I suppose we all come to this site with different mindsets, different views about what is important. My own intellectual formation derives principally from British analytic philosophy and it is from this standpoint that I make the following comments.

In my view, the concepts of modernism, post modernism and Cartesian inspired solipsism exercise a baleful influence over discussion in this site.

Post modernism
Post modernism, as far as I understand it, suggests that truth is a construction (expressing eg power or self interest) and therefore insists that we may not make any objective truth claims- truth is what is true for me. Kd5det accepts the post modernist assertion with its implication that we can know nothing of God but points out that it means we can know nothing of science either. Cold consolation, I would have thought.

I have read little post modernism but it strikes me as an idea which expands a minor insight (that the victors write the history) into a ravening monster of a theory. I really don’t want to spend time reading into it. On the other hand everybody else seems to take it seriously. Can anybody explain why?

Cartesian inspired solipsism
Some participants in this dialogue seem to have assimilated post modernism to Cartesian derived solipsism but the latter has a different basis, focussing on arguments that we can only know our own sensations.
Thus Albanach says
“and as we all know ‘cogito, ergo sum’ is the only true certainty. None of us can be certain of the existence of anything outside our own thoughts. Iand as we all know ‘cogito, ergo sum’ is the only true certainty. None of us can be certain of the existence of anything outside our own thoughts.”

I have two responses to this.

The short one is: it is ridiculous to believe that all the billions of usages of the word ‘know’ every day are mistaken. “Dear, do you know where my glasses are?” “No dear, I don’t and it will be no use looking since it is not possible to know anything.”

The long one is that this issue has been the major preoccupation of analytic philosophy, particularly the later Wittgenstein, for most of the last hundred years, but theology seems to be quite unaware of it (see “Theology after Wittgenstein” by Fergus Kerr).

Modernism
Modernism (also Enlightenment rationalism) I take to be the view that the only respectable knowledge is that which is completely objective, cause-effect empiricism. This is just another kind of metaphysics and seems to suffer from the fatal flaw that it’s own basic principle invalidates it ie it cannot itself be justified by cause effect empiricism.

This theory has suffered hammer blows over the lat 20 -30 years especially from Charles Taylor in his magisterial “Sources of the Self” but also from people like Bernard Williams and Alasdair McIntyre.

My question is: why do we feel obliged to make continual obeisances to this unholy trio in discussion of issues of faith, belief, knowledge, certainty?

I would suggest that the best starting point for such discussion is an examination of the way we use these concepts ie of their logical grammar. In the case of belief, for example, I think we tie ourselves into unnecessary knots by applying the logical grammar of opinion (belief that) to the logical grammar of faith (belief in)- points I have tried to make in my exchanges with erlenmeyer.