for the popularity of anti-rationalist and emotion based philosophy is probably the influx of women in the universities. Their proclivity to put emotion first seems to be aligned with the theory.
Yup. Also that's Machiavellian: the ends justify the means. It's fishing for whatever useful-for-the-moment principles get us to the conclusions we want to exploit.
This was interesting and helpful. My argument is that capitalism isn’t happening anymore. Government intervention isn’t socialism. If government doesn’t intervene, if if doesn’t regulate capitalism the logical conclusion is corporate monopolies
Keith Bell perhaps, but only for a short period of time. Monopolies can only exist for any great length of time if they have support from the state, often in the form of regulation. See: mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly a short breakdown.
Look at intel and amd, the free market broke a monopoly right in front of us. Then look at google, there map data came from the US military by the way... Though I will fully endorse right to repair type laws which are government intervention.
Socialist are so smart and sure of themselves; however, not a single one is willing to pack their bags and move to a socialist country. It's time to force them out of the U.S.
Why would they when they already live in a socialist country? Ever look up how many people don't pay into taxes but get welfare? It's amazing that we managed to hold back the economic collapse that socialism brings this long, but the poison has been their a long time.
While his analysis of postmodernism is, I think, salient and accurate, his analogy with religion in the 17th and 18th centuries doesn't prove true in the long run. This is, of course, more obvious in retrospect than it was at the time. But in fact, Christian theology has continued to prove bolstered rather than undermined by science over time (theism never lost the high ground from the perspective of the rational, though the specifics of Christian dogma, though not necessarily contrary to reason, cannot be arrived at simply by reason). The reason that this is the case is not merely that the empirical sciences have come full circle to the recognitionn that they do not, in fact, present any particular challenge to theism, but also because the challenges they presumed to present in the 17th and 18th centuries pressed Christian theology specifically to either challenge or fully embrace the pagan creep that has always been a problem for it. The "god of the gaps" thinking that the scientific world view challenged was always and everywhere a part of that creep. It is noteworthy both that Christianity in general still shows many signs of paganization (the German Christian Party, so-called "mainline" protestant denominations, traditions that focus on ecstatic experience, wholesale adoption of pagan doctrines by Rome, etc.,) and that orthodoxy nonetheless still perseveres. It is also noteworthy that Marxism's rejection of religion (or rather, replacement of Christian theology with a religion of the state) factors so largely into its catastrophic failure. This leads to the second major problem with the analogy: Marxism can be judged pragmatically, whereas Christianity, not so much. Christianity is eschatological in its focus - it makes no claims to simply transforming the here and now on some societal or geopolitical scale. Marxism is subject to judgment on its own terms, and has fallen painfully short. Not only so, but a reasonable analysis of its presuppositions and reasoning readily predict why it will always be a failure.
The idea that science bolsters christianity seems like nonsense based purely on the fact that we have discovered so much about the nature of our universe that christianity is painfully unaware of. You could make the same argument that islam is bolstered by science (many do) and you wouldn't have to change any words, so ultimately I think your comment specifically with regards to this point is dogshit.
@@RVGENomini It seems like nonsense only if you have a very narrow and shallow understanding of the science, and if you naively imagine that Christianity if fundamentally a comprehensive cosmology. The points at which many naive people think that a greater empirical understanding of the universe undermines the theism of Christianity is precisely where, in fact, science tends to bolster the the theism of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Think, for example, of the shift in the 1960s in astrophysics from a static-state theory of the universe to the so-called "big-bang" theory. Granted, these areas of science are miles apart from the specifically Christian claims about the person and work of Jesus Christ (incarnation, life, death and resurrection), but Christian theologians would not expect anything like empirical sciences to intersect with these claims.
@@arlobandersnatch6244 Feel free to get specific with the science that you feel is pertinent to your case. You also completely ignored my point that Christianity is interchangeable with islam in your argument and there's no difference.
@@RVGENomini Well, your point about Islam is pretty well meaningless, since Islam is just a cheap imitation of Judaism and Christianity. The distinctions there are primarily theological at best, and sociological otherwise. Apparently you didn't read my reply very carefully at all. Maybe once you've done that you can come up with some reasonable point of discussion.
@@arlobandersnatch6244 Okay now you ignored my other request to get specific with the science that is pertinent to your case. It's important that Islam is interchangeable given that you felt it necessary to only point out the science bolsters christianity. If it bolsters more than one religion then science can't be the factor with which you decide one or the other and thus it's deceptive to even say that it supports christianity without mentioning the others it supports. Forget all that though and talk about the science, lets see how right you are.
They believed based on reason because propaganda only presented the facts that made it sound reasonable. Orwell knew better way sooner and he wasn't special, any veteran of the Spanish civil war could have made the same predictions.
That checks out. Hicks is an "Objectivist". Which means he's likely to be just as ignorant and dishonest about Philosophy and Faith as a post-modernist is. All they care about is spouting ideology and winning "points". Truth doesn't matter.
I think most of this critique of post-modernism is on point: all the Marxists became postmodernists when the revolution never materialized; The internal inconsistencies of the philosophy are breezily dismissed to support a political agenda; ... etc. However, at it's heart, post-modernism *does* contain a reasonable critique of modernism: that we often fall into the trap of reifying our theories, fail to recognize the limitations of the mechanisms through which knowledge is produced, and knowledge produced my informal mechanisms out of hand. There are ways to take on these critiques to improve the rationalist project without devolving into absolute relativism. Unfortunately, it's tough to find thinkers who are willing to take on that challenge.
It all stems from a desire to be rebellious and fight against something, but coming from the most prosperous and egalitarian society in all of history. That isn't to say we don't have a lot of corruption and problems to address, but I find postmodernists are less interested in those issues. They are especially intellectually lazy in their thinking when they do tackle them.
I don't understand all the pro-Christian responses to this video. He describes postmodernism's descent from reason as being similar to the Christian theologists.
Which version of Christianity? Most biblical scholars, including those in the Vatican, won't deny that the original Hebrew manuscripts didn't call Mary a virgin, that doesn't show up until the early Greek translations where the it substitutes the Hebrew term for "young woman" from the original text with the Greek word for "virgin" in the translation. The Greek version was then copied by scribes across the world with other little mistakes and errors that they actually trace how those copies moved through the world. This mistranslated word is the entire basis of the Trinity concept that was developed two hundred years later. Wait another 200 years and the passage in Gospel of John 8.1-8.11 related to the adulterer suddenly starts showing up out of nowhere and scribes then continued to include that newly inserted story into the future books and so on. If this is what you mean by true, rational and defensible, then I guess I agree.
The difference is Christianity has a wide realm of action outside of natural philosophy. Science is clearly articulated in the bible as nature cannot be in conflict with God - so what we observe in nature, if true, would mean that our theology is wrong. Socialism is a development of the enlightenment which ultimately rejects it. Whereas the enlightenment emerges from Christianity as a part of it that is a real search for truth. Socialism winds up becoming a rejection of the enlightenment and Christianity - of both natural truth and the religious truth that produced and sustains it.
The funny thing about chaos theory is not that the universe is chaotic, it is that what is seemly chaotic are actually orderly. We use it all the time to predict the weather. We look at all the constants, things that don't change or change very little: mountains, oceans, flat lands, forest and so on, and take into consideration the variables heat, humidity, wind patters, season, and so on. We look at all this data and can predict what the weather will do in the future. It's not random for every effect their is a cause.
Lmao this dude really thinks theism has been debunked? He says it with so much confidence that science has largely filled all the holes theism once did.
@@venga3 Science can tell us literally nothing about God, seeing as it is limited to the study of the physical world. And God being the creator, necessarily rests outside of it. People accept or reject premises based on various biases amongst other things, Atheists are no different. I would've agreed with your last statement if it were indeed true that there are no sufficient reasons to believe in God, but that's literally a lie! I'm not a theist because i rest on "Blind faith and ignorance", as you atheist snarkily love to assert, far from it, I'm a theist precisely because i see good reasons to believe in the existence of a creator.
Actually atheism and secularism have played right into the hands of the Postmodernists. That's for the same reason as Communists abolished religion. If you want to stop the destruction of decent society, swallow your ignorant pride and get back to church.
I just love how these smart guys can tell you how great our system is because it was simultaneously developed alongside our technological revolution. What are the options for historical societies? It seems like you can choose between an endless list of authoritarianism regimes of slightly different flavor, some theocracies and, what, 1 democracy and 1 republic.
1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you *a reason of the hope that is in you* with meekness and fear:”
I think he is pointing to when Darwinism and the age of the earth stuff changed the public default. Most if not all of those claims have been debunked and replaced with new claims I will debate. But looking at it historically as a Christian, I can see a period of time in which the facts that were known would have made Christianity hard to believe. Of course Darwin was wrong about genetics and Mendel was right, which makes me find it hard to believe in macro evolution.
So many have gotten Religion all wrong,... The foundation upon which reason was built was created by God. Stupidity is thinking that a limited perspective of both nature and spirit will help us decide which is better and more important. *_When there "appears" to be a disagreement between science and religion, it either means that science's interpretation of nature is wrong, the believer's interpretation of scripture is wrong, OR BOTH!_*
So then you are saying that no one can know the answer. You can't tell if the Science is wrong or the religious interpretation is wrong, so then why bother with the scripture at all. You can't trust it because interpretation can be wrong, and you can't test it because the test could give you the wrong answer. That makes the religion pointless, and that's before you try to work out all the competing religions plus competing interpretations which contradict each other without Science advancing at all.
