AN EMPTY APOLOGETIC OF EVIDENCES

Several years ago a student confided in me his unbelief in the Judeo-Christian God. He was writing a paper contrasting Christianity & Islam and was alarmed with similarities between the two faiths. The more he talked, the more clearly he was able to explain that he did not disbelieve in a god—he was just not certain which one it was. "Is that all?" I asked. My concern was short-lived. "Get back to class." And I never spoke to him about it again.

Whenever I encounter conversations about religion with a POMO, I do not try to evangelize him. The Modern parent faults me for this, but I think that he is mistaken. Religion concerns questions of ultimacy, and those questions span the total of reality. The quality of one's religion is illustrated by its ethics: its evaluation of right and wrong action. In other words, there are not only right and wrong ways to to pursue justice, to punish evil, to believe, to pray. There are also right and wrong ways to vault a fence, to ride a bike, to eat a bagel, to vault a fence, to read a book, to wash a window, to make pancakes. Narrowing religion to the artificial domain of “spirituality” makes it partial like the elevation of a holiday over the other days of the year. Religion does not just look like something. Religion looks like everything.

One fifth grade student spent an entire lunch period with me describing her grandmother’s atheism. How could it be that such a loving sage did not believe in God? "Oh, but she does believe in God," I told her. I first affirmed her grandmother’s position: she says that she does not believe God exists. I believe that to be her intellectual position. But she does not live as if God does not exist. I asked my student "Your grandmother loves you, right?" She agreed. ""Then that contradicts what your grandmother thinks." Her grandmother’s Atheism did not, nor could it, change the reality of what is. You can have one thousand atheists intelligently arguing against the Christian faith, and that will not add one thing to the reality of what is. Conversely, you can have one thousand Creation scientists intelligently arguing for intelligent design, and that will not add one thing to the reality of what is.

How can I say this? Because the nexus of man is not his brain. So the initial problem with man is not with his brain. So the answer is not man's brain. The Modern Christian feared that a growing consensus of unbelief would intrinsically change the truthfulness of what is. So it concentrated its efforts by its own increased amount of data in favor pro God to defeat all atheistic opposition. Surely you have heard the following statements (or similar statements) countless times: "The science of the human eye proves that God exists" or "Ancient extra-biblical texts prove the Bible to be true" or "Current political events prove the Coming of Christ to be imminent."

When the children with whom I work express unbelief of or a dislike for Christianity, they have never meant that they do not believe in God (or a god). They do not see unbelief in God as an inescapable Atheism. Maybe they see unbelief in God as a rejection of my explanation of God. The POMO lives in the ethereal, in the theoretical, in the plausible, so he is not an Atheist in the classic Modern sense as having categorically shut out any possibility of God or deity or spirit whatsoever. To think so is to wrongly represent this generation.

What I have found to be true about the evangelical efforts of "evidences" is that the pressure of evidences has funneled both Modern and current POMO generations into a generic monotheism: not Christian monotheism, per se. The emphasis of evidentialism has largely been to move someone from an intellectual position of unbelief to an intellectual position of admitting or at least entertaining that "a" God must exist. From that point on, gravity does the rest of the work: it is statistically arguable that a person will "become" a Christian. It is a science, and that science equates monotheistic persuasion to Christianity.

The Modern monotheist will tend to be persuaded of a monotheism of evidences on the basis of science. The POMO finds the same evangelistic strategy of evidences to be an uncomfortably sinister form of coersion. You might as well put your hands down his pants. You don't need to convince a POMO of God's existence! That is not his problem! You don't need to convince him that a little "i" intelligence or big "I" Intelligence has designed the world and has a destiny for him. Save your breath. That is already the baseline of every POMO, atheist or not.

EDUCATIONAL DISORDERS

Let me illustrate the discrepancy of the Modern and POMO views with the multiplication tables. For the Modern, the multiplication tables are a system of truth. That means that the Modern does not worry about the validity of the system (the rightness of the multiplication tables), because he already subscribes to the logic of the tables (aka, the system itself). The Modern, therefore, largely concerns himself with the soundness of his answers or with correlating facts within the system itself (if 0 x 0 = 0, then 0 x 1 = 0). Such certainty is vital to the Modern, because he can make valid projections if certain answers are undoubtedly right and certain others are undoubtedly wrong. Because his generation’s problem is not with the system itself, all he has to do is merely to correlate the proper information within that system.

