Everyone holds a worldview, whether they know it or not. It is sometimes good to think about these deeper things of life, so that when we are faced with moral dilemmas, we will be able to successfully negotiate through them, and make decisions for our lives, which are in harmony with our worldview. Failure to do this will always result in spiritual discomfort and a sense of moral unease. When we know what we believe and act accordingly, conversely, we are at peace.
A worldview is a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or unconsciously, consistently or inconsistently), about the basic makeup of our world.
Why should we think about this at all? Discovering one’s own worldview is a significant step toward self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-understanding.
One of the easiest ways to grasp the differences between worldviews would be to ask the Big Seven Questions, and compare the various answers. Each worldview answers these questions quite differently.
1. What is prime reality - the really real?
2. What is the nature of external reality, i.e., the world around us?
3. What is a human being?
4. What happens to a person at death?
5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?
6. How do we know what is right and wrong?
7. What is the meaning of human history?
The fact is, we cannot avoid answering these questions, for we will adopt one stance or another. However, sometimes these choices are made unconsciously, and we may even hold a “pick and choose” , totally inconsistent worldview, which can get us into lots of trouble, not to mention mental and spiritual conflict. Men are not made with the ability to believe two contradictory thoughts: We are made to be consistent. Consistency brings peace. When we live and act according to our deepest beliefs, we can find peace and harmony in our lives. It is for this reason that the choice of a worldview, and the conscious understanding of our beliefs is so very important.
With some variation, we can narrow this down to eight. They are:
1. Theism
2. Deism
3. Naturalism
4. Nihilism
5. Existentialism
6. Eastern Pantheistic Monism
7. New Age Religion
8. Animism
1. God is infinite and personal (Triune for Christians) transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign and good.
2. God created the cosmos ex nihilio (from nothing) to operate with a uniformity of natural causes in an open system.
3. Human beings are created in the image of God, and thus possess personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, gregariousness and creativity. Human beings were created good, but through the Fall the image of God became defaced, though not so ruined as not to be capable of restoration; through the work of Christ, God redeemed humanity and beganthe process of restoring people to communion with him, though any given person is free to reject this restoration.
4. For each person, death is either the gate to life with God and His people, or the gate to eternal separation from the only thing that will ultimately fulfill human aspirations.
5. Human beings know both the world around them and God Himself because God has built into them the capacity to do so, and because he takes an active role in communicating with them.
6. Ethics is transcendent and is based on the character of God as good and loving. Humans are born with a conscience, which provides them an ethical guide in how to live a life pleasing to God. Men also have free will, and can choose to do either good or evil.
7. History is linear, a meaningful sequence of events leading to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for humanity.
1. A transcendent God, as a First Cause, created the universe, but then left it to run on its own. God is thus not immanent, not fully personal, not sovereign over human affairs, not providential.
2. The cosmos God created is determined because it is created as a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system: No miracles are possible.
3. Human beings, though personal, are part of the clockwork of the universe.
4. When humans die, their fate is the same as other living things on earth.
5. The cosmos, this world, is understood to be in its normal state; it is not fallen or abnormal. We can know the universe, and we can determine what God is like by studying it.
6. Ethics is limited to general revelation; because the universe is normal, it reveals what is right.
7. History is linear, for the course of the cosmos was determined at creation.
1. Matter exists eternally and is all there is. God does not exist.
2. The cosmos exists as a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system.
3. Human beings are complex “machines”; personality is an interrelation of chemical and physical properties we do not yet fully understand.
4. Death is extinction of personality and individuality.
5. Ethics is related only to human beings: Values are manmade. Ethics are autonomous and situation.
7.History is a linear stream of events linked by cause and effect but without any overarching purpose.
Marxism is a form of Naturalism.
Nihilism is more a feeling than a philosophy. It is a denial of philosophy, a denial of the possibility of knowledge, a denial that anything is valuable. If it proceeds to the absolute denial of everything, it even denies the reality of existence itself.
1. There is no God, only the material universe. Reality has no transcendence.
2. The really real is material.
3. Human beings are complex machines whose personality is a function of highly complex chemical and physical properties not yet fully understood. Human beings are conscious machines without the ability to effect their own destiny or do anything significant; therefore, human beings have no value in and of themselves.
4. Since there is no transcendence, death equals decay.
5. Humans can place no confidence in knowing. Naturalism places persons in a box, but for us to have any confidence that our knowing we are in a box is true, we need to stand outside the box or have some other being outside the box provide us with information (theologians call this revelation). But for nihilists, there is nothing or no one outside the box to give us revelation and we ourselves cannot transcend the box. Therefore, we can know nothing, nor can we know how we know.
6. Moral choices are meaningless, as there are no standards of value “outside the box”. Any course of action is open and permissible. Every time a nihilist trusts his thinking, he is inconsistent, for he has denied that thinking is of value, or that it can lead to knowledge.