@@shawn4110 No. You said that, and I wholeheartedly disagree. You misunderstood what I said and then *_correctly_* rejected *_your_* misunderstanding... never touching what I actually said. Of course you can tell in both science *_and_* religion. Regrettably, too many people (like you) use logical fallacies and get everything fouled up with muddy thinking. I've done that before, too. And it's not a fatal mistake. Scripture is True. So is science. But the interpretations of both have been questionable at time by scientists and the religious using sloppy logic just as you have displayed. My logic isn't perfect, yet, and I've been working on it for 70 years; still learning. But I've experimented with miracles, even replicating many of them. Science has had countless stumbling blocks, with the self-proclaimed experts using logical fallacies instead of logic. The "Clovis First" dogma, for instance. Thank goodness there were some scientists who were not afraid to dig below the Clovis horizon. For anyone interested, read my book, *_The Bible's Hidden Wisdom,_* for lessons on logic and biblical interpretation. Read my book, *_The Science of Miracles,_* for information on how scientific method can be used on spiritual action. Read my book, *_Proof of God,_* for more information on how scripture is foundational to all physical reality -- and *_not_* the way the "creation scientists" attempt to mangle things. And, if you're interested in some solid science, check out my #1 Weather Bestseller, *_Climate Basics: Nothing to Fear;_* it gives simple science that handily debunks the warming alarmists on nearly every point of their climate hysteria.
@@RodMartinJr Yeah, so I wasn't claiming anything. Just reading your post which clearly states that any religious interpretation can be wrong and any scientific test to prove the religious claim can also be interpreted wrong. Therefore, you would need a way to test your interpretations that aren't through religion or science. I agree you can tell what is true. By testing the claims in a repeatable methodology. So since you claim to have tested miracles, you should be able to detail your methodology so that I can do exactly the same thing and get exactly the same results. Go ahead and detail one miracle test that can be repeated and get the same results. If you can't do that, no intelligent person would believe you. So can you do that?
@@shawn4110 You weren't claiming anything? LOL You said, "So then you are saying that no one can know the answer." You were claiming an interpretation of what I said that was entirely wrong. Re-read what I wrote and try again to understand the underlying intent.
@@RodMartinJr I don't think you understand what I mean. You listed every possible solution as potentially wrong, but didn't explain how to resolve the issue. So you are by definition unable to determine when a scientific conclusion is correct nor how to determine if a religious interpretation is correct. I'll give an example. Suppose the scripture claimed that the earth was flat. If you check and find that your scientific test shows the earth is round. How do you know if your scientific conclusion is correct, versus the conclusion being wrong, versus the scripture being wrong, versus the scripture being misunderstood. What test could possibly falsify the scripture, and if it can't be proven false, then how do you ever test it to know that it is correct? Something unfalsifiable cannot ever be proven correct, and your statement makes scripture unfalsifiable.
Post modernist: Is this blue or yellow? Me: its actually green, a mixture of both I guess. Post modernist: I didn't ask what color it is, I asked if its blue or yellow! Me: But... Post modernist: You see? You can't even answer your own questions logically! Even I know it is green. Me: I just told you it was green. Post modernist: Yes, except that I didn't ask you if it was green I asked 'blue' or 'yellow', do you undestand that concept? Me: *shoot myself*
To save their religion, Christians rejected the Logos they were supposed to embody, renamed it 'Jesus', and now worship him and his pointing hand instead of what he was pointing to.
Stephen Hicks, like most people, doesn't know shit about postmodernism. His book on the topic is one of the worst academic books to have ever been written. He fabricates quotes, misrepresents postmodern arguments, labels thinkers that are not postmodern and even some that are against postmodernism as postmodern and provides very few sources for his claims. He spend a whole book building a strawman and attacking without even demonstrating a basic understanding of it (like most people who use the term "postmodern" as a sort of intellectual boogeyman). Cuck philosophy did a great takedown os his book, which is also a critique of Hicks' ideas about postmodernism.
Spot on. Only comment I've read that make sense. When there's a real crisis, like 2008 & covid 19, it socialist policies that come to the rescue. Not a crony capitalist in sight. Some folk don't realise that it was a government handout/bailout in 2008 that rescued the so called 'too big to fail' financial institutions......and again during the recent pandemic. I consider myself a socialist with a small 'S', but I vehemently disagree with postmodernism and their unlikely marriage to Marxist ideology.
@@bryanbelshaw7725 Yeah, maybe look up what caused the 2008 crash in the first place. FEE, Thomas Sowell, or even economist explained do good breakdowns that might make you change your mind.
The po-mo left is always called out for thier incoherent and contradictory stances or statements. Their actions and words are perfectly compatible with a stance of elitism of one individual: themselves. The postmodern evangelist has one clear message and one coherent belief: I am better and I am above all of this. Therefore I despise it all and would destroy it all, if I could. Any enjoyment I get from this world is incidental and not satisfying, it’s a sort of self soothing to mitigate the awful way this world makes me feel, which is dissatisfied, disturbed and disgusted. And I personally can sympathize with this position, perhaps there is a cure for it. It reminds me of a dissociative fugue state. This type of person has forgotten who they are and is being possessed by ideas. The ideas are seen as crutches, it’s no use to offer better ideas, they need to see directly the hollowness of ideas, so I would proscribe a transcendence experience, profound and deep. This way they regain the experience of true self and can rely on that as their source of satisfaction. So sincere and well guided spiritual practice is the cure for this ailment. 🙏
@@clivegoodman16 Why DON'T Post-Modernist...As academia debt-slaves a generation for the neoliberal banksters...Which granted are commies...But that makes Hicks (and Peterson) accomplices, too!
Why? What good comes from discovering your feelings? And what makes the feelings "yours"? Are our feelings not just social constructs that were chosen for us by the culture we live in?
I would argue that being conservative insofar as that entails a committment to reason allows one to be better in touch with one's feelings because having intellectual standards builds the strength to mindfully acknowledge things that make one feel uncomfortable rather than reflexively insulating one's self from discomfort as if feeling good is the highest priority, higher even than being accurate.
I don't know that this answered the question. I think it might actually be that, they say the things they *wish* they believed in. The things that would make them a good person if they believed in them. But it would take *work* to hold to those principles. It would require a commitment to individual integrity. If you haven't developed that in yourself, then it won't be there to draw on. so they end up taking the easier route of going along with whatever the majority says. They value niceness over truth. They value the false peace of quiet over actual harmony. They value 'If I can't currently see a problem, none exists'.
As a philosophy major (in analytic philosophy), I think that Hick's is being more-or-less a sophist here (and having read his philosophical work, he clearly knows). 1) Quine's rejection of the correspondence theory of truth had nothing to do with politics; he was an avowed conservative. 2) The postmodern attack on traditional philosophy is not a Kierkegaardian "leap of faith." Rorty, for example, critiqued traditional epistemology for having to rely on a "leap of faith" in order to justify itself. 3) The logical contradictions don't hold when one takes a deflationary semantics (this was pointed out by within Pyrrhonism 2000 years ago). 4) One can hold onto notions of truth while rejecting a correspondence of language to reality. Truth claims can be merely relational to other beliefs rather than dependent on an external (and largely unprovable) set our categories beyond our thoughts. 5) Taking these positions in epistemology doesn't make one a leftist. Figures like Daniel Dennett hold similar philosophical positions. Also, the postmodernists were largely critiqued by Marxists, socialists, and critical theorists for ruining the left. Habermas called Foucault a "neo-conservative." All in all, Hick's has his PhD in analytic philosophy and clearly understands the formal logic and semantics used to justify "postmodernism." He has politicized a complex set of problems into a revisionist history that just doesn't hold imo.
One-sided arguments for a self-admiration society of secular protestants who are frustrated by abiding disagreement with their paragons of temporal monotheism
@@larrydugan1441 But do you know any 'secular' Protestants? And do you know anything about that cohort? Or do you think that such a cohort is nonexistent because you know nothing about them? BTW I'm pro enlightenment + pro science & technology + pro democracy-capitalism, etc. etc. but I'm also an erudite intellectual, therefore able to call-out faulty rhetoric consumed by one-dimensional thinkers who are bigoted towards alternatives . Hear this talk (abridged) th-cam.com/video/Tlsm-VPEk0Y/w-d-xo.html (unabridged) th-cam.com/video/EHtvTGaPzF4/w-d-xo.html
@@BenCollin My guess is that you are classic self agrandizing pseudo intellectual. I have never been very impressed by modern day intellectuals. They pretty much seem to get everything wrong. I do detest marxists in their various slithering forms!
@@larrydugan1441 Well, that proves it: you’ve shown yourself as not having learnt any more than post-secondary diploma (and probably less) so believe that you have more than enough to confidently express opinion and knowledge that is lower than common sense. This conversation is deemed by me as over, because it is as useless to me as it is to anyone else educated.
