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The Antinaturalism of Late Postmodernity



Among the definitions offered for Modernity and Postmodernity, I would argue that a definition involving ‘nature’ gets to the core.  Modernity elevated science to the head of departments in the university. Postmodernity has responded by rejecting the study of nature, with its objectivity, and replacing science first with literature, a subjective study, and then with the social sciences, investing group realities with political power (the ‘reality’ of power).  The literary turn marked early Postmodernity, whereas late Postmodernity has sought to privilege groups that undermine earlier groups that held privileged status.  The Postmodern turn in both cases, however, is a defiance of nature.  The movement champions local reality and constructed truth.
Postmodernity began as a challenge to modernity in the 1960s with architecture.  In 1966, Robert Venturi argued for the richness rather than the clarity of meaning in buildings in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.  He said, ‘less is a bore.’  In 1977, Charles Jencks wrote, The Language of Postmodernism.  As a deconstructive movement, it has been difficult to define in itself.  The curators of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum put together an exhibit on postmodernity in 2011 that identified four characteristics: quotation, metaphor, plurality, and parody.  However, the museum’s website posts this about postmodernism:
From about 1970 to 1990, Postmodernism shattered established ideas about design and art. A brilliant mix of theatrical and theoretical, Postmodernism ranges from the colourful to the ruinous, the luxurious to the ludicrous. It is a visually thrilling multifaceted style which so famously defies definition.[1]
Why ‘so famously defies definition’? This is because Postmodern deconstruction is non-essentialist.  This would explain the characteristics of ‘metaphor’ rather than literal and ‘plurality’ rather than uniformity.  Deconstruction may ‘quote’ what came before, but it will do so playfully, with ‘parody’ rather than sincerity.
Postmodernity did not, however, arise only in the 1960s.  It was simply the form that Existentialism took once it had won the argument for the time being against Modernity.  Existentialism is the philosophical outlook that posits existence prior to essence.  Existentialists spoke of the ‘thrownness’ of existence, as though one were thrown into being with no definition, no pattern, no essence.  One was ‘nothing’ until one acted and, by acting, one created one’s being or essence.  While Modernity celebrated the advances in science as the study of nature yielded a more and more definitive understanding of nature, Existentialism rejected all definition in favour of amoral activity.  There was no God, no nature, no morality, no essence of a person to make one action better than another.
As Existentialism gained in status in the university in the 1960s, proponents managed to isolate scientific study from the rest of the academic departments.  One could continue to measure the stars or discover medical treatments, but no such certainty could define the interpretation of a poem or the politics of groups or the self-understanding of clients in human psychology. Thanks to changing sexual mores, drugs, and the undermining of ideology on college campuses due to the demise of European Empires and the Vietnam War, the 1960s turned from established realities to expressions of freedom.
This challenge to defined existence held through the 1980s, reaching a major mile marker with the crumbling of the Soviet Union in 1989.  The Soviet Union represented ideology, anti-freedom, power, and science in its own way—but so did the United States in its own way.  Would the West not also crumble in the expansion of Postmodern thought?  The biggest challenge to its expansion was in that area of the university that still operated under the rules of science.  How could one ever deny the biological facts of nature in favour of personal choice?
The answer to this question was political.  Facts of nature that were seen to be unjust could be challenged.  This challenge came first by manipulating science for a desired outcome.  While antiquity practiced certain types of birth control, the invention and legal use of ‘the pill’ for contraception in 1960 in America marked a major victory for those wishing to gain more control over nature. This scientific development also allowed couples to ‘design’ their families and women to control their lives to a great extent, compared to previous generations.  Marriage itself could be reconceived: it was not an institution that located sex in a safe place where children could be conceived and nurtured.  Sex could be had relatively safely without marriage, and the institution of marriage was only required when one ‘chose’ to have children.
What, however, of those instances where children were conceived despite the pill and when one had not chosen to bear them?  Nature posited value for human life.  Postmodernity needed a way to challenge the inherent value of life.  Advocates chose to do so by advocating that unborn children were not ‘yet’ human life, and the term latched onto was ‘viability’.  Ignoring, for the time being, that babies were not any more viable than fetuses without the care of an adult, the unseen child was deemed unviable.  As scientific methods improved so that babies could survive birth at increasingly early periods of gestation, and as discoveries about the life of the unborn—their feelings, their hearing, their responsivity, their development—the challenge of science became increasingly problematic.  The argument of ‘choice despite science’ did not gain in clarity but did become more shrill as partial birth and even post-birth killing was sanctioned by advocates of a Postmodern worldview.  Who better to advance this than politicians, those perpetrators of social rather than scientific definitions for human existence?
