Postmodern atheism

Atheism, which Etienne Borne defines as "the deliberate, definite, dogmatic denial of the existence of God," is one of the major components of postmodernism's philosophical belief system. The postmodernists, however, appear to be more subtle than many of their fellow atheists in their disavowal of the reality of God's existence.

Though their denial of the existence of God is in many ways deliberate, the postmodernists are simply not prepared to admit that they are also dogmatic and definite about their own brand of atheism. What is more important to note at this point, however, is that they are in full agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that the God of the Judeo-Christian theism has now become unbelievable, in the same manner that rigid rationalism and scientific empiricism of the old Enlightenment regime have suddenly become undependable and indefensible in the postmodern-infested popular culture of the 21st century world.

According to postmodern pragmatist Richard Rorty, atheism itself is as untenable as classical theism. This, at least, is the postmodernists' general assessment, as atheism by definition operates according to the dictates of the Enlightenment's own version of objective reality – that is, the reality, so-called, that everything that exists in the universe is matter and nothing else. For the postmodernists, the central point of the issue is not only that the existence of God is unverifiable in the material universe. For them, the very notion of objective verifiability is all by itself dubious, and for that reason, it must not be given any space whatsoever in the postmodern universe.

This explains the reason why leading postmodern thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Rorty himself resort to play post-structuralism’s language game and operate according to the epistemological notion of indeterminacy and ambiguity, if only to get rid of issuing absolute statements in reference to the non-existence of God. Unlike their fellow atheists, most especially the perpetrators of the so-called new brand of atheism like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Samuel Harris, the postmodern atheists, according to Rorty, treat “moral and scientific beliefs as tools for achieving greater human happiness, rather than as representations of the intrinsic nature of reality.”

Regardless of their differences, both the postmodernists and their fellow atheists meet at the same dead end of the road called unbelief. On the one hand, the Enlightenment-oriented atheists' unbelief surfaces in their absolute denial of God even as they positively affirm the major tenets of Darwinian evolutionism. Unwilling to seriously consider the availability of evidence and the tenability of arguments that point to the reality of God's existence, they created their own god after the image of the autonomous self and erected its monument in the secular modern city of man.

The postmodernists' unbelief, on the other hand, is hidden beneath their pretention of agnosticism, their defiance of absolute, objective reality and deliberate refusal to commit themselves to any transcendent point of reference. They would rather consign themselves within the bounds of radical relativism rather than subject themselves to universal truth principles, or resign themselves to meaninglessness instead of living within the parameters set forth by an absolute moral law that is only possible if God indeed exists.

This reminds the Christian believer of the words of the apostle Paul in the New Testament book of Romans.  The very essence of unbelief, according to Paul, proceeds not from the unavailability of evidence about the truth of God but from the willful suppression of it by human wickedness.  "What may be known about God," says the apostle, "is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:18-21 NIV).

References:

Borne, Etienne. Atheism. New York: Hawthorn, 1961.

Noebel, David. Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews (Revised 2nd Edition). Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Press, 2006.

Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought In Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Zacharias, Ravi. Can Man Live Without God. Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 1994.