@@BenCollin Lol. I have the same accreditation as Socrates. Any Dummy can get a PhD nowadays, many do! Where did you get yours? Erudite intellectual? Is that a college course? I will direct you to the rampant stupidity that comes out of the Yale English Department!
To have a foundational understanding of philosophy is to apprehend the limitations of rationality. Where then do you go when the answers to life's deepest questions can't be accessed by reason?
Watching this reminded me of Nietzsche's slave morality. Now I see a recommended video on this topic by the same speaker. TH-cam's algorithm is very impressive!
I always like Kierkegaard the most. I don’t think he’s as 1-dimensional as to be a simple irrationalism. He had a thing for pseudonyms and for writing books that were just people arguing with themselves. There is large debate on if he was actually an irrationalist or if he was was a rationalist because it’s hard to find what he actually believed, this due to the hyperindividualism that we do know he most certainly held, which compelled him to force the reader to choose the right answer for themselves in his arguments
The comparison between sophists and postmodernists/neo-marxists should not end with the claims that they both believe in the subjectivity of all things but that they both deal in absolutes and act superior to their counterpart. The sophists were merely children compared to the wise man ‘Socrates’ as Plato’s work is in itself fiction and he is painting - like many other fictional stories - the old man as the wise and experienced. It is within the rebellious nature of young post modernists just like it was within to the sophists to assume all older people caused the problems they now had to fix which is a generalisation many young my age assume. Assumption based on aesthetic, absolutism based off pre hierarchal structures, subjective truth stemming from personal experiences and moral relativism abstracted from objective fact are the main problems within the post modernists.
Things are only contradictions if you accept the premises. Some things are contradictions on one level but not another. William James famously said that "if you run into a contradiction, make a distinction".
The biggest problem I have with any relativist, is that they always try to argue that relativism is true. That is their biggest contradiction. I never saw any relativist open to the possibility that someone that think truth is absolute Is as right as someone that sees it as relative.
I left socialism during my 20s. I was firmly convinced of many things I started to see were terribly wrong. It was a long process that took years but I finally could see socialism is more like a religion in which proof has no importance. I have many socialist friends but I can't discuss anything with them because they are blind in front of evidence. They also tend to think there is always something evil in non socialist ideas, considering people who stand for them are either stupid or pervert. They believe they have been provided with extremely intelligent minds which allow them to see clearly what's right or wrong. I abandoned discussion with them because it is useless. I prefer being considered stupid.
“In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action." - Thucydides
lol Money, you've got lots of friends Crowding round the door When you're gone, spending ends They don't come no more ~ From the song "God Bless the Child"
I know a super lefty girl who preaches equality but will instantly disqualify this whole video because of his skin colour and gender. (White male).
Send her diamond and silk, or amazing lucas, or abl,
So she's a racist.
Imagine, for one full minute, the world with every contribution from White males removed.
There would be “bad things” removed” but they would be dwarfed by the “good things”.
Thanks to Jordan Peterson for his contribution to our understanding of this.
That's what the left is now...
What she really wants is equality of outcome and will sacrifice all other values for that one goal. Of course, that's short sighted because it will likely lead to far worse outcomes for everyone
'Never argue with an idiot, they will reduce the conversation to their level and then beat you with experience'.
DAMN!!! Who said that? If it’s yours, it’s a beauty!
Word
@@junior.von.clairemark twain said it
@@Nick_Taylor.I’m on the autism spectrum and even I can understand that much sarcasm! It was the !!!!! That did it
In other words
Matthew 7:6
“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, then turn to attack you.”
I have a philosophy teacher in college who was a post modernist. It was maddening the irrational nonsense that went on in there.
So maddening that now you can't use tense consistently?
@@LeekowalskiWalker I'm not that tense. I was just had a couple of glasses of wine.
@@philochristos it was a joke about you switching tenses. "i have a" vs "who was a" when referring to things that occured toget
her in time.
@@LeekowalskiWalker oh shut your hole.
It’s only gotten worse
I was talking about history with a Postmodern friend whom I thought I knew well, and considered rather intelligent. In the midst of our conversation he made two statements which were highly inconsistent. I pointed out the inconsistency as such, and he asked me:
"But, why is consistency so important?"
I was, at the time, flabbergasted, not expecting the need to explain something so fundamental.
@Timothy Somerville You are confusing a useful tool with a feeling. He didn't expect his PostModern friend to be such an indoctrinated dunce. This made him feel flabbergasted. *Consistency* is one of the tools of discernment, one of the many ways that humans have judged the sensory inputs from the world in order to survive and hopefully thrive. It's been used and conserved because it was found to be a reliable way of navigating the problems and circumstances put before us. It's been with us for so long that many have classified it as "Common Sense"... but you might argue that all this is a "Social Construct" and has no relevance. I'm glad I don't live in your version of Hell.
@The Modern Stoic You need to be some special kind of snowflake to make that postulation. They are capable of making anything into an emotion and then blaming you for how they feel.
@Timothy Somerville the basis of science is testability, and repetitivity, which leads to predictability.
@Timothy Somerville huh? Psycho babble?
@Timothy Somerville - "Consistency is an emotion" Really ? I broke down in consistency ....I was over come by consistency ....Tears of consistency rolled down my cheeks...
You have learning difficulties ...it might be a good idea to go into a desert and contemplate for a year or 2 ...
“Contradiction is a social construct”
That’ll be the next one! But of course, all you have to do is ask “Is it possible for contradiction to be a social construct at the same time as contradiction *not* being a social construct? If not, why not?”
Contradiction is the very fabric of toughts from what I see.
🤣🤣🤣no dear....postmodern leftist stupidity is a social construct
Social construct is a social construct
Spoken like a true socialist
They don't believe in contradictions, especially their own.
"Contradictions are a Social Construct" ...or some similar nonsensical statement.
@@marscruz Well, these actually are a cognitive product, but the thing is that these are not all worthless because none is the "absolute truth" but in fact human cognitive products are of highly varying use for varying people.
They will project how contradictory they are onto you and declare your objections to them a social construct, it is pure grandiose selfishness. It is like the power- and communication strategy of a mentally ill trying to convince the people that have taken him into custody continuously that he is Jesus or whichever grandiose claim he likes.
@@raymundhofmann7661
SJW: "...but, but, but, I AM Jesus!"
Cop: "Yes buddy, and I'm Pontius Pilot. So be a good little Savior and put your hands behind your back."
They see everything as being contradictory, that's the problem.
None of you have ever read anything by a post-modernist but somehow you are all experts because you watched Jorden Peterson say something about Marx and post-modernism on youtube.
The historical parallels are sublime. Well said Mr. Hick. We need more historians and philosophers in this society, replacing biased journalism would be beneficial for everyone.
So postmodernism is essentially intellectual cognitive dissonance...
Yes. Exactly.
Minus the intellectual part.
@@thenonexistinghero lmao
Right.
Yeah, when your ideology is completely discredited by logic and common sense, then you discredit logic and common sense.
Stunned by the summary from 4:58 onwards listing the perspectives of the Sophists and its extraordinary similarity with the current perspectives of the post modernists!
Nothing new under the sun, eh?
There is nothing more delusional than wanting something to be true
. . except not wanting ANYTHING to be true -
So religion?
Jarin Jove I don’t understand your question. Can you rephrase it?
I find that the definitive delusion is not wanting the truth to be true. That forces you into all kinds of mental gymnastics to reject the truth and create all kinds of otherwise unbelievable scenarios to explain things.
liljenborg precisely! Romans 1:20 says all who claim to be atheists are “without excuse”, and their continuing rebellion (verse 21) causes their heart to be “darkened”. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 explains further that because “ they received not the love of the truth” that GOD “ shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie”. In a terrifying and ironic twist, their own LOGIC turns on them to their ruin. Great answer!
Post-Modernism: There is no "Truth".
Me: So, no truth; no contradictions.
Post-Modernism: That's true.
@Lady Mercy It's a useful intellectual diversion, but unfortunately it becomes a way of life when it is hijacked by the bad-faith actors to win power games in political spaces and political games in intellectual spaces. See the fiasco at Evergreen State, a few years ago.
Hair splitting, semantics and goal-post moving is all that it ultimately is. And the only places it can thrive are places like academia and politics, where the standards are simply lower (or so very particular as to be mainly a racket). It's dazzling to mid-wits of a certain temperament, and tiresome to everyone else.
Post-modernism is "'This sentence is false': the philosophy."
Well, it's more like they're saying that they don't believe truth is accessible to us, and that even if it was, it isn't important (and that the notion that this is not the case, that truth is what corresponds to reality and that any approximation that can be made should be made so that a goal can really be reached, is part of the prevailing power structure that facilitates oppression and is therefore suspect). To postmodern thinkers, the only "truth" that is remotely accessible is relative, and specifically relative to what postmodern convention says is important about a person, that being inalienable characteristics as power structures respond to them (dubbed "positionality"). Therefore, truth when invoked by others is regarded as a naive or malicious evasion from discussing systemic oppression, (specifically based on whether it runs counter to their theories - "Theory" for short, or not), but when invoked by fellow activists for the same cause, it is "true" in the sense that according to Theory, it is the closest to truth that we can get, and it challenges oppression.