7. History is a series of random and meaningless events, with no lesson or goal.
Man cannot function in a totally nihilistic frame of mind. This leads to a total break with reality, which is how severe psychosis is often explained.
Nihilism means the death of art, which is the imposition of structure on reality. Of course, it is also the death of society, for without meaningful structure and shared values, there is no civilization. Nihilism is death.
Existentialism accepts many of naturalism’s propositions, including:
1. Matter exists eternally; God does not exist; the cosmos exists as a uniformity of natural causes in a closed system.
2. History is a linear stream of events linked by cause and effect, but without an overarching purpose. Ethics is related only to human beings.
Existentialism also holds that:
1. The cosmos is composed solely of matter, but to human beings reality appears in two forms - subjective and objective.
2. For human beings alone, existence precedes essence; people make themselves who they are.
3. Each person is totally free as regards their nature and destiny (earthly only, of course).
4. The highly wrought and tightly organized objective world stands over against human beings, and appears absurd.
5. In full recognition of and against the absurdity of the objective world, the authentic person must revolt and create value.
There are two subdivisions of Existentialism: Atheistic and Theistic.
Atheistic Existentialism is described above. Some additional propositions of Theistic Existentialism are below:
1. Human beings are personal beings who, when they come to full consciousness, find themselves in an alien universe; whether or not God exists is a tough question to be solved no by reason, but by faith.
2. The personal is valuable.
3. Knowledge is subjectivity; the whole truth is often paradoxical.
4. History as a record of events is uncertain and unimportant, but history as a type of myth to be made present and lived is of supreme importance.
1. Atman is Brahman; that is, the soul of each and every human being is the Soul of the Cosmos.
2. Some things are more one than others. To realize one’s Oneness with the One is to pass beyond time. Time is unreal. Many (if not all) roads lead to the One. To realize one’s Oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond knowledge. The principle of noncontradiction does not apply where ultimate reality is concerned.
4. Death is the end of individual, personal existence, but it changes nothing essential in an individual’s nature.
5.To realize one’s Oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond knowledge. The principle of noncontradiction does not apply where ultimate reality is concerned. To realize one’s Oneness with the One is to pass beyond time. Time is unreal.
6.To realize one’s Oneness with the cosmos is to pass beyond good and evil. There is no good or evil.
7.History is cyclical.
1. The natural universe is inhabited by countless spiritual beings, often conceived in a rough hierarchy, the top of which is the Sky God (vaguely like theism’s God, but without His interest in human beings).
2. Thus, the universe has a personal dimension, but not an infinite-personal
Creator-God. These spirit beings range in temperament from vicious and nasty to comic and beneficent. For people to get by in life, the evil spirits must be placated and the good ones wooed by figts and offerings, ceremonies and incantations.
3. Certain humans can gain powers to deal with the spirits. These people are used as mediums, shamans, witch doctors, priests and people who have special powers by virtue of birth, study or beneficence.
4. Witch doctors, shamans and sorcerers, through long, arduous training, have learned to control the spirit world to some extent, and ordinary people are much beholden to their power to cast out spirits of illness, drought and so forth.
5. Ultimately, there is a unity to all life; that is, the cosmos is a continuum of spirit and matter. Animals may be ancestors of man, people may change into animals, trees and stones may possess “souls”.
6. Good and evil are locally decided.
7. After death, there are various resting places, and various rewards and punishments, according to local belief.
1. Whatever the nature of being (idea or matter, energy or particle) the self is the kingdom - the prime reality. As human beings grow in their awareness and grasp of this fact, the human race is on the verge of a radical change in human nature; even now we see the harbinger of transformed humanity and prototypes of the New Age.
2. The cosmos, while unified in the self, is manifested in two more dimensions; the visible universe, accessible through ordinary consciousness, and the invisible universe (or Mind at Large), accessible through altered states of consciousness. Special beings seem to populate this realm.
3. The core experience of the New Age is Cosmos Consciousness, in which ordinary categories of space, time and morality tend to disappear.
4. Physical death is not the end of the self; under the experience of Cosmic Consciousness, the fear of death is removed.
5. Three distinct attitudes are taken to the metaphysical question of the nature of reality under the general framework of the New Age:
(1) the occult version in which the beings and things perceived in states of altered consciousness exist apart from the self that is conscious;
(2) the psychedelic version in which these things and beings are projections of the conscious self, and
(3) the conceptual relativist version in which the Cosmic Consciousness
is the conscious activity of a mind using one of many nonordinary models for reality, none of which is any “truer” than any other.
1. There is a better way of gaining information than through the senses.
2. There is a fundamental unity to things.
3. Time is an illusion.
4. All evil is mere appearance.
Possibly, just a certain simpleminded set of working assumptions: that there is a reality out there, that we can perceive it, that no matter how difficult the perception, the reality is finally an external fact.
Adapted from: The Universe Next Door, by James W. Sire. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1988.