Christian Worldview in Comparsion with a Naturalist Worldview - Research Paper Example

Comparison between Christian Worldview and Natural Worldview The basic dichotomy between the Christian Worldview and the natural worldview is that when the first one is based on a self-existent god, the second considers that nature is self existent. A worldview is generally considered as the conceptual and theoretical foundation depending on which man interacts with his or her surroundings, more generally speaking with the world in which he or she lives, as James W. Sire says, “A world view is a set of presuppositions…which we hold about the basic makeup of our world"1. It comprises of a man’s interpretations of the world and his ways of organizing his belief, assumptions and, theoretical and empirical findings about the world. Obviously one’s view of the world more likely is supposed to be influenced by the collective views and beliefs of the society. Yet an individual’s world may tend to influence the prevailing and the existing view if it is based on enough supportable and credible reasons ad findings. Though in the beginning of human civilization empiricism and empirical findings were valued as the prerequisites of credibility, validity acceptability of any worldview, the dominance of rationality in worldview is the tenable characteristic of modern society. The greatest thinker James W. Sire provides with a great insight into the Christian worldview. He says that any worldview is supposed to be based on several points such as the conception of reality, nature of external world, notion of human being, notion of afterlife, transcendence of the knowledge, sense of justice, and findings of human history. Most of the Christian scholars including Sire have attempted to classify the worldviews depending on the concept of god. According to them, the god-centric reality is the basis of theism and deism. But the naturalism defies any notion of God in the place. Indeed naturalism, to a great extent, is ambiguous because it either includes the natural power as the replacement of God or may depend on factual and empirical findings of science and theoretical assumption. The dichotomy between the Christian worldview and the natural world view is that whereas the first considers as a self existent being, the later considers nature as self-existent. There are diverse ways of classifying worldviews due to the overlapping areas. In his book, Sire elaborates eight basic worldviews in separate chapters: “Christian theism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern pantheistic monism, the New Age, and postmodernism”2. Sire’s naturalism includes the worldviews such as atheism, and nihilism and existentialism. Indeed these philosophies attempt to apply the atheist view of the world to human life. Human history shows that rigid religiosity often is found to dominate the view of the world. More frankly speaking, religious belief forms a major part of the people’s worldview. In such religious worldview, man’s knowledge of the world especially evolves from God and man has no role other than the limited and restricted one to find evidences for supporting the religious worldview. Also a society may have a culture that contains a unique worldview that appears to be totally different from any religious worldview, as Eisenbarth and Treuren says in this regard, “A significant portion of one’s worldview is formed from the cultural narratives (stories) that are embedded in one’s learning and nurture environment”.3 But with the Enlightenment in Europe in the early 19th century, rationality begins to question and challenge the religious view of the world depending on the empirical and theoretical findings of science. Christian worldview specially is outlined on the Old Testament’s narrative accounts of the Israel. Also a major part of Christian worldview comes from the descriptive accounts of Jesus Christ’s personality and his works. Indeed Christian worldview and Christian doctrinal beliefs of the origins of the material world and human being revolves around three points: creation of human beings, fall human beings and redemption as the purpose of human life, as Eisenbarth and Treuren say, “Using these common terms, a meta-narrative framework centered on the concepts of Creation, Fall and Redemption can be constructed”4. This Christian meta-narrative describes God as a merciful creator of the universe. Also it declares that man is created in the image of God. Another point that Christian doctrinal narrative infers is that man is responsible for his own sin. This fall of human being into sin is essentially the beginning of stress and decay in creation. Finally redemption of human being is man’s attempt to restore to his or her pre-fall state through creation. Indeed this Creation-Fall-Redemption is the most ubiquitous interpretation in the Christian Scriptures. But this basic outline of the Christian Worldview is often variedly interpreted by different interpretive practices that subsists within a variety of Christian traditions and groups, for instances “the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Reformed traditions or independent communities such as the Baptist and Quakers”5. Due to the variety of Christian dogmatic beliefs and practices, there, acceptably, exist a number of narrative elucidations and thus a “variety of worldviews that fall under the Christian umbrella”6. Nevertheless, a number of Biblical references indicate to a predominantly functional elucidation of the Redemption narrative. Obviously some paradigms that are basically different from the Redemption Paradigm tend to provide the Christian worldview with an interpretative base for existence. The twofold model of “Light versus Darkness” serves the Christian theologizes with an example of fundamental separation between the spiritual and the physical in a tenable manner. But the scriptural narratives appear to be deficient to provide any traditional philosophical basis for the worldview. The fundamental mainstream Christian belief depends on a self-existent and triune God as the creator of all known and unknown creation. Creation is believed to the majesty and glory of God, when human being chooses to turn away from the worship of God and to worship God’s creation, that is, to commit idolatry. As result the effects of idolatry reveal itself as corruption and malevolence in the natural order of the universe, as the apostle Paul confirms “The created universe is waiting with eager expectation for God’s sons to be revealed. It was made subject to frustration, not of its own choice but by the will of him who subjected it, yet with hope that the universe itself is to be freed from the shackles of mortality and is to enter upon the glorious liberty of the children of God. Up to the present, as we know, the whole created universe in all its parts groans as if in the pangs of childbirth.”15 Indeed Christian concept of redemption has a huge impact on the worldly notion of mankind. First it considers that human being is corrupted within himself. Yet since he has been created in the image of God, he is capable of achieving redemption through worshiping Him. Man as a true worshipper becomes able to understand “the universe is an expression of the creative nature and will of God”7. This redemptive memorandum lies at the heart of the proclamation of the Gospel in Peter’s address to the Jerusalem crowd: “He [Jesus] must be received into heaven until the time comes for the universal restoration of which God has spoken through his holy prophets from the beginning”8. Further elaborating the significance of redemption in with Christian worldview, David Naugle says that there is “A stereological and doxological purpose to human history, that God is glorying himself in the redemption of his people and the cosmos, terminating in a final judgment and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”9 The world that is built on the Christian paradigm of Creation-fall-redemption has to face a number of challenges from the natural worldview. Though the Christian worldview is more or less successful to shape human interactions with the society from a sociological perspective, the challenges -which the naturalist or materialist approaches to the world puts forth- are seemingly irrefutable. Based on empirical findings and theoretical assumptions the naturalist worldview is so overpowering that pro-Christian-worldview thinkers are to come up with counter theories. One of the most influential Christian thinkers who, coming out of the Christianity’s self-rebounding logic, attempts to prove the validity of Christian worldview through rationalistic approach was William Paley. Paley’s watchmaker analogy was essentially a response to the growing demand for solid rational ground the Christian view of the world. But Darwin’s formulation of the Natural Selection theorem appeared to be a blow to the Watchmaker theory, on the ground that man is not the ready-made creation of God as he [man] is now. Rather man’s present appearance and physical state are the derivatives of transformation and evolution through billions of years motivated the Natural Selection of the fittest. Again the discovery of the extra-terrestrial life like microorganism on Mars, tends to shake the religious perspective that the Universe was created for Man alone and man’s presence on this earth is unique to this universe. But the contra-religious worldview scientists argue that to shake off blind religious faith on solid evidence is better than clinging to superstitions. Dawkins attacks this perspective from a strong mathematical ground. Dawkins says that since life on this earth is a matter of chance, and since it goes through the process of evolution through natural selections of the fittest, the discovery of another planet with some sort of life would rather prove the validity of the evolutionary theory, than establishing Palley’s watchmaker theory.10 According to Dawkins, since the existence of life on this earth is not a lucky chance and since it is the result of evolution through natural selections of the fittest, the discovery of another planet with some sort of life would rather prove the validity of the evolutionary theory.11 Yet another group of people argue that the theological assumption that God is the intelligent designer of the complex design of human organism is not going to be much affected because Dawkins fails to perceive that Paley’s brilliant watchmaker also has planned the evolution of the watch. That is, the evolution process itself will be perceived as a part of God’s plan. Since Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, in the first place, denies the presence of a god replacing it with the natural selection, Paley’s “Watchmaker” is threatened, because the first premise of the paradigm of the Christian Worldview, “Creation” fundamentally collapses. That is, man has not been created; rather he has emerged through the natural selection. But modern scholars continue to support Paley arguing that since Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection starts from the nature itself, it cannot infer anything about the creation of Nature or the physical world. Therefore Darwin’s natural selection itself can be considered as a part of the Watchmaker’s or God’s action of creating human being on Earth, because the complex watch-like man cannot be thought of separate from the complex physical world. Read More