With that in mind:
Postmodernists: we shouldn't care about "truth" when it gets in the way of fighting oppression.
Me: How do you get at oppression without considering truth?
Postmodernists: That question undermines my cause of fighting oppression (creating equity), therefore you're either a bad person or you've been brainwashed by the system I'm trying to fight, and therefore in dire need of my guidance.
Me: What if the inequity is justified?
Postmodernist: "justification" is a tool of hegemony to preserve pre-existing power-structures. Oppression can't be justified, and if you refuse to see this you need to be shut down so you can't defend the current hegemony.
Me: So we shouldn't punish any murderers or thieves whatsoever?
Postmodernist: Enough of this epistemic violence! SHUT UP AND LISTEN!
Yes, there is a perfectly sound case to be made from postmodern theory that any and all social sanction is bad and should be done away with (you can see it in definitions of equity). It is never turned upon itself because that is inconvenient and therefore "untrue" to the "lived experiences" of "oppression" that are the closest thing to truth in the paradigm. Theory can't be broken because it's so cynical, it has to not fall into any pitfalls (right?). (Of course, there's still an implicit appeal to truth in there, to it being true that truth is not important. However, there can be no contradictions in Theory, only in what Theory criticizes. Criticizing Theory for self-contradiction is using "the master's tools" to protect the "master's house", and theorists *know* that those tools must not be *relied* upon if they are to accomplish the goal of equity (this is based on one poorly argued quote-application from the 80s).
It's at this point everyone should realize that even from it's own perspective, Theory can't accomplish what it aims to do, because it disregards any and all opposition as stemming from ignorance or malice, disregards facts when inconvenient, and rejects that the reality it is trying to change (which it has psychologized entirely while training people to be psychologically unstable) corresponds to anything besides *feeling* "oppressed", meaning that the only solution is to embrace the hegemony it is fighting because when operating properly, any hegemony will make resident believers think current arrangements are fair and not to be opposed. That's on its own terms. It is only by appealing to reality that theorists can justify teaching people that they are oppressed and must fight it, that is, only by rejecting their own analysis. By teaching people that they are oppressed, Theory is in fact doing the exact thing it seeks to do away with, and there's no reason for it besides the axioms: "oppression is real. It is perpetrated by power-structures against group identities that are thus made real." (And which provide group members a positionality that gives access to truth-claims - if they don't challenge Theory, in which case they have a false consciousness.)
It is best seen as an intellectual trap for critically incompetent but caring individuals. One I'd hope was set up by accident and not intentionally.
"Come to my house and lets discuss" said the spider to the fly.
Incredibly eye opening for I have many postmodernists friends who in conversation throw logic or evidence out the window without hesitation and instead consider their feeling an obvious trump card to logic or evidence.
I used to be a democrat and hardcore socialist, till one day I was studying free societies and in less then 15 minutes everything I believed came crashing down when put against logic and reason.
I would hypothesize the reason people choose postmodernism is they get to believe they’re right, and that lovely feeling is simply more valuable than truth or logic, a sad clarity regarding the human mind.
Not just that they are right, but that they get to keep the hedonists lifestyle and be right. Socialism is at it's heart a way to get utopia without making the sacrifice.
Marxist theory looks good on paper, unless that paper is in a history book.
Never read Marx or a single work by a post-modernist. Still an expert. Wonderful.
@@lordbunbury Cool story, bro.
Marxism doesn’t even look good on paper. It is an immoral mess. Theft and force is mandatory. How else will you redistribute property from the unwilling?
Violence and force. Any Marxist Revolution will be bathed in the blood of the innocent. When your foundation is that fundamentally evil it doesn’t look good, it looks like a system built on genocide and mass murder.
I wish it was only relegated to history books filed under, don’t do it again, but evil exists in this world.
Marx was not a postmodernist.
@@AP-sd1fldude wat
Some postmodernist wrote the title, but I changed it :)
Thanks Dr Hicks! Sorry if I seemed too nitpicking there. It's just that I find spelling / grammar and other sorts of errors constantly, and it gets to me sometimes.
Frankly, I think your analysis is excellent. Though I am still thinking about the ultimate conclusion regarding what motivates the Left. I see contradiction ensuing in the Left's positions from the fact that they seem to move from a modernist / Enlightenment perspective, when that suits their purposes, to a postmodernist (relativist) perspective, when that suits their purposes. The two worldviews, modernism and postmodernism, are obviously incompatible. (As someone like Steven Pinker shows.) But the Left employs those two different rhetorics at will, again depending on what they want in a given context. Their real target/s, I would argue, are Christianity, and tradition (although mainly just Western tradition). That's really what harnesses them together. That's why, too, the Left now hates the US Constitution so much. It has the status of being a tradition. That's why they want to radically modify it (add to it, or subtract from it), or even eliminate it and rewrite it altogether. Of course they will use other non-Western traditions to undermine Western and Christian traditions.
I am Dr Michael Carper, by the way, philosopher from St Louis University. I really enjoy your lectures and interviews. Thanks for all your hard work! Let me know if, during this time of lockdown, you would like to talk. I would love to. I have thought a lot about our current political and cultural situation. I have a paper, eg, that I gave at the University of Nebraska, on the logic of being a conservative vs being a liberal. It was very well received by both sides, much to my delight! It started a great conversation! I am trying to reach out to as many as I can. I love learning from others whose views have real coherence and integrity, such as yours. Take care.
I enjoyed and agree with the point of the video but I do hate how obstinately Randians insist on misunderstanding that Kant quote!
@@michaelcarper2185 I'd like to read your paper on the logic of being a conservative vs being a liberal. Where can I find it? Thanks.
Lmao!
@@michaelcarper2185 Thanks for the response. I didn't know if you would get a notification of my response to your message due to the 3 month gap, but you did. I've sent you an email and I'm looking forward to reading your paper.
P.S. I would recommend removing your email address from the previous comment now that it's served its purpose, but that's your call.
Yes. If they claim truth is a function of power, and words are a rhetorical weapon used in the interest of power, why wouldnt they be playing their own game?
It also perfectly explains why they keep accusing us of things so alien to our own motives - since they see the world through that game, they presuppose that we must be doing the same.
Right... they tell on themselves all the time, it's all projection of their own perversions and their horrible worldview. "Everything is racist and sexist, nobody is really normal, everything is a power struggle, everyone is just selfish and wants to dictate will to power, bla bla.." That's THEM. That's THEIR stupid thinking.
Their own words are their psycho constructions, their ideas from mental institutions. And their truth is a falsity working contrary to common sense. Nuff said. Don’t waste your time going deeper. Ignore and detour from them when u meet one.
George Orwells doublethink, believe 2 things at the same time, that contradict each other.
Cognitive dissonance
Why can't postmodernists find the contradictions in titles?
TLDR: Postmodernists see their contradictions but are literally irrational (they reject the use of reason to arrive at conclusions).
Francis Schaeffer made the astonishing prediction of modernity in his book "Escape from Reason" all the way back in 1968. Though, he was an astute thinker and assessor of ideological consequences, so its not really a huge leap given what was going on in those days.
I’m on the verge of buying that book following your mention, though I see Schaefer was Christian, which is a fundamentally superstitious belief system. Is that book therefore coloured with assumptions about the supernatural?
@@EmperorsNewWardrobe Supernatural in the historical sense is that which is higher than a material essence. It is widely believed that things such as consciousness is immaterial. Do you think you are conscious? If so, Schaeffer may be able to speak to you in meaningful ways. If not, then no communication is possible with you.
@@1stGruhn how do we know consciousness is immaterial? Surely if you’re braindead (which is material), you’re not conscious
@@EmperorsNewWardrobe I would say you are conflating the information with that which is encoding it. When I speak my vocal cords move air, but you can't determine what I mean by the air movement alone. The content of information is immaterial even if it uses the material to transport the message.
@@1stGruhn where is there evidence of anything immaterial?
Do not agree with Professor Hicks on his view of Nietzsche and the Nazis. But I find his thoughts on Post Modernism clear, succinct and quite helpful. It’s very difficult to debate someone with Post Modern views. As they often throw out entirely Logic and Reasoning. This lecture gave me some footholds to use next time I find myself in conversation
In a postmodern art exhibition there was once a house built upside down as some sort of fundamental protest against the norms of western capitalist society. The doors, windows, roof everything was upside down, but the ultimate inconsistency / hypocrisy was that the house though upside down was still built on a council approved regulatory concrete foundation.
"All truths are relative" is its an absolute statement and thus paradoxical. This one statement disproves postmodernism.
It is called "philosophical relativism". No truth, no facts - only opinions exist.
Very stupid and very postmodern indeed.
Embracing contradiction in the attempt to conceptualize contradiction can lead to wisdom (i.e. Zen), but trying to reconcile contradictions in belief leads to harm and chaos.
It's really human pride. It requires humility to admit you're wrong, which is difficult to do when your whole identity is wrapped up in an identity of being enlightened and more educated that others (as academics love to brag about), and therefore are the fountain of TRUTH! Throw in a moral righteousness of "saving humanity" by any means necessary and the ends justifies the means-and voila! Post-modernists!