For the Modern, memorization aids his systematic reliability. Partly for that reason the Modern had a good education. You must understand that when prayer was officially banned from public schools, public education did not deteriorate because of the new manifestation of the atheistic world-view. That Supreme Court decision to “ban” God was only another manifestation of the Modern world-view that had existed for almost two hundred years.

In addition, the response by Christians to “get God back into public education” was equally an atheistic impulse. Why? Because the atheistic public believed that God could—through human effort—be banned from the secular world, and the Christian Church—which should have known better—believed that God could—through human effort—be put back into the secular world! Both subscribed to the Modern atheistic dichotomy that either God totally does not exist (atheism) or that He partially does not exist (sacred-secular distinction).

This Modern atheistic position amongst Christians, I would argue, is largely responsible for the POMO’s rejection of logical systems. The Modern concept of truth relies heavily upon logical systems but allows for the suspension of that system at the will of the individual. When you begin to notice that the Modern concept of truth was relativistic in this way and not objective, then you will begin to understand why logical systems are not reliable for the POMO: every “objective” system has a man behind it.

For example, the moral failures of certain public figureheads in the Christian community during the 1980s—men who publicly preached the systematic truths of Christianity while privately suspending (breaking) the systems themselves—make my point exactly. Those figureheads did not subject themselves to the tenets of the “system”, volitionally admit their faults and step down—which the Biblical system that they flouted demanded they should do. Rather, they chose to remain within the system and to preach the system while all along breaking it. Adherence to religious or “secular” logical systems for the POMO is ultimately submission to the arbitrary will of an individual. It does not matter if the secularist is the proverbial God-awful atheist humping a baboon or if the secularist is a cool, Christian youth minister who has tattoed himself to be relavant. The POMO will reject the bifurcation of the sacred from the secular. Period.

For all I have said about the POMO rejecting systems, his is a generation addicted to technological systems. Is this a discrepancy? I do no think so. POMOS do not reject Microsoft per se. They reject Bill Gates. Why? Because Bill Gates is back of Microsoft. Microsoft cannot manipulate because it is a system subject to Bill Gates. Bill Gates can manipulate because he is the intelligent designer of Microsoft. Although Bill Gates created what looks like a system, that “system” is a mechanistic expression of his own arbitrary design which is not to be taken more seriously than it should be. Microsoft, as a system made by a man, is a game. It is a frame. Understand this!

For the POMO, learning the multiplication tables is doubly difficult than it was for the Modern because the POMO concerns himself both 1) with the logical reliability (validity) of the numerical system and 2) with the rightness of the individual answers. The Modern has only to concern himself with the rightness of the individual answers (3 x 3 = 9) and not with the truthfulness or with the logical reliability of the system (Is 3 really 3, and if so, then why?). The POMO thinks, "Are the multiplication tables a game or the truth? What man came up with the multiplication tables? Why did he come up with them? Was he a good man or a bad man? Were he a good man, what did he mean by coming up with the tables? Were he a bad man, what is he trying to do to me? Can I rely upon the tables? Can a I rely upon this man?"

Modern parents look at me in disbelief when I explain that this subconscious thought process is the crux of their child’s academic dilemma. Being materialistic because of their heavy atheistic culture, Moderns tend to see academic problems as the outgrowth of nutritional deficiencies, genetic inheritance, or any physical predisposition. Rarely do they see academic problems as a moral deficiency. Because the POMO does not subscribe to a mechanistic reliability of logical systems, he fundamentally doubts the reliability of the multiplication tables. Why? Because memorizing the tables is hard? No. He does not believe in the multiplication tables because he does not believe that objective systems are infallible when he knows that every system must be flawed because it has a man behind it. If he is naturally bent to be independent, he will typically flounder in the system because he will allow no one to tinker with him. If he is not naturally bent to be independent, he will typically imbibe what he is given to his ultimate spiritual confusion and undoing.

