Truth in Conflict

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Truth in Conflict
Keynote Lecture 1 Professor John Drane
Thursday August 30th
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Introduction

• What is Truth ?
• Objective Scientific v Relativistic ?
• Truth as Cultural Imperialism ?
• Western Truth is part of the problem not the
  solution ?
• Greater understanding leads to greater wisdom
• Western culture looks to non-rational truth claims

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Changing Culture

• The end or a new beginning ?
• Listening to postmodernism with care
• Religious Education discource

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Changing Culture 1
Of course, the modern man the liberals tried to
appeal to did not really exist. This new breed
of humanity, so scientific, so rational, was a
projection of modern philosophy, a myth created
by a tiny number of intellectuals who wanted to
attribute their own scientism and rationalism to
the whole human race. Gene Edward Veith,
Postmodern Times (Wheaton IL Crossway 1994), 192.
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Changing Culture 2
In country after country ... religious upsurges
have a strongly populist character. Over and
beyond the purely religious motives, these are
movements of protest and resistance against a
secular élite. Peter Berger, The
Desecularization of the World (Grand Rapids
Eerdmans 1999), 11.
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Truth Claims in Popular Culture

• Focus on popular culture
• Challenging high culture
• Key characteristics of post-modern culture
• Centrality of story in the search for meaning
• Retelling the story for the new contexts
• Meta-narrative

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Truth Claims in Popular Culture 1
... its not healthy to live life as a succession
of isolated little cool moments. Either our
lives become stories, or theres just no way to
get through them. ... We know that this is why
the three of us left our lives behind us and came
to the desert - to tell stories and to make our
own lives worthwhile tales in the
process. Douglas Coupland, Generation X (New
York St. Martins Press 1991),
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Truth Claims in Popular Culture 2
We know that life is really about a spiritual
unfolding that is personal and enchanting ... we
know that once we do understand what is
happening, how to engage this elusive process and
maximize its occurrence in our lives, human
society will take a quantum leap into a whole new
way of life - one that realizes the best of our
tradition - and creates a culture that has been
the goal of history all along ... The following
story is offered toward this new understanding
... All that any of us have to do is suspend our
doubts and distractions just long enough ... and
miraculously, this reality can be our own. James
Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy (New York
Warner 1993), 226-227.
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Truth Claims in Popular Culture 3
I think I am a broken person. I seriously
question the road my life has taken and I
endlessly rehash the compromises I have made in
my life. I have an insecure and vaguely crappy
job with an amoral corporation so that I dont
have to worry about money. I put up with halfway
relationships so as not to have to worry about
loneliness. I have lost the ability to recapture
the purer feelings of my younger years in
exchange for a streamlined narrow-mindedness that
I assumed would propel me to the top. What a
joke. Douglas Coupland, Life after God (New
York Simon Schuster 1994), 309.
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Truth Claims in Popular Culture 4
When reasonable persons from different cultural
backgrounds agree that certain institutions or
cultural practices cause harm, then the moral
neutrality of cultural relativism must be
suspended ... We have moved beyond the idea of a
value free social science to the task of
developing a moral system at the level of our
shared humanity that must at certain times
supersede cultural relativism ... this does not
diminish the continued value of studying and
affirming diversity around the globe ...
suspending or withholding judgment because of
cultural relativism is intellectually and morally
irresponsible. Fluehr-Lobban, Cultural
Relativism and Human Rights, in AnthroNotes 20/2
(Winter 1998), 16-17.
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Challenges for Religious Educators

• Where does this leave us ?
• Defining our own personal perspectives
• Knowing where we come from
• Engaging in new styles of discourse
• Defining and Describing our discipline