Postmodernism and Christianity
Postmodernism can be determined as the western philosophy of the 20th century driven by wide skepticism regarding political, spiritual, and economic life (Wellmer, 2018). This can be defined as the ending and the beginning of modernity. Christianity helps to offer religious perspectives on the nature of spirituality and ethics. According to Hiebert, (2018), it believes that the spirituality can be defined as a theological and religious prism that helps to represent the notion or idea of God. God is mainly perceived as all-powerful and the eternal being over everyone and everything. With the realization of God, Christians have made a belief system that is displayed in the Bible. This belief system explains the main objective of human life. Christian people take ethics as developing decisions depending on the instructions of God as discussed in the Bible. According to several authors such as Duke, (2020), the perspectives of Christian people on ethics and spirituality have several implications for critical care or health care through decision-making for accepting options or choices while making decisions. Christians are specifically very much focused on augmenting wellbeing and human suffering.
Postmodern relativism generally presents a more liberal realization of spirituality and the many people argue on this topic no absolute truths are there. The perspectives of postmodern relativism are useful in healthcare as it helps to support multicultural care deliveries through adopting diversity. With such awareness, the medical personnel will acknowledge that they have no monopoly about the truth of ethics and spirituality and the obscure culture must not be avoided.
Scientism can be determined as a view that helps to explain that science is the only objective by which a society must determine epistemological and normative values. Different types of scientism are there such as dismissive scientism, ontological scientism, logical positivism, radical reductionism, extremist scientism, and others. Scientism suggests that science can explain all truth about reality and the world. It has identified hard science as the concepts relying on laws and experimentation of nature for including physics and biology. Hard science depends on testable, factual, and replicable data or information, therefore, making all results reliable. Hard science helps to offer different information as it depends on falsification, experimentation, and objective skepticism. Soft science mainly depends on subjectivism and for this reason, it offers several opportunities to influence human nature like contrasting ideas between two same things. Scientism identifies hard science as having more authority over real knowledge while compared to soft science.
Two main arguments are there against scientism. Firstly, hard science does not deliver absolute facts and truths since these are structured by the recent understanding of measuring instruments and the environment. The concepts that are previously thought of as absolute truth are not given much priority in hard science. So, the information that is represented by both hard and soft science changes over time. Secondly, hard science has adopted the tyrannical approach which relies on rationalism. The tyrannical approach is very much essential in advanced science and this approach is also important to discover new information. On the other hand, soft science has adopted an accepting approach which allows for wilful thoughts.
Postmodern Relativism and Healthcare
According to different authors such as Kirilyuk, (2017), ultimate reality can be defined as a belief that everything is fundamental, supreme, and final power of all reality and it mostly overlaps with concepts of Absolute in some philosophies. Some common signs of the Ultimate reality are fire, children, the human body, world trees, children, and microcosm. The ultimate reality of life is that God is the main source of realities and meaning of human life and the world. Ultimate reality generally aims at how experiences affect decision-making as well as life perceptions.
The Universe is continuously experiencing several changes and it depends on the energy for driving changes with the direction of change depending on various prioritization methods determined by energy conversion, competition, evolution, and extinction (Wu, 2017) From the beginning phase, the Universe had psychic-spiritual dimensions. The competition mainly involves a struggle for acquiring energy sources. According to Chen, (2020), extinction includes the elimination of several components which are not able to compete with disaster events and direct competition. Evolution includes adapting to different environmental challenges and energy conversion helps to involve various changes between different energy forms that generally begin with the solar energy captured by the plants. According to different authors such as Rautalahti (2018), religious people believe that the Universe can be defined as a reflection of the God and the Universe involves all living organisms and the environment.
According to Gans, (2017), a human being can be determined as a man, child, and woman of the same species (Homo Sapiens) and it helps to distinguish them from animals by power of articulate speech and superior mental development. The life cycle of human beings includes six major phases and those are, child, foetus, baby, elderly, adult, and adolescent. People continually and gradually change throughout these phases or stages. The Christian people think that a human is a person as God is also a person and God is the creator of the whole mankind. Effective thought processes have allowed humans in developing complex language and vocabulary, clothes and technology and all of these things allow humans to use this environment beyond physical capabilities.