Having grown up a lefty, and with many members of my family Democratic party members (Union president, AFL-CIO organizer, Dem party chair, Teamster lawyer), there is no reasoning with them anymore, and that started with Obama. Really liked him at first, but then his character was revealed. Started arguing against him, and guess what? I'm RACIST!! Funny thing is, I was one of 3 whites at a HBCU in the deep south back in the mid 1970's. Yet, my critical thinking about Obama got me labeled a KKK member. And it's only gotten worst, hasn't it?
The truth doesn’t matter and must be ignored if it does not forward the ideology, the party must always be protected and come first.
We are living out 1984
SirDroidThe1st totally agreed. It is amazing to see what is happening today and most do not realize what is happening.
Very smart talk. One small complaint. The guy seems to be still stuck seeing most sexism as directed at women. While men are the ones who seem to be dying and in actual distress.
The low number of upvotes on your comment speaks volumes.
Anyone want to talk about how Johnny Depp was hospitalised while in Australia and why every single media outlet is remaining silent? That’s a measurable fact.
FYI- Johnny was beaten repeatedly. Amber admitted it and admitted Johnny never hit her... not one media outlet will cover it ... and never will. Every act of DV by a woman is covered up. And there’s a lot of it!
Well I agree with you, I Hick's was talking about how the left sees the world more then his own beliefs.
Sexism isn't actually a thing. Hear me out.
Marxism divides people into 2 groups and labels one the oppressed and one the oppressor. They roles have to be immutable. Gender is obvious as we already have 2 groups and women have a history of being oppressed. But because it is immutable they can't view sexism as going both ways. So gender differences are all viewed as oppression even when they are privileges.
Traditionally women take the last name of men. This could be a plus as men are expected to keep their last name even if they don't like it. Women get to choice their last name through who they marry. But this view is never taken and instead it is viewed as a women giving up her name. Both perspectives could be true, but only one is allowed because only one fits the marxist narrative.
Or the draft. Women not having to be draft is a privilege. So that fact is ignored and the female soldier is idolized so that more men on the battlefield is also just the oppression of women.
But many gender differences are not a bad thing. Imagine a room that you can only enter if you are the correct gender, and even worse ever building must have this room. Sounds sexist until you realize this is a bathroom. We all have lots of situations in which sexism is a positive. So by what standard do we declare some of them sexist and others required? And by what standard do we say other civilizations in the past were wrong about their gender roles?
(I have a standard myself. I think most of history has actually had some standard, right or wrong. But I don't think most people in the modern day have anything more then feelings to decide this.)
stop complaining about sexism. be fn man
When Postmodernists win, everyone loses.
No. You are already lost. You just can't imagine what people can do with their ability to think.
Yes Chris, it’s Gary Krishna
They destroy everything to attain representation , representation of their fragmented personalities reflecting back at them.
Your mom is a loser.
Part of his logical argument is that the PhDs can’t possibly be that stupid - after all, they have a PhD. I would counter with ... “but they don’t”. They don’t have a PhD in math or physics. Indeed, they don’t even have a PhD in English or history. Rather they have a PhD, granted to them, by other PhDs within the same discipline that is devoid of logic. i.e. they are not thinkers but people who just want to belong.
I think we see this in the global climate change “scientists” who have perverted the fundamental scientific process to include manipulating data, recording false data, generating data from models and using it as real data, etc. They all have just accepted these perverse practices. Here again, the global climate change scientists are giving PhDs or credentials to other global climate change scientists. It is a classic example of group think.
@Twenty Faces vaccine deniers do not deny science either. They just question the additives to vaccines, and the need for herd immunity. The science is open to debate, but by labeling different points of view, as deniers, you in fact are not doing science anymore, it's propaganda and bullying.
Couldn’t agree more. Not all Ph.D.’s are created equal.
They have PhDs in Sophistry.
Twenty Faces...it used to be called global warming.
He also is assuming they are being honest. Do they really think all cultures are equal, or do they just say this to pander and use as a club against their adversaries? Are they like the white liberals who speak at length about racial equality, but insist that only white people can fix the ills of black society?
Socialism requires constantly monitoring and modifying human behavior to meet an acceptable societal "norm" or a police state
Postmodernism is a "stalemate" goal oriented mentality in chess game.
They know they can't win because they know they don't have it (the truth), yet they don't want to loose, so what they do is always looking for a draw.
Gin,
I recently heard it described like this: "Arguing with a liberal is like playing chess with a pigeon. They knock over all the pieces, shit on the table, and then strut around as if they've won."
The title is the work of TH-cam. Stephen Hicks seems to have some mastery of the language and correct grammar.
Ok, I see. Thanks.
The problem isn't leftists or Marxists. The problem is that our culture is vulnerable to bad ideas.
What surprises me is that something like Zen, is anti-logic, but it still accepts that words and definitions function in human society even though reality can't be accurately defined with words. Post modernism is like just having a lobotomy and rejecting all reason, but with nothing behind why or what replaces it. It's just rubbish and people make careers out of this.
Hicks should be a million times more we’ll known than Jordan Peterson.
He communicates with so much more clarity, and precision. He also uses the appropriate tone of voice and emotion
Peterson’s tone and emotion most of the time makes me not even hear what he is saying, and think that he’s nuts
Thats your problem, not jps problem
His philosophical ideas are great . His understanding of psychology maybe not so much. He assumes very high intelligence in these humanities professors.
He is setting off from the wrong foot here. You don't have to be intelligent to get a humanities masters or PHD, you just need to pick the right subject and viewpoint.
If I wanted an easy pass on a humanities PHD I would choose a thesis subject like "Proving the response to COV19 affects women in a disproportional way and thus proving muh patriarchy is alive and well and attempting to regain power"
I doubt leftists in the UK would read more than the title and introduction before gleefully passing the writer of it.
Seeing as leftists run every humanities dept in the UK I guess this tittle or a more academic variant of it would pass easily.
One could actually make an intresting study about how woman are more affected by covid-19 in regards to the additional time they have to spend with childcare and then comparing this to the additional time men spend with childcare and see if there are actual gender diffrences. So your idea is not to bad after all, although a little bit sloppy formulated.
@evan cavalier Yeah I saw that it was a year or two ago.
Had entirely forgotten about that until you mentioned it.
Whenever I find an apparent contradiction in someone's view, I don't give them any benefit of the doubt and assume I understand their position better than they do. I'm so insecure that I can't risk properly understanding my opponent (what if they're right? What if I'm wrong?). So I straw man them, and don't bother meaningfully engaging with what they actually say and think. I'm just interested in reinforcing what I already think, rather than getting at the truth.
And when you have studied Kantian and Post-Kantian for decades and find a REAL contradiction, what do you do? Blanking out, so your friends and collegues won't think you've started to think independently?
There is actually a way to unify the contradictions into a solid world view. I spent a lot of time talking politics with a guy that was smarter then me and a self declared communist. The only problem is the way you unify these contradictions is exactly what Hicks said in the video. Straight from a communists mouth I have heard this idea that words are just tools to assert power over others and that objective truth does not exist.
A very woke star wars show explained it perfectly.
"It's not about good or bad. This is about power, and who is allowed to use it."
This the lefts M.O.
The flat earth society of academics.
Never read a post-modernist’s work and still an expert. Wonderful.
Lord Bunbury Who are you talking about? Me? You? Hicks?
I’m working on competing another university degree (I have several). Gives me good perspective.
There was never this concentration of people who believed in flat earth that we know of. Academia on the other hand...
Walter B You missed by point. I compared Postmodernism with flat earth believers. Postmodernists never back anything they say with empirical evidence. They only test of a Postmodernist idea is if other postmodernists like them.
A characteristic of all ideologues is that they always make the facts fit their ideas, rather than the other way around.
There are no objective truths... except this one...
Life carries with it numerous contradictions. The difference between ideology and ideals is that those with ideals adapt and learn.
The absolutism and dogma are definitely the core of their ideology. The relativism is a shield against criticism. It's the same as a religious fanatic screaming "God makes it true."
Or an evolutionist fanatic screaming millions of years makes it true.
There is power in not seeing your own contradictions.
He definitely took Kant and Kierkegaard out of context at 2:33 - their true arguments were substantailly deeper - not just choosing faith iver reason and knowledge. That really shortchanges two tremendously influential thinkers. Kant examined reason for it’s internal structure, while Kierkegaard saw the complementary nature of faith and reason, that reason must in a sense crucify itself on things it cannot grasp (he was applying it to the incarnation but it can apply about every huge question - why is there something rather than nothing, etc). He also saw it as the *glorification*, not the *defeat* of Reason that it could come to know its limits. Really encourage you to read more into it - found this excerpt that hints at Kierkegaard’s actual argument:
books.google.com/books?id=aGEtGhl-gEAC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=kierkegaard+crucified+reason&source=bl&ots=sE-OaZf4uv&sig=ACfU3U2N_fCr0O3GusQ28ldDeQGbOZDJcg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjSwa721bjqAhUBl3IEHUYBCqYQ6AEwCnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=kierkegaard%20crucified%20reason&f=false
Thanks, I didn't know that.
