What in the Worldview?
Everybody has a story to tell. Whether the narrative tells about love, gender, sex, race, politics, economics, astronomy, science, faith, theology, philosophy or something else, all these comprise the stories we tell. Everyone is a storyteller. We tell stories in an attempt to make sense of the world we live. Some storytellers are better than others. Some stories are more fact than fiction, whereas others are more fiction than fact. All stories are ultimately rooted in the worldview we possess. Worldviews are like the spectacles that we wear to see the world around us. James Sire indicates “A worldview is a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basis make up of our world” [1].
Our worldviews are built around answers to questions about ultimate reality: Can I know truth? Is the universe I perceive real or an illusion? If the universe is real, is it one thing or a combination of different things? Is the universe eternal or the effect of an uncaused first cause? Is their right and wrong? What does it mean to be human? What happens after death? Is there a meaning to life? Is there a God? Who is Jesus Christ?
The way we answer these questions determines our worldview. Foundational to atheism is the naturalistic presupposition that the material universe (or multiverse) is all that exists and there is nothing on the outside (i.e. spiritual beings like God, angels, demons, etc.). Foundational to Eastern religions (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, etc) and the New Age movement is the belief that the observed universe is ultimately one immaterial substance—distinctions between me, you, the Internet, and everything else is illusion—all is one and one is all). A universe that is a combination of material and immaterial substances is foundational to the monotheistic faiths that affirm a distinction between the creator and the creation, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
If what Christians profess about Jesus Christ being the incarnation of the one true God of the universe who died and rose again corresponds to reality, then there is something exceptional about Christ over Moses, Muhammad, and others.
How we think about the world around us ultimately determines how we live. If one believes we are all just modified monkeys that came about via millions of years of biological evolution, than are not the morals we possess just social constructs that came about through the process of evolution, and it was really the survival of the fittest that made our moral code reign supreme over other moral codes that went extinct? If our morality is the product of Darwinian evolution, what makes the Adolph Hitler’s Holocaust in Nazi Germany so atrocious or for that matter anything else labeled a tragedy? If Darwinian naturalism is true, then we are fatalistically determined to do what we do because that is all we can do on account of our biological hardwiring. If we are just modified monkeys, can we really say all the mass murderers and haters of the world done wrong? If all morals are relative, being merely social constructs developed within a community, by whose moral code do we measure out justice, your own, my own, the killers, or the haters?
It is never the case that Atheist are incapable of distinguishing good and evil, right and wrong, or truth and fiction, but naturalistic worldview cannot account for things we know to be true, such as object moral values. In fact, atheist must concede that the universe (or multiverse) came from nothing, and all that which came from nothing produced morality. Existence of numbers and human consciousness are also things atheists are unable to account for with through their worldview spectacles.
What if the universe bears the marks of an intelligent designer? What if God condescended to commune with the creatures of this universe? What if the Creator came to help us discover the objective moral values that could help us ethically thrive as human beings? What if the same Creator sought to show humans other virtues aside the golden rule and lex talionis, such as grace, mercy, love and redemption? What if humans found purpose behind all their activities as beings of intrinsic worth created in the imago Dei? Would not the universe be a different place?
Our worldview spectacles will shape the way we see the world around us, and we live according to the ideas we form from the way we see the world around us. Worldview thinking is then far from an academic exercises, for our ideas have consequences.
~ WGN
___________________
Notes:
[1] James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 19.
The way we answer these questions determines our worldview. Foundational to atheism is the naturalistic presupposition that the material universe (or multiverse) is all that exists and there is nothing on the outside (i.e. spiritual beings like God, angels, demons, etc.). Foundational to Eastern religions (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, etc) and the New Age movement is the belief that the observed universe is ultimately one immaterial substance—distinctions between me, you, the Internet, and everything else is illusion—all is one and one is all). A universe that is a combination of material and immaterial substances is foundational to the monotheistic faiths that affirm a distinction between the creator and the creation, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
If what Christians profess about Jesus Christ being the incarnation of the one true God of the universe who died and rose again corresponds to reality, then there is something exceptional about Christ over Moses, Muhammad, and others.
How we think about the world around us ultimately determines how we live. If one believes we are all just modified monkeys that came about via millions of years of biological evolution, than are not the morals we possess just social constructs that came about through the process of evolution, and it was really the survival of the fittest that made our moral code reign supreme over other moral codes that went extinct? If our morality is the product of Darwinian evolution, what makes the Adolph Hitler’s Holocaust in Nazi Germany so atrocious or for that matter anything else labeled a tragedy? If Darwinian naturalism is true, then we are fatalistically determined to do what we do because that is all we can do on account of our biological hardwiring. If we are just modified monkeys, can we really say all the mass murderers and haters of the world done wrong? If all morals are relative, being merely social constructs developed within a community, by whose moral code do we measure out justice, your own, my own, the killers, or the haters?
It is never the case that Atheist are incapable of distinguishing good and evil, right and wrong, or truth and fiction, but naturalistic worldview cannot account for things we know to be true, such as object moral values. In fact, atheist must concede that the universe (or multiverse) came from nothing, and all that which came from nothing produced morality. Existence of numbers and human consciousness are also things atheists are unable to account for with through their worldview spectacles.
What if the universe bears the marks of an intelligent designer? What if God condescended to commune with the creatures of this universe? What if the Creator came to help us discover the objective moral values that could help us ethically thrive as human beings? What if the same Creator sought to show humans other virtues aside the golden rule and lex talionis, such as grace, mercy, love and redemption? What if humans found purpose behind all their activities as beings of intrinsic worth created in the imago Dei? Would not the universe be a different place?
Our worldview spectacles will shape the way we see the world around us, and we live according to the ideas we form from the way we see the world around us. Worldview thinking is then far from an academic exercises, for our ideas have consequences.
~ WGN
___________________
Notes:
[1] James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 19.
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