DOES YOUR WORLD VIEW PASS THE TEST?
So let’s talk world views. Everyone has a world view, which is best described as the way you see the world. There are as many world views as there are people, but in general, there are three specific world views that I will be analysing with this article. These three world view categories are religious, naturalistic, andrelativistic world views. Of course there are many subcategories within these three categories that we will cover as well.
A NATURALISTIC WORLD VIEW
A person who has a naturalistic world view generally rejects all caused causes and instead tends to embrace a view that the world was made by chance through the process of general evolution with absolutely no interference from a created being. In a nutshell, these people believe that what we see is all that there is. No GOD, or if there is a God he/she/it/they do not interfere in the world.
A large percentage of the scientific community holds this world view as do most atheists
RELIGIOUS WORLD VIEW
In general a religious world view embraces that there is something greater than man. That a GOD in some form is responsible for creation, morals & an afterlife (in some form). This world views is much more broad than the naturalistic world view as there are many different religious positions. Within this category, we will test a few different world view subcategories these categories are:
1. Christan World View
2. Hindu World View
3. Muslim World View
4. Pantheistic/Pagan World View
RELATIVISTIC WORLD VIEW
The last category to be discussed is a relativistic world view. This has become a very popular world view as of late. In general this world view believes that all world views are true for the individual and therefore all are right as long as it right for YOU. In a relativistic world view, the word truth, right and wrong are subjective as opposed to objective truth as the world would be used by the other two categories.
HOW TO TEST A WORLD VIEW
When testing a world view, you need to take into account three things. Even if you are not familiar with all the aspects of a world view, if any one of these three test proves to be false, then the entire world view must - necessarily - be false. These tests are:
1. Is the world view contradictory within it’s own view?
2. Does the world view actually align with reality?
3. What do expects and eye witness have to say about the world view?
Applying these tests, we will attempt to test the truth of the three world views addressed above.
TESTING THE RELATIVISTIC WORLD VIEW
Relativism believes in subjective truth. If it’s true for you, then it’s true. Basically, relativists believe that there is a neutral moral ground where no one is to make any judgements as to someone else’s truths. This neutral moral ground is called “tolerance”. The question is, does a relativistic world view hold up to the three tests?
First and foremost, relativism fails the test of contradiction. There simply can’t be any morally neutral ground. If I (with a Christan world view) went up to a relativist and stated that I thought Homosexuality was immoral, the relativist would call me intolerant, arrogant, and wrong. They would likely tell me that my view is wrong and I should change it. Does this language seem like neutrally moral ground? Does this language seem to allow me to have my beliefs as true for me or can the language better be described as my beliefs are objectively wrong? The fact is, the second that a relativist makes any judgement at all they have created a contradiction and thus the view is necessarily false. The relativistic world view fails the law of non-contradiction.
Does relativism pass the test of coherence (how the world actually seems to be)? Ask yourself this question, “Does there seem to be anything that is wrong for everyone?” Can you think of any reason in any culture where touching babies for the pleasure it brings you is OK? If you can simply think of a single situation where something is wrong for all then relativism is false. It must be because relativism does not allow for objective (universal) truth. Clearly anyone with this world view (to it’s extreme) has a major malfunction as taken to it’s absurd conclusion there is absolutely no right or wrong and no justification of punishment or justice.
Lastly, what do experts say about a relativistic world view? First college professors seems to love relativism as a world view. It allows them to teach anything without any consequence for the teaching. So it seems, on surface, that experts have embraced it. However, this is simply not the case. First science doesn’t hold to this view. How could they? Science is about observation and what they observe is objective in it’s analysis. If a scientist holds to this world view they would be unable to report that one medicine works to cure cancer and another does not. This is best described as the insulin versus ice cream argument. Relativism believes that the world is made up of ice cream. All you have to do is select the flavor that you “like” and reject the flavors you don’t. Insulin on the other hand is objective. If you have diabetes, you NEED insulin, ice cream simply won’t do. Furthermore, psychologists would reject relativism as well. A physiologist would call a person who believes that are is no moral truth as a psychopath. Psychologists would try to “fix” him or her by curing the malfunction.
I believe the best proof against this world view is that no one actually lives by it. If someone thinks they do, steal there car and see if they tell you that you were wrong for doing so. If they say you are wrong or that there should be justice, then they are living a contradiction.
I think it is clear that without a huge analysis of a relativistic world view, we can show that the view is necessarily false. It doesn’t hold up to any of the three tests, and therefore MUST be rejected.