According to various authors such as Bolisani & Bratianu, (2018), knowledge can be defined as a unique collection of several information, skills, and facts that individuals cognitively acquire through education and experience. Experiences involve practices to cope up with the knowledge and education mainly involves attending informal and formal processes for acquiring theoretical knowledge (Collins, 2017). Actually, knowledge allows an individual to possess a capacity thought process. As an example, a person who is from an engineering background can manage different technical projects and a person who is experienced in health studies can treat and diagnose patients. Knowledge may be explicit (with the theoretical realization of subjects) or implicit (with practical skills or expertise). Knowledge can be defined as one of the major parts of epistemology. Knowledge is very much essential for personal development and growth and knowledge also helps to sharpen the skills like problem-solving, reasoning, and others (Pereira & Costa, 2017).
My perceptions of ethics are based on major two concepts and the first one is personal beliefs, awareness, and opinion for determining moral right, wrong, and others. It depends on what I learn from the environment and I believe personally that all persons must perform honest work to achieve healthy living. Stealing something is wrong and it is against all laws or regulations. The second one is public beliefs and principles. I have different personal beliefs and opinions but it is not necessary to match those beliefs with public beliefs determined through several public discussions. There is an ethical principle on how to manage all private information in a professional environment and I am also expected to maintain those guidelines or principles. These two main concepts or facts interact for determining how I manage all ethical situations.
My existence has two purposes and the first one is to bring up and procreate future generations. It involves meeting all demands of family members, having children, and getting married. It also involves taking care of the environment to ensure that future generations will not face any challenges for my mistakes. The second objective is to satisfy God’s will by observing various religious principles. My purposes are to fulfill God’s will and also to present and procreate a better world for the future generation.
References
Bolisani, E., & Bratianu, C. (2018). The elusive definition of knowledge. In Emergent knowledge strategies (pp. 1-22). Springer, Cham.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Constantin-Bratianu/publication/318235014_The_Elusive_Definition_of_Knowledge/links/5a428087a6fdcce19715b08e/The-Elusive-Definition-of-Knowledge.pdf
Chen, E. K. (2020). Quantum mechanics in a time-asymmetric universe: On the nature of the initial quantum state. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01666
Collins, A. (2017). Processes in acquiring knowledge. In Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge (pp. 339-363). Routledge. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA020270.pdf
Duke, E. O. (2020). From Christian spirituality to eco-friendliness. International Journal of Humanities and Innovation (IJHI), 3(1). https://philpapers.org/archive/DUKFCS.pdf
Gans, H. J. (2017). The participant-observer as a human being: Observations on the personal aspects of field work. In Institutions and the Person (pp. 300-138). Routledge.https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203788448-23/participant-observer-human-being-observations-personal-aspects-field-work-herbert-gans
Hiebert, D. (2018). ” The Massive Subjective Turn:” Sociological Perspectives of Spirituality. Journal of Sociology and Christianity, 8(2), 55-75. https://sociologyandchristianity.org/index.php/jsc/article/view/129/127
Kirilyuk, A. P. (2017). Theory of Everything, Ultimate Reality and the End of Humanity: Extended Sustainability by the Universal Science of Complexity.https://philpapers.org/archive/KIRTOE.pdf
Pereira, O. P., & Costa, C. A. A. T. (2017). The importance of soft skills in the university academic curriculum: The perceptions of the students in the new society of knowledge.https://repositorium.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/46211/1/2017_International%20Journal%20of%20Business%20and%20Social%20Research_V07_Issue03_25-34.pdf
Rautalahti, H. (2018). Disenchanting Faith—Religion and Authority in the Dishonored Universe. Religions, 9(5), 146. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/5/146/pdf
Wellmer, A. (2018). The Persistence of Modernity: Aesthetics, Ethics and Postmodernism. John Wiley & Sons.https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Persistence_of_Modernity/xjxRDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Wellmer,+A.+(2018).+The+Persistence+of+Modernity:+Aesthetics,+Ethics+and+Postmodernism.+John+Wiley+%26+Sons.&pg=PP2&printsec=frontcover
Wu, Z. (2017). The Scientific and Technological Methods of Explaining Nature and Universe May Be Considered Complete. Available at SSRN 3072962.https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3072962