Because he is not certain about what makes the tables true, he will have one of two broad tendencies: 1) he will be reluctant to commit the tables to memory and will suffer from short-term memory loss or related information gaps in his thinking (ADD, ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, etc.) or 2) he will temporarily suspend the moral dilemma he has with the tables and will wholeheartedly commit the tables to memory.

Because of the future with which he has to live, I would argue that it is preferable that the POMO do the former by wrestling with his moral dilemma. By wrestling with the logical reliability of logical systems, he wrestles with the spiritual obstacle to faith of his own generation. The obstacle to faith for this generation is that Christian children, the children of Christian families, and children who have grown up in the Christian Western Hemisphere do not believe that the God of the Bible is the only Final Reality. And if they do, it is not in the same way that their Modern parents frame it. This is what I mean by calling these children POMOS.

Educational and medical establishments increasingly seek to address this moral faithlessness with medication because they attribute the heightened nervous activity of POMOS almost totally to physical predispositions—not to profound moral insecurities. Educational forums no longer liberate students to think about truth, because they no longer appeal to the classical flow of cause-and-effect. They cannot appeal to it because they have undermined its foundational support which is rooted in a certainty beyond artificial system.

I would argue that both private and public school forums, insofar as they subscribe to Modern ideology, tend to teach by indoctrination and imposition. As a result, education bypasses logical flow and emphasizes arbitrary contexts. Arbitrary contexts can only be memorized; they cannot be reasoned. Virtually all that a student must learn in school today he must memorize apart from proper associations because he does not have the faith and/or contingent intellectual faculties to make logical associations.

Educational forums are not designed to encourage students to think about truth. They are designed to insinuate academic proficiency. Insinuating academic proficiency is nothing but a continuation of the Modern value of a fixation upon the short-term, the artificially quantifiable. However, Modernism is no longer relevant in our world. It is a dinosaur and does not communicate to the POMO.

POMO absurdity is an intentional distortion by POMOS of Modern logical reliability. That is why anything labeled “post-modern” for its farfetchedness could also be labeled “cynical.” It does not matter if it is language, politics, economics, science or media, the POMO rages against the machine in such an unsystematic way that the Modern writes him off as completely absurd. That is a foolish move on the part of the Modern, because the nonsense of the POMO is rapidly replacing the sensibilities of the Modern. POMO absurdity is the new logic.

UNIFORMITY OF NATURAL CAUSES IN AN OPEN SYSTEM

Perhaps, it is important to now relate the POMO cultural aspiration to absurdity to the Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg's Law (1927) says that when it comes to quantifying a minimum of two measurements, it is impossible to calculate both to high precision within the same system at the same time in the same way. It is only possible to calibrate the system to one measurement at a time. To try to calibrate both at the same time would result in inaccurate measurements.

This elastic nature no longer allows the system to be traditionally viewed as a fixed frame. The illusion of the "absolute" disturbs the Modern who has been oriented to the rigidity of systems and who frankly would be hindered from functioning if he is not allowed his categorical frames in which to operate.

Just as the Modern subscribed to the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, the POMO subscribes to the uniformity of natural causes in an open system. What that means is that the natural world (or physical portion) is not all that exists. A final reality of which we are unaware exists outside the physical universe and "interferes" with it of its own will and according to its own rules. Therefore, that final reality makes all of the difference in the world in the determination of which facts are right or wrong.

So the POMO's paradigm is bent to be antagonistic towards the mechanistic (the machine portion of the universe), because it believes there is something greater than mechanics to which all things are oriented. If you do not understand this point, then you will be lost when it comes to understanding the absurd communication forms of this generation. The POMO has an ambiguous uniformity, the illusion of a natural world, and an “openness” that cannot rightfully be called a system because so many nebulous factors play into it so that no one is ever sure to get them all right at any given time. So everyone everywhere is always theoretically right and always theoretically wrong. Anything is possible if you give it enough time and if you let interplay enough factors.