TESTING THE NATURALISTIC WORLD VIEW
Does naturalism stand up to the three tests? Are there contradiction in this view? I think there are. Since I am far from an expert on everything that naturalists hold, I will focus on only the most obvious contradiction. Naturalism by name believes that what one sees or observes is true. I must say the statement paints naturalists with a broad brush, and I would not be surprised if I get comments on my global assumption of this category. In my defense I am basing this on my observation and communication with naturalists, so it is based (at least in part) on truth. The problem is that science (the poster child for naturalism) is based nearly entirely on hypothesis or educated assumptions. Many of these hypothesis CAN be tested, but many cannot. We can’t test consciousness, intuition, or morality for instance. We know that these things exist, but we simply don’t know why or how and since things like consciousness can only be attested to by the individually conscious person, no independent test can be produced to test such a thing. Another way of stating this is. The test of intimate knowledge. Only the person feeling or thinking something has intimate knowledge of the truth and no test can allow others into my intimate knowledge of something. This doesn’t mean that the information is NOT true just that it can’t be tested. For instance we can test memory but we can’t testconsciousness or the existence of a soul.
The big test of naturalism is the test of coherence. Science would have us believe that the world happened by chance with no help from an invisible GOD. After all, we can’t see GOD and therefore he can’t exist. First and foremost, just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean that something doesn’t exist. We can see love but we know it exists. We can’t see logic but clearly it exists.
Evolution and the creation of the cosmos simply doesn’t support the Naturalistic world view either. The general theory of evolution is all about change over time from one species to another. However, is this what we actually observe the world to be? Of course not. What we see is an orderly Universe where everything is in a perfect location to allow for humanity to thrive. If the sun was just a little hotter, or colder, life could not exist. If the continents were a little bit out of alignment, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn would seize to flow and the world would be covered with ice. If our sun was just a little bit younger or older, our orbit would be such that the planet would be unable to sustain life. The fact is the Universe seems to be ordered, not in chaos as Darwin would have had us believe. In addition to this, the complexity of organisms is so great that it is nearly impossible to see a naturalistic cause for it. Since evolution postulates that things evolve from simple cell organisms into complex ones, there should never be a stage where the complexity of an organism cannot be reduced to a less complex stage (calledirreducible complexity). Has any one ever wondered how the heart could have continued to work as it mutated from two chambers to four? How could such a defect still keep the mutated creature alive? How could an animal with a half flipper and half leg survive? It seems logical to assume that a half flipper would not allow the organism to swim and the half leg wold make hunting on land impossible as well. It seems that the organism would starve to death of be a perfect meal for a non-defective creature. Lastly, how can abiogensis occur? How did a rock turn into DNA? These questions have been largely ignored because they show that the naturalistic world view should only be rejected as false.
What do expects say about this world view? Many of the experts that reject naturalism from within the scientific community are blacklisted so scientific experts are hard to find, but they do exist. In addition to this, the actions of the experts within the field speak volumes. It seems interesting to me that science has started looking at other planets for life. The naturalist knows that life simply could not have happened in such a short span of time here on earth, so they are looking at other planets for evidence that itoccurred elsewhere and was deposited here. This is a silent admission that evolution is in trouble.
Naturalism simply doesn’t hold up to the three tests, and though there are many things that can (and perhaps should) be proved by a naturalistic cause, the big holes in the theory of evolution point to a cause and if only one cause can be demonstrated, then naturalism is necessarily false.
THE RELIGIOUS WORLD VIEW
Religious world views are too broad to describe in a single category as with the other world views. I will discuss them by individual religions and ending with Christianity.
Hinduism holds that the world is an illusion. That there is no good or evil but that good and evil are just an illusion (called Maya). Does the concept of Maya hold up to a test of contradiction? Obviously not. If the world is just an illusion, then we, as part of the illusion, would only have access to the information given us by the person creating the illusion. So the question is, how do Hindus “KNOW” such a thing? For a Hindu to know that we are illusions would be like Homer Simpson knowing that he is a cartoon. Clearly a cartoon has no knowledge of such things, because they can’t know anything, they are an illusion. So the vary act of knowing by the Hindus falsifies to the falseness of the world view.
The second question is does this align with the way the world actually is? Do you have any reason to believe that you exist? If you seem to exist, then the world view doesn’t align with reality and thus it is false. I once had a Hindu respond to this argument by stating, “Prove you exist”. I answered back with, “Who are you talking to?” She said,“You”. I then told her not only do have reason to believe I exist but I have an independent witness to my existence..YOU! She testified to my existence by asking me the question! She clearly thought I existed too.
Across the board most experts in no matter what category would agree that Hinduism is false. It would be ridiculous for a scientist to partake in the act of testing if we were an illusion. The results would be meaningless and there would be no truth in them. The only expert that might support Hinduism would be the relativist as the relativist would say as long as it’s true for the Hindu than it’s OK. An obviously ridiculous argument.
