Worldview

About 12 years ago I engaged in some lengthy dialogue with a fellow graduate student who had abandoned his Christian faith upon reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Below is one of the emails I sent to “Oleg” (not his real name).

Dear “Oleg”

Please allow me to begin by first expressing my profoundest sorrow over the terrible experiences you have been through. I cannot possibly understand the hurt and anguish these things have caused you. I can only say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and that I hope that in spite of it all, you are able to clearly distinguish between the wickedness of the persons that took advantage of you and the goodness of the God they so poorly represented in your case. My heart truly ached within me when I read your email. I know these words of mine may not mean that much, and certainly they can’t erase your personal history or the present feelings that history may yet arouse within you, but please know that I truly and deeply hurt for you because of this. 

I also want to apologize for taking so long to send a response to your last two emails. Despite the passage of so much time, I still, regrettably, have no elaborate treatise to offer you in defense of my position. I have no knock-down argument to give to you. And truthfully, my suspicion is that given the rather lofty standard of evidence you have raised for justifiable belief in God (namely, a theophany), there is not much I can say that you will likely find especially compelling. Nevertheless, I will try. 

The Cambridge Dictionary of philosophy defines a worldview as “an overall perspective on life that sums up what we know about the world, how we evaluate it emotionally, and how we respond to it volitionally” (Audi, 236). Another quotable source puts it: “A worldview is a philosophical system that attempts to explain how the facts of reality relate and fit together….a worldview shapes or colors the way we think and furnishes the interpretive condition for understanding and explaining the facts of our experience” (Geisler and Bocchino, 55).

The basic questions addressed by any worldview concern the nature and/or existence of God or gods, the nature and origin of the universe, the origin, nature, and destiny of mankind, the source of and solution to evil, and the basis and nature of ethics and morality. Based upon these criteria, it is safe to say, nuances aside, that there are three major and opposing worldviews colliding in the world today: theism, pantheism, and atheism. Put simply, theism says that God brought the universe into existence some finite time in the past, that man is the special creation of God who is morally accountable to his Creator, that moral evil is the result of the corrupt use of freewill, and that ethics are ultimately rooted in the nature of God. Pantheism teaches that God is impersonal and metaphysically indistinct from the universe, that man’s true self is God, that evil is an illusion caused by the errors of the mind, and that ethics are relative inasmuch as they transcend the illusion of good and evil. Atheism asserts that there is no God or gods at all and that the universe is all that is, that man is a product of evolution, ultimately reducible to matter, that evil is caused by human ignorance (especially religion), and that ethics are grounded in humanity alone.

Though this is of course a thumb nail sketch, I think it fairly treats the major worldviews in at least rough outline. Recently, however, the supposition was brought to my attention that atheism allegedly is not a worldview. This attempt to deny the “worldviewness” of atheism, I believe is fueled by what I call the atheist via negativa. That is, despite all appearances to the contrary, some atheists claim that they are not making any metaphysical assertions and therefore need not provide any proof of their beliefs.