A worldview is merely the manner people perceive the universe and believe it relates to them. Norman Geisler and William Watkins said a worldview is a manner of sing or construing all of world. It is an interpretative model through which or by which one makes sense of the information of life and the universe ( 1, 15 ) . Another manner to conceive of a worldview is to see it as a chopper. A chopper lifts you off the land and allows you to see the Earth from an aerial position as a worldview allows you to see the bigger image of the universe around you. Both show how the universe maps, and, merely as if you were to descry your house in your vicinity from the place of a chopper, a worldview allows you to see your topographic point and intent in context of the universe. A worldview influences the manner person lives by supplying logical and moral regulations by which to populate, such as teaching how one should handle another individual ( e.g. Christians treat others with love in a Christ-like mode ) or how to comprehend world ( e.g. Postmodernists believe it is defined based on civilization ( 1 ) ) . In this paper I will present and explicate the divinities, doctrines, and moralss of six different worldviews, every bit good as comparison, contrast, and review them with each other.
Christianity is a worldview based entirely on the truth of the Bible which relies on a personal relationship between the Christian and God. It can be proved historically, scientifically, and preternaturally and hence is the 1 and merely true faith ( 3 ) . Christianity is founded on theism, “ the belief in the being of a supernatural God, ” which is based on particular disclosure and general disclosure ( 1 ) . Particular disclosure is God ‘s specific communicating, such as the Bible or Jesus Christ, refering redemption
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and the nature of God, and general disclosure is God ‘s communicating by nature and scruples of His being ( 1 ) . Particular disclosure has been described as the “ anchor ” of, or the cardinal point to, Christianity whereas general disclosure encourages people to see the ultimate truths in Scripture and in Jesus Christ ( 1 ) . Christians embrace the statement from design, which says that if something exists it has been designed by a interior decorator. They believe in Trinitarian theism, which claims there is a God who is three separate individuals in one: Father, Son and Spirit ( 1 ) . Christian religion proclaims: “ ‘God is, ‘ ‘God created, ‘ ‘God loves, ‘ and ‘God Judgess ‘ ” ( 2 ) .
In Christian doctrine, epistemology ( the survey of cognition ) is “ based on particular disclosure, which is based on history, the jurisprudence of grounds, and the scientific discipline of archeology. ( 1 ) ” It is considered to be the “ most rational of all worldviews, and it requires no more faith than any other doctrine ( 1 ) . ” Christian doctrine calls Christians to hold a meaningful, purposeful life in which their beliefs are shaped “ harmonizing to a coherent, sensible, true worldview ” ( 1 ) .
Christian moralss is grounded in the character of God and hence is inseparable from divinity ( 2 ) . Since God ‘s character ne’er alterations, Christians ‘ moralss ne’er do either, which means they believe in moral absolutes, “ the belief that an absolute ethical criterion exists for all persons irrespective of epoch or civilization ” ( 1 ) . Luke 10:27 amounts up the Christian naming, which states that Christians ought to: “ love the Lord your God with all your bosom and with all your psyche and with all your strength and with all your head, and love your neighbour as yourself ” ( 8 ) . Christians are to continually give their full egos to obeying God ‘s moral order until the twenty-four hours they meet God face to face ( 1 ) .
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Moslems, unlike Christians, believe in Unitarian Theism because they reject the being of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus ( 1 ) . They believe in monotheism every bit good. Shirk is the 1 inexcusable wickedness: tie ining other divinities with God, who is sovereign over worlds and history. They believe in angels and genie, arch liquors of fire. They believe that merely Muhammad ‘s Qur’an is the actual word of God and has been preserved free of mistake, which makes it the ultimate important Bible ( 1 ) . The Hadith are a aggregation of the instructions, opinions, and actions of Muhammad, believed to be inspired by God and obeyed as a consequence. On the Day of Judgment they believe everyone will confront a deliberation of workss, after which, if the weight of one ‘s good workss surpasses that of one ‘s bad workss each will trust to come in into Paradise as opposed to Hell ( 1 ) . “ Muslims believe that we do n’t necessitate redemption. What we need is counsel and that counsel is the Islamic jurisprudence, an all encompassing system that controls every facet of mundane life ” ( 4 ) . Devout Muslims are expected to pattern the five “ pillars ” of Islam: confession of religion ( “ There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophesier. ” ) with earnestness of head and bosom, supplication five times a twenty-four hours confronting Mecca, fasting during Ramadan, almsgiving, pilgrim’s journey to Mecca one time, and jehad, the conflict against enticement and wickedness for self-denial and the conflict against any who oppose Islam ( 1 ) .
Islamic doctrine was greatly influenced by Grecian doctrine. The Kalam Cosmological Argument, an statement that fundamentally states that anything that is finite has a cause, which must be God, was created by Muslim philosophers ( 1 ) .