Pantheism, and perhaps paganism (witches) would hold that all things are GOD or have GOD in them. Pantheist generally have a high respect for life as all life is GOD. The question of contradiction is based more on definition then everything but there are still contradictions within the world view. The most apparent contradiction is that if everything is GOD than nothing is GOD. Even if you define GOD in a very general term as say a life force (The Jedi God), the religion can not account for anything because the life force GOD has no power to create. Therefore the pantheistic god is unimportant and totally meaningless. In a nutshell pantheists stating that everything is god is a meaningless statement and meaningless as a world view.
Does pantheism align with a real world? Simply, it has been demonstrated that the would was created from some cause. The cause may still be in dispute but most world views support some type of cause (natural or not). As demonstrated above if everything is god, then god simply has no power to create. God also seems to be a personal creator who had man in mind when creating. The Pantheistic gods cannot be personal and cannot have anything in mind when creating. Lastly, animals have gone extinct over time. Are we to assume that god can die and go extinct? These arguments shows how ridiculous this world view actually is. In fact it is not even a world view as it doesn’t really answer anything.
Simply no expert would support such unrealistic assertions about a god without power. MY argument for Christianity will give a presuppositional refutation to this as well as other religions points of view.
The argument against Islam can be described by presenting the argument for Christianity. The fact is Christianity and Islam are in harmony is many ways.
Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet and a very respected prophet at that, so using Jesus credibility is the best way to show that Islam is false. Muslims believe that Jesus was not GOD and that passages in the Bible that show him to be were either misinterpreted or were added later. They believe that Mohammad had the accurate representation of who Jesus was. The question is whom are we to believe?
The New Testament was written from AD 45 to AD 140 some 13 to 100 years after Jesus’ death (conservatively). We have around 5000 copies of early manuscripts to compare the writing to insure accuracy. It is reasonable that we have a fairly accurate picture of what Jesus taught. On the other hand Muhammad, who Muslims believe has the accurate picture of Jesus, was born around 570 AD, hundreds of years after the New Testament was written. Is it reasonable to assume that Muhammad had it right, but those who walked the earth during Jesus’ time didn’t? Of course NOT. Think of it this way. Who would have a more accurate description of my wife? You, who have never met my wife, or me, who has intimate knowledge of her? Clearly an expert opinion of Jesus would be a better opinion and though this may not prove Islam false, it does show that there are inconsistencies in the religion at least. How about the number of early copies of Koran? How many do the Muslims have floating around? According to Dr James White (Alpha and Omega Ministries), the Koran was consolidated after Muhammad’s death and all copies were destroyed. So we have no copies to compare to. We have no way to scrutinizing the apparent historical accuracy of the works. This is a big problem and it calls into question the motives of the religious world view.
I believe it is reasonable to reject Islam as a true religion, and instead accept the the most consistent religion to ever be. Christianity.
WHY I AM A FOLLOWER OF CHRIST
Christianity, like all world views, should be tested with the same three tests as all other world views. How does Christianity hold up to scrutiny?
The bible holds up very nicely to the tests. The Bible provides this in several ways.
1. PROPHECY in the Old Testament is seen fulfilled in the New Testament and other part of the Old.
2. The books are UNIFIED. You see the same redemptive message throughout the book. In the Old Testament the penalty for sin was death carried out through animal sacrifice and in the New Testament the penalty for our sins is also death redeemed through the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
3. The Bible answers the BIG QUESTIONS. It gives account for the creation of the Universe and the things in it. Painting an accurate picture of reality. There are certainly secondary questions as to what the Bible says about creation (I personally hold to an old earth theology), but creation itself is not called into question.
4. It is an INDEX TO HISTORY. The Bible is a historical account of the world as it was during the times in questions. Archeology continues to show the accuracy of the historical accounts.
5. It CHANGES PEOPLE’S LIVES. Followers of Jesus hold the power of change. Not only have Christians changed personally but they have been instrumental in changing the world. Can Pantheism or Islam make the same claim?
6. The Bible & Christianity are a FIGHTERS. It has held up the test of time, including attacks and scrutiny like no other. Included in this was the persecution of the early church which continued to thrive even under horrible persecution.
Though these points alone cannot prove Christianity to be TRUE, it does seem reasonable to accept that Christianity is more likely to be true than other world views. Many would say that religion is based on faith, and to that I would agree, however it is not based on blind faith as blind faith is not only useless but harmful as faithfully believing something without reasonable proof has lead to just about every false world view around. Simply put, it takes more faith to believe in Naturalism and Relativism than it does Christianity.