The political challenge to biology continued in the case of homosexuality.  Advocates of homosexual practice could choose between two types of argument, as with abortion.  One could argue that homosexual orientation was natural, taking a Modernist approach to the issue.  Years of searching for a homosexual gene or some basis in biology have turned up nothing definitive, although some advocates continue to hope for a biological defense of homosexuality.  In light of the Postmodern turn in Western culture, however, such an argument seems antiquated and unnecessary.  Why not rather argue that people may define their sexuality in whatever way they choose?  This Postmodern approach allows one to dismiss arguments from science altogether, and it allowed people to posit an indeterminate number of gender identities despite biology’s binary genders of male and female.
When homosexuals began to push for ‘marriage’, Postmodernity’s general interest in ‘metaphor’ turned ‘marriage’ into a metaphor and celebrated the parody of natural marriage.  Recall Postmodern architecture defined in terms of metaphor and parody.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a metaphor as ‘a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.’[2]  It also defines a parody as ‘a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule.’  Homosexual ‘marriage’ and transgenderism provide examples for both of these.  With all of life no longer considered natural but simply a stage, the actor, living in a world of metaphor and parody, was also no longer considered merely an actor but now the only reality there is.
For example, in a case involving female, high school athletes having to contend with males identifying as females, a Connecticut judge has tried to silence the girls’ lawyers from referring to the males as ‘males’.[3]  He has urged that they be identified as ‘transgender females’.  This is an example of how a Postmodern mindset challenges reality at two levels.  First, one’s ‘identity’ is not defined by nature and can, in fact, be held over against nature.  By the same logic, a person identifying as a dog would be considered a dog.  Second, one’s chosen identity can be enhanced by taking drugs and having surgery to ‘correct’ biology.  By the same logic, a person with average muscles could take steroids to build muscle and compete against those who have not taken drugs.  Moreover, one can imagine persons choosing embryos or editing DNA to produce genetically modified children who would be better competitors in athletics.
A move to genetic modification will allow earlier Postmodernity to progress to late Postmodernity.  As the old Existential value of choice per se gives way to a new perspective on what choices are made, late Postmodernity can unashamedly value certain kinds of life over other.  In Iceland, for example, it is not enough to have the choice to abort a child or not.  It is now accepted that choosing to abort children with Down Syndrome is the right choice.  Columnist George Will has called this Iceland’s ‘program of genocide’.[4]  This is, however, only the beginning of what is possible. Gene splicing may, on the one hand, offer a ‘cure’ for inherited abnormalities, but it also offers genetic ‘improvement’.  The definition of what constitutes ‘improvement’ is more than scientific.  As we have already seen in horrific practices in the 20th century, biological, religions, social, racial and so forth definitions of ‘better’ have led persons with power to commit genocide.  The question is not whether people will pursue such agendas but by means of which worldview they will advocate that such practices are ‘good’. 
Look to China today to see how such policies play out for an atheist oligarchy.  Look anywhere—the West included—to imagine how they will play out in the future with science as a tool in the hands of late Postmoderns to manipulate and modify nature to conform to its own definition of ‘better’.  One of the inventors of CRISPR technology in 2012, Jennifer Doudna, has voiced concern about the ethics of the ability to modify DNA in light of a Chinese scientist, He Jianku, creating gene-edited twin girls.  Doudna says that the ability to make any change to any genome with precision will soon be possible.[5]  Her concerns with countries like China and Russia doing ‘unethical’ things with CRISPR are believable, but they are likely too narrow: the West lacks the worldview to handle this technology in a way that could be defined as ‘good’—the politicians and sociologists, not the ethicists—will define ‘good’ in a way that suits them.  In the antinaturalism of late Postmodernity, science does not ‘heal’; it ‘creates’ for political ends.