Because the POMO affirms that a final reality exists outside the natural world and that it is beyond the full comprehension of man, the POMO refrains from making absolute judgments about the nature of that final reality. He will speculate, but he will not make an absolute judgment. A variety of opinions exists as to what that final reality is. He does not rely upon one logical system but keeps many logical system options open-ended. Variety, or tolerance, is the Achilles heel of the POMO.

Steve Carell's THE OFFICE is also a brilliant illustration of POMO parody of the open system. Michael Scott is forever interrupting the effective systematic flow of the [[Dunder Mifflin Paper Company]]. Though company protocol has been established and procedure is at his dispense, Michael Scott injects his own disruptive "solutions" to problems for which the management system has already provided. What is the result of each episode after Michael Scott's meddling? Human bonding. Human connection. Something the system cannot in its best of moments achieve.

The POMO does not commit to one system because he has no certainty in the presence of other conflicting contexts that his particular system is right. By not being committed to one system, he remains open to all. In a nutshell, this quality is what I mean by “post-modern.”

POST-MOD CRUMPING VS. MODERN BREAKDANCING

POMO culture parodies Modern culture. It is important to understand this if you are to read sense into POMO "absurdity." Just as POMOS are the direct offspring of Moderns, POMO culture references Modernism. It is vital, however, to understand that POMO culture is not incidental. As a cultural movement, it is unique in that it acquiesces to the gravity of Modern culture by parody: an intentional but cynical compliance in which it is "forced" into.


For example, breakdancing belongs to the Modern because it imitated the technology of Modern industrialized culture: the reduction of matter to hydraulic motion, robotic movement, and wave theory. What made the dance Modern was its emphasis upon precise mechanical imitation and the most number of rotations exploited from an efficient move. Just like the mechanistic, Modern world-view, breakdancing was a mechanistic expression of that worldview. That is not to say anything negative about the dance, per se, unless a person has bought into the mechanistic worldview. I am only trying to contextualize it. Many customary norms of the Modern can be observed in every strata of culture that link it back to its mechanistic emphases, not just breakdancing.


In the following clip, notice the predictable "orbital" motion of the floor moves. Notice the "waves" and "machining" of the popping moves. Also, notice how the breakers dance, synchronized to the music, not against it, indicating the "staged" choreography. Perhaps, the most obvious Modern convention is the fact that the dancers are spaced or "alienated" from each other at a generous distance from each other so as to be discerned from each other. Also, each dancer specializes in a particular section of the dance genre: fracture. You are watching Modern compartmentalization in action.



As the 1980’s came to a close and the world spirit shifted from a Modern, deterministic view of reality to a Post-modern, spiritual one, breakdancing lost media favor and gave way to a Hip-Hop form more compatible with POMO culture: crumping. Whereas breakdance was predictable, crumping defined itself by its impredictability and attendant absurdity. It is the quantum version of breakdance in that it sections a predictable dance move into exponentially small portions and reframes them in a stream of glitches, aesthetically imitating the uncertainty principle. In fact, properly done, no two Crump dances ought to look the same (RIZE documentary).

In the video clip first listen to the deconstruction of the classic song at the beginning, a post-mod convention. Next, watch the several selections of crumping. Notice in several of the dance selections how close in proximity the onlookers are to the main crumper: the onlookers are "feeding" the crumper energy just as they are "receiving" that energy back. Notice that they do not respond to "staged" moves but only to the novel move or the "unprogrammed" move. These dances are not staged. Also, notice in a few sections how the crumper "stutters" or "skips" very much like a scratched CD "loops" back on itself. It is as if they are breaking out of a "predetermined" act. Also, notice the definitive movements that have a "pull back" to them and the aggressively angular contortions that go no where. Do not watch to criticize. Watch to understand.



What is intriguing about this "ghetto ballet" born out of the 1996 L.A. Riots is that crumpers looked on breakdancing as bling or show because it was fashionably simplistic, pretentious, and commercial. Breakdancing was interested in the precise imitation of mechanics whereas crumping was in revolt against mechanics. Being Modern, I have been culturally partial to breakdance; that is to say, I understand it and can appreciate it.