I AGREE with the postmodernists that A) we do not have access to a final, eternal. complete truth, but DISAGREE with the postmodernists that therefore B) every interpretation is as good/ valid/ viable as any other, and that therefore, C) all we are left with is a nasty, ugly, anything-goes battle for power among ephemeral, socially-constructed interest/ identity/ racial groups.
Some interpretations/models/maps simply and easily work better than others. That's what the sciences and technologies, businesses and societies are constantly trying to figure out as we go along, as we learn, improve, grow, as our purposes and paradigms and pretexts evolve. Every model we come up with is provisional but there is an ineffable reality, a LOGOS, a TAO, outside of our human-all-too-human conception that tells us "this works and that doesn't, this works under these conditions, this works for this amount of time", etc. Not all airplane designs fly, not all airplane designs fly as well under various weather conditions, not all airplane designs are as fuel efficient, etc. Not everything works. Mother Nature won't let us get away with just anything. Not everything is sustainable. Not everything survives. Not everything is viable.
Behind all the academic postmodernist verbal-gymnastics hogwash, there is an evil cabal - WEF, etc. - that is out for world domination and believe that the best way to achieve that is by rendering societies and individuals as chaotic and confused, traumatized and afraid, weak and worried, as possible, create a specter of increasing "danger" from each other and from the "outside", "Russia! Russia! Russia!", etc., so that confidence and clarity and resistance collapses and we are relived to be ruled and used by them like farm animals. The nightmare is finally over. The pain finally stops. We finally have "safety" in our conceptual and physical pen.
They don't care about Communism or Socialism, Trotskyism or Leninism, Liberalism or Capitalism, or any ism, they cynically use them as tools, Psychiatry, Pharmaceuticals, Entertainment. All they care about is that their cabal gains absolute political and bureaucratic, financial and psychological control. A feudalism 2.0, if you will. Hell on earth.1984. Brave New World.
The fist thing they have to do is to ridicule and get rid of the "superstructure" of Christianity and Islam and Hinduism, etc., any loyalty higher than to their mundane political structure. Get rid of individualism, family, community, love, loyalty, beauty, rational thought, etc. Lost people looking for a Messiah. They want to be viewed as gods with nothing above them. But as the wise American philosopher and former heavyweight boxing champion of the world Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they're punched in the face." It ain't gonna work, baby. Tradition is too strong, reality too stubborn, love of liberty conquers all. The immune system kicks in. Life takes wings.
The idea that every interpretation is equal is pretty stupid, and antithetical to their academic elitist framework, so I'm surprised they use that. The reality is that a blind person's interpretation of a visual event is likely not going to be as valid as a seeing person's interpretation. However the blind are oppressed, so therefore their interpretation is more valid. That's the leftist/post-modernist belief, the blind leading the seeing, because oppression.
Humanity needs both strong community and competition to thrive and it's very hard to build a system (or religion) that works for all occasions.
Christianity seems to do pretty well when people are willing to actually do it.
One reason for the popularity of anti-rationalist and emotion based philosophy is probably the influx of women in the universities. Their proclivity to put emotion first seems to be aligned with the theory.
That is why it's so easy to troll these guys...... Eg: I reached my credit card limit, can I use yours? It's only money.....
Perfect, I like that.
The essence of post modernism is to reason backwards from your conclusions
Which in practical terms tends to be rationalising sociopathy
Yup. Also that's Machiavellian: the ends justify the means. It's fishing for whatever useful-for-the-moment principles get us to the conclusions we want to exploit.
Avoid wrapping up your identity into your beliefs and you can change your beliefs as facts become clearer to u.
This was interesting and helpful. My argument is that capitalism isn’t happening anymore. Government intervention isn’t socialism. If government doesn’t intervene, if if doesn’t regulate capitalism the logical conclusion is corporate monopolies
Keith Bell perhaps, but only for a short period of time. Monopolies can only exist for any great length of time if they have support from the state, often in the form of regulation. See: mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly a short breakdown.
Look at intel and amd, the free market broke a monopoly right in front of us.
Then look at google, there map data came from the US military by the way...
Though I will fully endorse right to repair type laws which are government intervention.
“Truth is not the issue here.”
1. Unseen and seen
2. Scripture and the world
3. Soul and material body
4. Life and Death
5. Good and evil.
Socialist are so smart and sure of themselves; however, not a single one is willing to pack their bags and move to a socialist country. It's time to force them out of the U.S.
Ok fascist
Why would they when they already live in a socialist country?
Ever look up how many people don't pay into taxes but get welfare?
It's amazing that we managed to hold back the economic collapse that socialism brings this long, but the poison has been their a long time.
Nothing can be proved = Truth is subjective = All interpretations are equal = Lies are as valid as truth.
While his analysis of postmodernism is, I think, salient and accurate, his analogy with religion in the 17th and 18th centuries doesn't prove true in the long run. This is, of course, more obvious in retrospect than it was at the time. But in fact, Christian theology has continued to prove bolstered rather than undermined by science over time (theism never lost the high ground from the perspective of the rational, though the specifics of Christian dogma, though not necessarily contrary to reason, cannot be arrived at simply by reason). The reason that this is the case is not merely that the empirical sciences have come full circle to the recognitionn that they do not, in fact, present any particular challenge to theism, but also because the challenges they presumed to present in the 17th and 18th centuries pressed Christian theology specifically to either challenge or fully embrace the pagan creep that has always been a problem for it. The "god of the gaps" thinking that the scientific world view challenged was always and everywhere a part of that creep. It is noteworthy both that Christianity in general still shows many signs of paganization (the German Christian Party, so-called "mainline" protestant denominations, traditions that focus on ecstatic experience, wholesale adoption of pagan doctrines by Rome, etc.,) and that orthodoxy nonetheless still perseveres. It is also noteworthy that Marxism's rejection of religion (or rather, replacement of Christian theology with a religion of the state) factors so largely into its catastrophic failure. This leads to the second major problem with the analogy: Marxism can be judged pragmatically, whereas Christianity, not so much. Christianity is eschatological in its focus - it makes no claims to simply transforming the here and now on some societal or geopolitical scale. Marxism is subject to judgment on its own terms, and has fallen painfully short. Not only so, but a reasonable analysis of its presuppositions and reasoning readily predict why it will always be a failure.
The idea that science bolsters christianity seems like nonsense based purely on the fact that we have discovered so much about the nature of our universe that christianity is painfully unaware of. You could make the same argument that islam is bolstered by science (many do) and you wouldn't have to change any words, so ultimately I think your comment specifically with regards to this point is dogshit.
@@RVGENomini It seems like nonsense only if you have a very narrow and shallow understanding of the science, and if you naively imagine that Christianity if fundamentally a comprehensive cosmology. The points at which many naive people think that a greater empirical understanding of the universe undermines the theism of Christianity is precisely where, in fact, science tends to bolster the the theism of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Think, for example, of the shift in the 1960s in astrophysics from a static-state theory of the universe to the so-called "big-bang" theory. Granted, these areas of science are miles apart from the specifically Christian claims about the person and work of Jesus Christ (incarnation, life, death and resurrection), but Christian theologians would not expect anything like empirical sciences to intersect with these claims.
@@arlobandersnatch6244 Feel free to get specific with the science that you feel is pertinent to your case. You also completely ignored my point that Christianity is interchangeable with islam in your argument and there's no difference.
@@RVGENomini Well, your point about Islam is pretty well meaningless, since Islam is just a cheap imitation of Judaism and Christianity. The distinctions there are primarily theological at best, and sociological otherwise. Apparently you didn't read my reply very carefully at all. Maybe once you've done that you can come up with some reasonable point of discussion.
@@arlobandersnatch6244 Okay now you ignored my other request to get specific with the science that is pertinent to your case. It's important that Islam is interchangeable given that you felt it necessary to only point out the science bolsters christianity. If it bolsters more than one religion then science can't be the factor with which you decide one or the other and thus it's deceptive to even say that it supports christianity without mentioning the others it supports. Forget all that though and talk about the science, lets see how right you are.
In the 1960's people believed in Marxism based on reason. In the 2010's people believed in Marxism by the power of Faith. Hallelujah and Amen.
They believed based on reason because propaganda only presented the facts that made it sound reasonable. Orwell knew better way sooner and he wasn't special, any veteran of the Spanish civil war could have made the same predictions.
I don't feel that the treatment of Kant and Kierkegaard is correct here
That checks out. Hicks is an "Objectivist".
Which means he's likely to be just as ignorant and dishonest about Philosophy and Faith as a post-modernist is.
All they care about is spouting ideology and winning "points". Truth doesn't matter.
Stephen Hicks’ book was great. I read it three times.
How can they reconcile their epistemology with their socialist policy?
Ouija boards.
I think most of this critique of post-modernism is on point: all the Marxists became postmodernists when the revolution never materialized; The internal inconsistencies of the philosophy are breezily dismissed to support a political agenda; ... etc. However, at it's heart, post-modernism *does* contain a reasonable critique of modernism: that we often fall into the trap of reifying our theories, fail to recognize the limitations of the mechanisms through which knowledge is produced, and knowledge produced my informal mechanisms out of hand. There are ways to take on these critiques to improve the rationalist project without devolving into absolute relativism. Unfortunately, it's tough to find thinkers who are willing to take on that challenge.