Late Postmodernity is also interested in saving the planet.  So stated, this is a scientific concern, but the articulation of the concern still lies in the hands of politicians.  In other words, environmental science has been politicised.  This raises two problems.  On the one hand, what is the science and how should we respond to it?  Science is not itself political and yet, in matters that concern the shape of society, the two are inseparable.  This means that scientific clarity for the question, ‘Is global climate change a reality and, if so, a danger?’, is virtually impossible, and, in a search for clarity, average people who do not understand the science are faced with the terrible choice of trusting a scientific oligarchy or remaining suspicious of them when there is, perhaps, a real danger. 
We are, right now, experimenting with what this dilemma involves as scientists guide public policy during the covid-19 pandemic.  Their guidance regarding the facts has been often enough been incorrect, but their guidance regarding what should be done has been and will necessarily be political.  In a Postmodern context, society is much more likely to manipulate scientific data for political purposes than to attempt to take a disinterested posture towards scientific research. 
Therefore, on the other hand, climate change is, whatever the data, as much about politics as anything else.  It is one thing—and somewhat frightening—to imagine the scientists in control; it is another thing—and even more frightening—to imagine politicians in control, manipulating the science.  An alternative, not really on offer, is for a stewardship of nature that aids it for what it is rather than manipulates it for what we would like it to be.  Neither those for or against the climate change argument are likely to do anything of the sort.
Christians occupy a dangerous position in such a society.  On the one hand, Modernity sets science up as a way to attack religious belief (although the Cartesian programme of doubt leading to foundational certainty was initially meant to establish faith), but Christians were not opposed to science in their worldview.  They believed that ‘all truth was God’s truth’.  The agreement that existed between the early Christians and Stoicism, with the latter’s desire to live ‘according to nature’, was like Christianity’s affirmation of scientific enquiry during the period of Modernity.  In both cases, ‘nature’ was accepted and affirmed.  Christians just added that God created nature.  The rub came when scientific observation in the Modernist period crossed the line and became speculative, such as with regard to the origin of life (science does not study first causes) or an insistence on a process of simple to complex chance, evolutionary development rather than development according to design (DNA).
On the other hand, Postmodernity is decidedly anti-Christian—or it has, over time, proven itself to be so.  There may have been some initial hope during early Postmodernity that, if voices from the margin were to be heard, Christianity, too, could have its audience in the public square.  Yet its origins in Existentialism were antagonistic to natural and creational views, and it quickly turned out that Postmoderns still held Christendom against Christians and viewed them as part of the problem.  Moreover, Christians hold that there is truth—real truth, not manufactured or personal truth.  Postmoderns are, of course, thoroughly inconsistent on this matter in their day to day lives, but in theory, they despise anyone who claims that there is truth.  Their ‘personal truths’ parody truth.  For a Christian to argue from God’s design, His creational intention, to what is right is opposed at every level.  ‘You cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”,’ argued R. M. Hare already in 1952 (The Language of Morals)—and he believed that this was the view taken by the Scottish Empiricist, David Hume.[6]  Possibly so, for Hume’s Empiricism, as George Berkeley understood, lacked the concept of ‘God’.  If naturalism is defined as an understanding of the world as a ‘causally interconnected system, without “gods” or systemic “purposes,”,’[7] then it is deficient.   Hume could not establish the certainty of the relationship between cause and effect, and he most certainly could not establish a moral imperative from a creational cause.  Still, he was a naturalist in the sense that his empiricism confines itself to the examination of phenomena and denies the existence of, or at least the relevance of, God.  This broken bridge of an atheistic naturalism from ‘fact’ to ‘imperative’ is just one step away from the antinaturalism of the Existentialist’s denial of essence and the Postmodernist’s denial of objective truth and ethical arguments from nature.[8]
One further thought on such matters has to do with the result of a denial of the natural.  If there is no objective reality, constructions of ‘reality’ are merely tentative, like sandcastles.  If they are tentative, then they are insincere.  Where Postmodernity becomes playful in the absence of truth, Christianity maintains sincerity in its presence—a protruding rock on the beach.  Postmodernity is the Middle School cad who mimics the teacher, lies for his own gain, lets others take the fall for what he has done, and champions the cause of anyone who undermines authority.  The present culture is insincere.  Socially constructed truth is interested in no facts, only the political function of discourse.  Its playfulness, however, may turn into ideological discourse, which is exactly what has happened from early to late Postmodernity.  If so, insincerity may turn into subterfuge.  The rise of critical discourse analysis in this era is understandable: it turns from questions of truth and falsity to how discourse functions with respect to relations of power.[9]
A Christian mission to such a culture cannot speak directly to the issue—to the reality of nature.  It cannot offer sincerity to persons who have learned to be insincere.  It can, however, find those who have fallen off this merry-go-round, those who have found Postmodernity wanting.  Perhaps this has always been the case in evangelism: a direct challenge to those in control of the culture is likely to fail.  Indeed, the cross of Christ presents the idea of power in weakness.  Those who have been victims of Postmodernity—the denial of nature and truth, the championing of insincerity and ideology—are persons who might listen to the Gospel.  Girl athletes losing to males pretending to be female are the sort of persons who will find Postmodernity to be the farce that it is.  Our culture knows numerous other examples of those marginalized by the Postmodern champions of the marginalized.  With them, there may be an audience for the Christian message that begins, 'We believe in God, maker of heaven and earth.'




