With so many of our cultural institutions now possessed by postmodernism and its bastard descendants, I find it amusing to note that true believers of the philosophy must, ironically enough for the ‘believe science’ crowd, be creationists. Consider that a foundational axiom of postmodernism is the absence of objective truth and by extension an absence of objective reality. After all, if there is an objective reality one can make objectively truthful statements about it. So in the absence of an objective reality, how does evolution work? Evolution is a process of optimization, of species adapting and improving themselves to survive in the environment. That environment must be at least meta-stable with reasonably consistent rules for any organism to optimize itself. If there is no objective reality at all, exactly what is it that any species adapting itself to? One can’t hit a target with nothing to aim at. To reject objective reality entirely is to reject evolution which leaves us with creation.
So now suppose our postmodernist compromises just a bit and accepts that there is some sort of objective reality, but then asserts that it is impossible for us to know any truths about it. Neither our rational minds nor our imperfect senses can make anything out of this ‘objective reality’ so we can know no objective truth. Again one must reject evolution to assert that. If we have evolved then our senses must be well evolved to accurately reflect at least some aspects of objective reality, the ones critical for surviving and thriving in the natural world. And what about rational thought? About 30% of all the calories you consume go to feed your brain; human rational thought is incredibly expensive. It could not possibly have evolved if it did not confer a very substantial benefit for survival given its cost. As a product of evolution, our rational minds must be quite good at understanding and modeling objective reality (or at least that subset thereof necessary for survival). We must be good at identifying and understanding at last some truth because evolution can’t tolerate that kind of waste otherwise. To claim that we are incapable of sensing or understanding any truth necessarily requires the rejection of evolution, which leaves us with creation once again.
Of course a truly committed postmodernist would have already rejected evolution because he rejects all ‘truths’, so I don’t offer this up as an argument to convert the lost. I do however enjoy knowing that most people who accept may of the conclusions of postmodernism (e.g. cultural relativism and critical race theory) also claim to ‘believe science’ and mock ‘creationists’. Well guess what kids, you are creationists too.