It all stems from a desire to be rebellious and fight against something, but coming from the most prosperous and egalitarian society in all of history.
That isn't to say we don't have a lot of corruption and problems to address, but I find postmodernists are less interested in those issues. They are especially intellectually lazy in their thinking when they do tackle them.
This sounds brilliantly insightful and accessible. Hats off.
Is it wrong to agree with your hypothesis but still argue the case of convetionalism or kants idea of universal truths?
It is postmodernity where we are at present. Postmodernism that you criticise is ideology.
I don't understand all the pro-Christian responses to this video. He describes postmodernism's descent from reason as being similar to the Christian theologists.
Christianity is true, rational and defensible.
Which version of Christianity? Most biblical scholars, including those in the Vatican, won't deny that the original Hebrew manuscripts didn't call Mary a virgin, that doesn't show up until the early Greek translations where the it substitutes the Hebrew term for "young woman" from the original text with the Greek word for "virgin" in the translation. The Greek version was then copied by scribes across the world with other little mistakes and errors that they actually trace how those copies moved through the world. This mistranslated word is the entire basis of the Trinity concept that was developed two hundred years later. Wait another 200 years and the passage in Gospel of John 8.1-8.11 related to the adulterer suddenly starts showing up out of nowhere and scribes then continued to include that newly inserted story into the future books and so on. If this is what you mean by true, rational and defensible, then I guess I agree.
Christianity is logocentric and is therefore vindicated. Suggested reading: Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.
The difference is Christianity has a wide realm of action outside of natural philosophy.
Science is clearly articulated in the bible as nature cannot be in conflict with God - so what we observe in nature, if true, would mean that our theology is wrong.
Socialism is a development of the enlightenment which ultimately rejects it. Whereas the enlightenment emerges from Christianity as a part of it that is a real search for truth.
Socialism winds up becoming a rejection of the enlightenment and Christianity - of both natural truth and the religious truth that produced and sustains it.
The funny thing about chaos theory is not that the universe is chaotic, it is that what is seemly chaotic are actually orderly. We use it all the time to predict the weather. We look at all the constants, things that don't change or change very little: mountains, oceans, flat lands, forest and so on, and take into consideration the variables heat, humidity, wind patters, season, and so on. We look at all this data and can predict what the weather will do in the future. It's not random for every effect their is a cause.
Until you get to the quantum level then we get true random. Particles don't care about your physics, particles do what they want.
Lmao this dude really thinks theism has been debunked? He says it with so much confidence that science has largely filled all the holes theism once did.
@@venga3 Nope, not even close lmao. the arguments for God have been anything but rebutted.
@@venga3 Well we seem to disagree on that. I'm not impressed by any of the responses to arguments for God.
@@venga3 Science can tell us literally nothing about God, seeing as it is limited to the study of the physical world. And God being the creator, necessarily rests outside of it. People accept or reject premises based on various biases amongst other things, Atheists are no different. I would've agreed with your last statement if it were indeed true that there are no sufficient reasons to believe in God, but that's literally a lie! I'm not a theist because i rest on "Blind faith and ignorance", as you atheist snarkily love to assert, far from it, I'm a theist precisely because i see good reasons to believe in the existence of a creator.
Actually atheism and secularism have played right into the hands of the Postmodernists. That's for the same reason as Communists abolished religion. If you want to stop the destruction of decent society, swallow your ignorant pride and get back to church.
@@venga3 yup, you're definitely part of the problem. BTW, Postmodernists deny the existence of truth, so good luck with that one.
I just love how these smart guys can tell you how great our system is because it was simultaneously developed alongside our technological revolution. What are the options for historical societies? It seems like you can choose between an endless list of authoritarianism regimes of slightly different flavor, some theocracies and, what, 1 democracy and 1 republic.
Ancient Israel had an anarchy period before King Saul. The US had something pretty great going after the revolution before technology took off.
Sorry, I don't have to throw out reason for my faith. So with Postmodernists, it's the ends justifies the means.
1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you *a reason of the hope that is in you* with meekness and fear:”
I think he is pointing to when Darwinism and the age of the earth stuff changed the public default. Most if not all of those claims have been debunked and replaced with new claims I will debate. But looking at it historically as a Christian, I can see a period of time in which the facts that were known would have made Christianity hard to believe.
Of course Darwin was wrong about genetics and Mendel was right, which makes me find it hard to believe in macro evolution.
"Here's my devastating critique of positivism. Also, here's some quantitative research on the existence of structural racism."
Umm . . .
So many have gotten Religion all wrong,... The foundation upon which reason was built was created by God. Stupidity is thinking that a limited perspective of both nature and spirit will help us decide which is better and more important. *_When there "appears" to be a disagreement between science and religion, it either means that science's interpretation of nature is wrong, the believer's interpretation of scripture is wrong, OR BOTH!_*
So then you are saying that no one can know the answer. You can't tell if the Science is wrong or the religious interpretation is wrong, so then why bother with the scripture at all. You can't trust it because interpretation can be wrong, and you can't test it because the test could give you the wrong answer. That makes the religion pointless, and that's before you try to work out all the competing religions plus competing interpretations which contradict each other without Science advancing at all.
@@shawn4110 No. You said that, and I wholeheartedly disagree. You misunderstood what I said and then *_correctly_* rejected *_your_* misunderstanding... never touching what I actually said.
Of course you can tell in both science *_and_* religion. Regrettably, too many people (like you) use logical fallacies and get everything fouled up with muddy thinking. I've done that before, too. And it's not a fatal mistake.
Scripture is True. So is science. But the interpretations of both have been questionable at time by scientists and the religious using sloppy logic just as you have displayed. My logic isn't perfect, yet, and I've been working on it for 70 years; still learning. But I've experimented with miracles, even replicating many of them.
Science has had countless stumbling blocks, with the self-proclaimed experts using logical fallacies instead of logic. The "Clovis First" dogma, for instance. Thank goodness there were some scientists who were not afraid to dig below the Clovis horizon.
For anyone interested, read my book, *_The Bible's Hidden Wisdom,_* for lessons on logic and biblical interpretation. Read my book, *_The Science of Miracles,_* for information on how scientific method can be used on spiritual action. Read my book, *_Proof of God,_* for more information on how scripture is foundational to all physical reality -- and *_not_* the way the "creation scientists" attempt to mangle things. And, if you're interested in some solid science, check out my #1 Weather Bestseller, *_Climate Basics: Nothing to Fear;_* it gives simple science that handily debunks the warming alarmists on nearly every point of their climate hysteria.
@@RodMartinJr Yeah, so I wasn't claiming anything. Just reading your post which clearly states that any religious interpretation can be wrong and any scientific test to prove the religious claim can also be interpreted wrong. Therefore, you would need a way to test your interpretations that aren't through religion or science.
I agree you can tell what is true. By testing the claims in a repeatable methodology. So since you claim to have tested miracles, you should be able to detail your methodology so that I can do exactly the same thing and get exactly the same results.
Go ahead and detail one miracle test that can be repeated and get the same results. If you can't do that, no intelligent person would believe you. So can you do that?
@@shawn4110 You weren't claiming anything? LOL You said, "So then you are saying that no one can know the answer." You were claiming an interpretation of what I said that was entirely wrong. Re-read what I wrote and try again to understand the underlying intent.
@@RodMartinJr I don't think you understand what I mean. You listed every possible solution as potentially wrong, but didn't explain how to resolve the issue. So you are by definition unable to determine when a scientific conclusion is correct nor how to determine if a religious interpretation is correct.
I'll give an example. Suppose the scripture claimed that the earth was flat. If you check and find that your scientific test shows the earth is round. How do you know if your scientific conclusion is correct, versus the conclusion being wrong, versus the scripture being wrong, versus the scripture being misunderstood.
What test could possibly falsify the scripture, and if it can't be proven false, then how do you ever test it to know that it is correct? Something unfalsifiable cannot ever be proven correct, and your statement makes scripture unfalsifiable.
Excellent !!!!!!!!
Clear , up to date and probing
Post modernist: Is this blue or yellow?
Me: its actually green, a mixture of both I guess.
Post modernist: I didn't ask what color it is, I asked if its blue or yellow!
Me: But...
Post modernist: You see? You can't even answer your own questions logically! Even I know it is green.
Me: I just told you it was green.
Post modernist: Yes, except that I didn't ask you if it was green I asked 'blue' or 'yellow', do you undestand that concept?
Me: *shoot myself*
Haha this so reminds me arguments with my wife...
To save their religion, Christians rejected the Logos they were supposed to embody, renamed it 'Jesus', and now worship him and his pointing hand instead of what he was pointing to.
Stephen Hicks, like most people, doesn't know shit about postmodernism. His book on the topic is one of the worst academic books to have ever been written. He fabricates quotes, misrepresents postmodern arguments, labels thinkers that are not postmodern and even some that are against postmodernism as postmodern and provides very few sources for his claims. He spend a whole book building a strawman and attacking without even demonstrating a basic understanding of it (like most people who use the term "postmodern" as a sort of intellectual boogeyman). Cuck philosophy did a great takedown os his book, which is also a critique of Hicks' ideas about postmodernism.