[3] See: ‘Lawyers can’t call male athletes ‘’males,’’ judge rules in transgender track case,’ LifeSite (May 11, 2020); online at https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/lawyers-cant-call-male-athletes-males-judge-rules-in-transgender-track-case.
[4] George Will, ‘The Real Down Syndrome Problem: Accepting Genocide,’ The Washington Post (March 14, 2018); online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whats-the-real-down-syndrome-problem-the-genocide/2018/03/14/3c4f8ab8-26ee-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html.  Will reports statistics that 67% of Down Syndrome babies were aborted in America between 1995-2011.  The rate in France is 77%.  Of those who learned that the child they were carrying had Down Syndrome in the UK, the rate was 90%, and in Denmark it was 98%.
[5] See ‘One of CRISPR’s Inventors has called for controls on gene-editing technology,’ MIT Technology Review (Nov. 15, 2019); online at https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/15/102457/crispr-has-made-jennifer-doudna-rich-now-she-says-it-must-be-controlled/.
[6] See also R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963).  He says that he is ‘a firm defender of Hume’s doctrine that one cannot deduce moral judgments from non-moral statements of fact, and also of that particular application of the doctrine which says that one cannot deduce moral judgements of substance from statements about the uses of words or about the logical relations between concepts’ (pp. 186-187).  Note that his objection to naturalism entails an objection to analytic naturalism (next footnote).  I would maintain that the error in this antinaturalism is in ignoring the intentionality in nature—what we Christians therefore refer to as ‘creation’.  If there is purpose in the facts of the created world, then there is moral value as well.  Naturalism is not, for Christians, simply analytical.  Arguments from creation are not simply about description, evaluation, and application.  Eve’s error was to adopt an (her own) analytic approach (whether natural or not) to moral reasoning—eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—over against God’s intentional design in creation.
[7] The words (p. 116) are from Peter Lopson, ‘Naturalism,’ in The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophy, ed. Constantin Boundas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007): 116-127.  While noting that Thomistic naturalist theologians do, of course, speak of God and God’s purposes, Lopson limits his understanding of naturalism to the view beginning with the ancient Greek atomistic philosophers, such as Democritus, who affirmed ‘the unity of the world, the absence of guiding purposes or minds for it, and its operating as a closed system of deterministic causal laws’ (p. 117).
[8] Robert B. Scott, Jr., suggests five types of naturalism—the first of which is actually anti-naturalism.  ‘Eliminative naturalists deny the existence of certain types of ethical entities (e.g., ethical properties), contingent naturalists appear to hold as a minimum thesis that some moral principles which connect ethical with factual predicates are at least contingently true; methodological naturalists claim that moral principles are justified by roughly the same procedures as are scientific hypotheses; reductive naturalists assert identity between various ethical and factual entities; and finally, all analytical naturalists hold as a minimum thesis (roughly) that some moral principles which connect ethical with factual predicates are analytic’ (p. 261).  See his article, ‘II. Five Types of Ethical Naturalism,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 17.4 (October, 1980): 261-270.  As Christians, we need to speak of intentional naturalism—creation.
[9] See, e.g., N. Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (London: Longman. 1995).  Look no further than the antics of the political left in inventing ‘Russia collusion narratives,’ championing false testimony in Supreme Court justice hearings, scheming to get persons to lie, destroying evidence, twisting others’ words, and so forth.  Insincerity and subterfuge fit political intrigue like a tailored suit.  Imagine a culture devoted to it; don’t imagine, just observe.

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