I have told my students that with my new understanding over the past decade, I would fall on the side of crumping because it is a relevantly cultural expression of the signs of the times. In the proper spirit, it is beautifully choreographed post-modernism exhibiting no faith in truncated predictability and running with a wide-arm embrace towards the unknown or "faith in faith." And I wouldn't crump on stage or in a circle surrounded by an non-participatory audience either like breakdancing demands, being performance-oriented. I would crump outside the circle, in the crowd, on a building, in a tree. I would crump until I was exhausted. I would crump until the Modern crowd went from ridiculing me to awkwardly murmuring about my nonsense to finally giving in to a reverent silence until someone in the crowd says "I think he's trying to say something." And I would do it as a Modern full of compassion for this generation, and not as some POMO wannabe sporting tattoos I really don't want or eyebrow rings I really don't like or speaking a lingo I really don't know or listening to music I really don't understand. No, I would do it as a member of my own optimistic but narcissistic Modern generation before 1989.


And what would I be saying? I would be saying that it is time to wake up to the fact that the world is no longer a Modern world! Even though Modernism has two hundred years of momentum, I am telling you that if you are a Modern you are being marginalized. You are becoming quickly redundant. And it is no fault of the encroaching post-modern world, because eras are subject to change. It is the fault of the nostalgic Modern who wishes it to be 1940 again or 1950 again or, God forbid, the 1980's again when those decades themselves embodied cultural failures we have so tried to escape. Can a man crawl back into his mother's womb and be born again? Of course not, and neither is it a solution to talk about the "good old days" when in reality they were only good because they were familiar.


The movie Beat Street (1984) which featured the East Coast New York City breakers was about breaking out of poverty. The movie ends with a death and a memorial. The plot of the movie Breakin 2 Electric Boogaloo featuring West Coast Electric Boogaloo was about "breaking the system." However, the breakdancers capitulated to the system by using an aspect of Modernism to fight Modernism. In the end their promise to revolt ended up in their raising money to save a local arts hangout. Crumping is different in that it is very very personal. You can't "get crump" unless you are spiritually and emotionally motivated. It does not come any other way. Crumping has finally become commercialized to the ire of its many founder-contributers, but it will remain grassroots because of its emphasis on individual expression.


Youtube breakdancing vs. crumping. You will see that the two Hip-Hop dances have no love for each other. That is because they are two different world-view expressions. Crumping is a quantum expression of breakdancing which is what I mean by POMO culture parodying Modern culture. POMO culture, being derived of Modernism, will always use a Modern sensibility as its reference point. But the key to understanding POMO culture is a veneer of compliance plus a cynic's twist.

A WELL-MEANING, CULTURAL ATHEISM

The POMO will not compartmentalize life while his parents' chief goal in child-rearing is the creation of an automaton with formatted body, mind and spirit. The POMO cringes when expected to compartmentalize his life. I have listened to hundreds of students express as much to me, to each other, and to their parents. They write it in their essays. They talk about it at lunchtime. They etch it on their skins. They express it in their clothing. In their insomnia. In their boredom. The POMO aspires that all compartments of life be a fluid one and only one. Ultimately, this is what a POMO means when he speaks of being genuine or true or honest or authentic. How authentic is it to express truth in Newtonian terminology when Newton's simplicity denies the extraordinary complexity of the universe we now know? The POMO believes that most, if not all, of life's categories are artificially imposed, propping up a very artificial system he is told is reality. As artificial, those categories are hampering to the pursuit of an successful and enjoyable life that desires above all things to exist in harmony with itself and with the world around it.

The fundamental confusion of the Modern Christian’s logical (doctrinal) position is that God (as absolute) is to be seriously considered in one area of reality but not in another. For example, many Christian schools teach students that an object returns to the ground because of gravity, yet in a “spiritual” sense (though functionally impractical) because God wills it (if they ever get around to saying that). But that reality is not sensible. Newton argued that, because God wills it, an object will return to the ground and that, if gravity works, it works because God wills it. Natural law and supernatural law are not to be divorced if both are to make sense. Natural law exists in a practical and predictable form upon which men can project material results because God is already there willing natural law to work.