Brillant. The more I know the Man, the more I love my dog. And I don't even have a dog.
This guy is conflating post modernism with socialism. There's plenty of socialists who aren't post modern and vice versa. Very misleading
Spot on. Only comment I've read that make sense. When there's a real crisis, like 2008 & covid 19, it socialist policies that come to the rescue. Not a crony capitalist in sight. Some folk don't realise that it was a government handout/bailout in 2008 that rescued the so called 'too big to fail' financial institutions......and again during the recent pandemic. I consider myself a socialist with a small 'S', but I vehemently disagree with postmodernism and their unlikely marriage to Marxist ideology.
@@bryanbelshaw7725 Yeah, maybe look up what caused the 2008 crash in the first place. FEE, Thomas Sowell, or even economist explained do good breakdowns that might make you change your mind.
The po-mo left is always called out for thier incoherent and contradictory stances or statements. Their actions and words are perfectly compatible with a stance of elitism of one individual: themselves. The postmodern evangelist has one clear message and one coherent belief: I am better and I am above all of this. Therefore I despise it all and would destroy it all, if I could. Any enjoyment I get from this world is incidental and not satisfying, it’s a sort of self soothing to mitigate the awful way this world makes me feel, which is dissatisfied, disturbed and disgusted.
And I personally can sympathize with this position, perhaps there is a cure for it. It reminds me of a dissociative fugue state. This type of person has forgotten who they are and is being possessed by ideas. The ideas are seen as crutches, it’s no use to offer better ideas, they need to see directly the hollowness of ideas, so I would proscribe a transcendence experience, profound and deep. This way they regain the experience of true self and can rely on that as their source of satisfaction. So sincere and well guided spiritual practice is the cure for this ailment. 🙏
The title is ungrammatical. Work harder to get that sort of thing right. Be professional.
Michael Carper you’re really clever thank you
@@williammarshalknight1846 Carper is a moron.
BenMJay I know 👍
How is it ungrammatical?
@@clivegoodman16 Why DON'T Post-Modernist...As academia debt-slaves a generation for the neoliberal banksters...Which granted are commies...But that makes Hicks (and Peterson) accomplices, too!
If you’re conservative, you better discover your feelings. Don’t allow them to continuously punish your feelings in order to prevent them.
Why? What good comes from discovering your feelings? And what makes the feelings "yours"? Are our feelings not just social constructs that were chosen for us by the culture we live in?
@@viperstriker4728 good point, especially since our feelings are continuously punished in order to prevent us from having them. I try, though.
I would argue that being conservative insofar as that entails a committment to reason allows one to be better in touch with one's feelings because having intellectual standards builds the strength to mindfully acknowledge things that make one feel uncomfortable rather than reflexively insulating one's self from discomfort as if feeling good is the highest priority, higher even than being accurate.
I wish he would spend more time breaking down Kierkegaard in this convo like Rand did Kant.
Because you can Don't Do something, but you can't Do Don't something.
12 of some of the most important minutes, every rational person should firmly grasp.
I don't know that this answered the question. I think it might actually be that, they say the things they *wish* they believed in. The things that would make them a good person if they believed in them. But it would take *work* to hold to those principles. It would require a commitment to individual integrity. If you haven't developed that in yourself, then it won't be there to draw on. so they end up taking the easier route of going along with whatever the majority says. They value niceness over truth. They value the false peace of quiet over actual harmony. They value 'If I can't currently see a problem, none exists'.
As a philosophy major (in analytic philosophy), I think that Hick's is being more-or-less a sophist here (and having read his philosophical work, he clearly knows).
1) Quine's rejection of the correspondence theory of truth had nothing to do with politics; he was an avowed conservative.
2) The postmodern attack on traditional philosophy is not a Kierkegaardian "leap of faith." Rorty, for example, critiqued traditional epistemology for having to rely on a "leap of faith" in order to justify itself.
3) The logical contradictions don't hold when one takes a deflationary semantics (this was pointed out by within Pyrrhonism 2000 years ago).
4) One can hold onto notions of truth while rejecting a correspondence of language to reality. Truth claims can be merely relational to other beliefs rather than dependent on an external (and largely unprovable) set our categories beyond our thoughts.
5) Taking these positions in epistemology doesn't make one a leftist. Figures like Daniel Dennett hold similar philosophical positions. Also, the postmodernists were largely critiqued by Marxists, socialists, and critical theorists for ruining the left. Habermas called Foucault a "neo-conservative."
All in all, Hick's has his PhD in analytic philosophy and clearly understands the formal logic and semantics used to justify "postmodernism." He has politicized a complex set of problems into a revisionist history that just doesn't hold imo.
One-sided arguments for a self-admiration society of secular protestants who are frustrated by abiding disagreement with their paragons of temporal monotheism
Huh? The protestants I know are darn fine people.
Superior in every way to cultural marxist thugs!
@@larrydugan1441 But do you know any 'secular' Protestants? And do you know anything about that cohort? Or do you think that such a cohort is nonexistent because you know nothing about them? BTW I'm pro enlightenment + pro science & technology + pro democracy-capitalism, etc. etc. but I'm also an erudite intellectual, therefore able to call-out faulty rhetoric consumed by one-dimensional thinkers who are bigoted towards alternatives . Hear this talk (abridged) th-cam.com/video/Tlsm-VPEk0Y/w-d-xo.html (unabridged) th-cam.com/video/EHtvTGaPzF4/w-d-xo.html
@@BenCollin
My guess is that you are classic self agrandizing pseudo intellectual.
I have never been very impressed by modern day intellectuals.
They pretty much seem to get everything wrong.
I do detest marxists in their various slithering forms!
@@larrydugan1441 Well, that proves it: you’ve shown yourself as not having learnt any more than post-secondary diploma (and probably less) so believe that you have more than enough to confidently express opinion and knowledge that is lower than common sense. This conversation is deemed by me as over, because it is as useless to me as it is to anyone else educated.
@@BenCollin Lol. I have the same accreditation as Socrates.
Any Dummy can get a PhD nowadays, many do! Where did you get yours?
Erudite intellectual? Is that a college course?
I will direct you to the rampant stupidity that comes out of the Yale English Department!
To have a foundational understanding of philosophy is to apprehend the limitations of rationality. Where then do you go when the answers to life's deepest questions can't be accessed by reason?
Watching this reminded me of Nietzsche's slave morality. Now I see a recommended video on this topic by the same speaker. TH-cam's algorithm is very impressive!
added irony - Jordan Peterson's positions are inherently post-modern in their construction
Greatest intellectual slap-down in internet history.
I always like Kierkegaard the most. I don’t think he’s as 1-dimensional as to be a simple irrationalism. He had a thing for pseudonyms and for writing books that were just people arguing with themselves. There is large debate on if he was actually an irrationalist or if he was was a rationalist because it’s hard to find what he actually believed, this due to the hyperindividualism that we do know he most certainly held, which compelled him to force the reader to choose the right answer for themselves in his arguments
Those last 5 minutes were pretty remarkable.
Nicely and articulately put.
The comparison between sophists and postmodernists/neo-marxists should not end with the claims that they both believe in the subjectivity of all things but that they both deal in absolutes and act superior to their counterpart. The sophists were merely children compared to the wise man ‘Socrates’ as Plato’s work is in itself fiction and he is painting - like many other fictional stories - the old man as the wise and experienced. It is within the rebellious nature of young post modernists just like it was within to the sophists to assume all older people caused the problems they now had to fix which is a generalisation many young my age assume. Assumption based on aesthetic, absolutism based off pre hierarchal structures, subjective truth stemming from personal experiences and moral relativism abstracted from objective fact are the main problems within the post modernists.
If there's no objective Truth then there's no such thing as a contradiction.
Things are only contradictions if you accept the premises. Some things are contradictions on one level but not another. William James famously said that "if you run into a contradiction, make a distinction".
The biggest problem I have with any relativist, is that they always try to argue that relativism is true. That is their biggest contradiction. I never saw any relativist open to the possibility that someone that think truth is absolute Is as right as someone that sees it as relative.
I left socialism during my 20s. I was firmly convinced of many things I started to see were terribly wrong. It was a long process that took years but I finally could see socialism is more like a religion in which proof has no importance. I have many socialist friends but I can't discuss anything with them because they are blind in front of evidence. They also tend to think there is always something evil in non socialist ideas, considering people who stand for them are either stupid or pervert. They believe they have been provided with extremely intelligent minds which allow them to see clearly what's right or wrong. I abandoned discussion with them because it is useless. I prefer being considered stupid.
Take tenure away from them - go after their university large donors who would cancel endowments when they find out about this activism in humanities
“In general, the men of lower intelligence won out. Afraid of their own shortcomings and of the intelligence of their opponents, so that they would not lose out in reasoned argument or be taken by surprise by their quick-witted opponents, they boldly moved into action."
- Thucydides
Money is also relative. The more you have the more relatives you have.
lol
Money, you've got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When you're gone, spending ends
They don't come no more
~ From the song "God Bless the Child"
Is it easier to believe in socialism if you are receiving a government pay check?
"No man is so blind as the one whose source of income requires him not to see."
4:59 is a terrifying paragraph, given the implications it has today