On one hand, the Modern Christian mindset demands exhaustive and logical, physical knowledge of the universe in a way that it does not expect exhaustive and logical knowledge of the “spiritual” world. The result is that blatant, logical glitches in “spiritual” truth pockmark the Christian faith and become the logical reasoning of a totalitarian subculture.

I encourage you to compare and contrast the levels of consistency you expect from scientific knowledge and church doctrine, respectively. You will find more often than not that the tendency is either to speak haphazardly about spiritual things but to speak with precision about physical things or to speak with precision about theoretically spiritual things that do not make one iota of difference in this world and to speak theoretically with precision about physical things that make no difference in this world. Either way, you have a bifurcation of spirit and matter, where it is either the world or the spirit that matters at any one time in any one place. This dual expectation is an arbitrary value shift which is as equally atheistic as a “totally” atheistic position, because God is to be barred from where it truly and effectively matters.

The POMO is different. He tends to speak haphazardly about spiritual things AND physical things because his is one world. The sincerity with which he combines both worlds into one is the absurdity against which the Modern revolts. That absurdity (which the Modern does not so easily recognize) is the POMO parodying Modern culture.

THE CULTURAL STRESS-FRACTURE

One hears the term "absolute" quite alot amongst Moderns in religious and political discussions: absolute truth, absolute values. In this sense, absolute is the antithesis to "relativistic" which I have already explained is often confused with legitimate relativity. A premodern view of "absolute" would reserve the term for God or as descriptive of God, not as a term for the entity of creation or for any material particular. Because matter is created, it is transient. Because it is transient, it is not absolute. Only God is absolute. What about ideas or culture derived of God? It does not matter: as derivative they are transient. The Modern ultimately believed scientific law to be absolute and spiritual truth derived of that scientific law to be absolute, too. So, for example, an evangelist who scientifically "proves" to an individual the existence of God is expected to necessarily convince him of the Christian faith. Material, imminently discernible, is primary. Spirituality, less discernible than matter (in this view), is derivative.

The Modern orientation acknowledges that a mechanistic system encases the total of natural law and, as a system, is independent of any other factor. For those who subscribe to deity, it is outside the system so as not to affect the integrity of the mechanistic system. James Gleick says of Modern science "A God that does not intervene is a God receding into a distant, harmless background." Modernism does not rely upon an a-material entity for a total answer to reality that embraces both physical and spiritual realms. From beginning to end, the Modern mind is formatted with the architectural blueprint, with the five-year business plan, with family planning, with the fiscal budget, with the Romans Road. Even the concept of the business core value is conceptually structured as an independent solar system affected by no more factors than the material environment in which it finds itself.

The strength of the Modern is that he can project with scientific accuracy the end of many material things. He can do that because his logical reliability projects a constant into the future, be it only a physical constant. The Egyptians did not have this kind of reliability, and to them is attributed the 24-hour day, the 365-day solar year, the decimal system. The Greeks and Romans did not have this reliability either, though to them has been attributed the foundations of mathematics and Western civilization. Each of these civilizations had a complexity of mythological deities that diluted the logical reliability unique to our Modern view.

After the advent of the Modern system, a man could do what men before the system could only hope to do: make approximate or accurate material projections with no consideration of deity whatsoever. That is what James Gleick meant when he said of the Scientific Revolution "The more competently science performed, the less it needed God." In here we have two admissions. First of all, Modernism was a transitional era where a classic Christian consideration of God was greater before the advent of Modernism. Secondly, Modern sensibilities are best understood on the basis of quantitative measurement. "The equation knows best." (Heisenberg)

The POMO mindset does not naturally embrace this framework for two critical reasons. First, the optimistic Modern worldview was crushed and finished with the end of the Cold War. Any serious view of Modernism since then has been jettisoned for the preferential consideration of shattered ideological systems. Secondly, any child born after 1989 is no true Modern, no matter how hard a parent might try to constrain him or her into faith in Newtonian predictability. The POMO hears, ingests and frames information differently.

The Modern is surprised when this generation rejects Modern sensibilities. "Why would a POMO want to forfeit the certainty of projecting a physical constant?" they ask. True, having confidence that the universe and its parts are programmed with a reasonable measure of accuracy is a strength. It is especially a strength if an entire culture is programmed to operate that way. However, what if that view of the physical world is only a truncation of total reality? What if a physical constant does not properly demonstrate the broadest possible view of accessible reality? And of what practical, cultural use is it if the culture is no longer organized that way?

The chief weakness of the Modern mindset is the tendency to subject life to an efficient scientific view of reality. The uniformity of natural causes deals only with matter. The Modern applies scientific law to spiritual reality when scientific knowledge is partial and indefinitely in flux. In other words, mechanics is not the ultimate constant or final reference point. Necessarily, the Modern is conditioned to be satisfied with the material results of material projections. The POMO, oriented to a much broader awareness of reality, refuses to organize all data on the basis of the scientific, the categorical, or the observable. The POMO is not oriented to satisfaction with material results. This is the main stress-fracture between the two generations.

MODERN MECHANISTIC REALITY

The Christian Modern affirmed the existence of Deity, but argued for a dominant mechanistic reality over which God had no practical input or control. The Christian Modern would argue. However, ask a Modern Christian what causes an object to fall back down after being thrown into the air, and he will more than likely reply “gravity.” Tell him “The answer is 'God', not 'gravity,'" and he will go "ah" because you should have clarified yourself. He did not understand you to be speaking spiritually but scientifically. Why did the Modern have to speak in terms of disclaimers, clarifications, and rejoinders when speaking about spirituality? Because the largest context and overall tone of Modernism was that what can be known can be known apart from God.

How can two kinds of answers exist for the same question if the Modern Christian really believes that God created one world? How can the spiritual answer be God and the scientific answer be gravity? In this two-dimensional world, which dimension is the more practical? The overwhelming consensus would agree that the practical answer is gravity while the impractical answer is God. Why? Gravity is more practical because gravity is pervasively experienced as a natural law, and natural law has definite negative (flying a plane into the ground) and positive (flying a plane to Rome) consequences.


Gravity is "upon" us every single moment of our lives and is immediately appreciated or sensed. What of God? Well, in a more "spiritual" sense God is upon us, but that explanation is unreasonable within a mechanistic framework. That explanation is not saying anything at all. The Modern is often more conscious of the "pull" of gravity than he is of the "pull" of God. This is his scripting. Oftentimes, the answer “God” has been given as an argumentative acquiescence to Christianity and practically nothing more because it lacks the manifestation "material" things afford.

This schismatic reality is not the systematic reliability Isaac Newton had in mind when he codified the laws of motion. Newton understood that the world has a machine portion that is mechanistically integrated. However, that mechanistic portion is not all that exists. Newton never said it was all that existed. The monotheistic God as described in the Bible was Newton’s Final Reality. Newton's God is infinite, "bracketing" the finite, mechanical portion of reality. Because His God is infinite, He has of His own volition made Himself intelligibly known. Because He has made Himself understood by intelligible means, He, too, has a definite and practical relationship to the world: He created it. He is the most liberal context ever.

Newton did not have to leap from physical to spiritual worlds. Inconsistency in one did not force him to find cover in the other. He did not have to operate within a dichotomy, which is one of the reasons Newton and his generation did not manifest the anxiety disorders so rife throughout Modern and POMO cultures. Newton’s concept of causes illustrates a consistent flow and reference of material to the immaterial, of finiteness to infinity, of physics to metaphysics, of the world to God. Newton’s world is one world.

Newton did not even know the material cause of gravity, but his logical reliability did not hinge upon that specific lack of scientific information. His logic was not rooted in information or in the machine portion of reality. Newton's system was not an exhaustive system that sought to reconcile all data on the basis of matter. Finite things are subject to change, so science can be expected to develop, progress, and expand. He did not have to know everything there was to know in order to say that something was so. He did not have to pretend to stand on "absolutes" in order to validate his faith in God. Newton was free from that mindset which can be described as premodern if anything.