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Their doctrine has non purely adhered to orthodox Islam philosophy and embracings supernaturalism over naturalism. Muslims imply their belief in life after decease because of their belief in concluding judgement, and an accent on miracles is put in the Qur’an, but Muhammad himself ne’er performs miracles, unlike Jesus ( 1 ) .
The foundations of Islamic moralss lie in the Qur’an and Muhammad ‘s workss, which consist of worshipping and obeying Allah ( 2 ) . The Hadith shows Muhammad as the model human whom Muslims must copy in all respects ( 1 ) . The Islamic religion establishes ethical absolutes, but alternatively of establishing morality in God ‘s character the Qur’an Teachs that God will ne’er be finally known ( 1 ) . The five pillars of Islam make up the nucleus of Islamic moralss ( 1 ) .
Secular Humanists are basically Atheists, those who deny the being of a supernatural God ( 1 ) . Their chief philosophy is comprised of three pronunciamentos: Humanist Manifesto I ( 1933 ) , Humanist Manifesto II ( 1973 ) , and Humanist Manifesto III ( 2000 ) , or Planetal Humanism. Secular Humanism “ eschews transcendental philosophy in any and all signifiers ” ( 5 ) . This means Humanists reject the supernatural raw and merely accept the being of the natural ( 2 ) . They insist that God is merely a figment of the imaginativeness because adult male came prior to God, which sets adult male up in topographic point of God ( 1 ) .
Secular Humanists have several philosophical places which include: naturalism, materialism, philistinism, and organicism, all of which underline the same message: stuff is all that exists ( 1 ) . Naturalism is the chief stance Humanists take, which states that merely what we can touch, experience and analyze exists ( 2 ) . They see the scientific method ( which proves that stuff exists by observation, proving, and experimentation )
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as the lone certain manner of cognizing anything exists. Therefore, the supernatural can non be because it can non be proven by the scientific method ( 2 ) . Unfortunately, the defect in this worldview is that it leaves its followings absent of hope or a intent in life as a consequence of holding no God or psyche ( 1 ) .
Secular Humanists dislike the limitations of absolute ethical motives ( 1 ) . They believe it is their responsibility to liberate “ persons from illicit controls of every type: the political control of inhibitory governments ; the ecclesiastical control of organized faith ; even the societal controls of societal and household outlooks, conventional morality, and the dictatorship of the small town ” ( 5 ) . Their moralss are consequentialist, in which ethical picks are judged by their consequences, or a fluctuation of moral relativism ( 1, 140 ) . “ Secular humanitarianism affirms the values of both originative and single self-fulfillment and cosmopolitanism ” ( 5 ) . It defends “ the right to knock any instruction, even instructions revered by spiritual or cultural communities ” ( 5 ) .
Basically Marxist-Leninists are atheists, or, as they prefer, scientific atheists ( 1, 65 ) . The ground being that Karl Marx believed faith to be the “ opiate of the multitudes ; ” he believed it distracted people from the current societal province of personal businesss and alternatively focused them on Heaven ( 6 ) . The end of Marxism-Leninism is a “ physical overthrow of all bing societal conditions, ” which would include the economic system, authorities, jurisprudence, etc ( 2 ) . At the bosom of Marxist-Leninism is the naturalist intercrossed doctrine of dialectical philistinism, deducing theories from the dialectical procedure and philistinism to make a new theory which states that “ in everything there is a thesis ( the manner things are ) and an antithesis ( an resistance to the manner things are ) , which must necessarily collide, ”
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ensuing in a synthesis, or the new thesis, which will in bend have another antithesis, making another clang and synthesis ( 1, 109 ) . This belief is of import to Marxism-Leninism because it “ moved affair from inorganic province into life, so to animate beings, so to worlds, and eventually organized societal establishments like authoritiess and states ” ( 2 ) .
Marxists base their moralss on utilitarianism-an ethical model that posits that all action should be directed toward accomplishing the greatest public-service corporation for the greatest figure of people ( that the terminal justifies the agencies ) ( 1 ) . Anything is acceptable every bit long as it benefits society. The Marxist purpose is to make a society absent of category differentiations by revolution, a method they deem to be the most efficient agencies to accomplish their end ( 1 ) .
The alone thing about the Cosmic Humanist worldview is that it accepts neither godlessness nor theism and alternatively is pantheistic, which means it states that God is everything and everything is god ( 2 ) . Cosmic Humanism emphasizes religious experiences that are expected to confabulate particular penetration, power, and integrity with the Godhead. Anything and everything, which is God, is germinating toward a province of greater integrity and power. ( 7 ) . Cosmic Humanists give persons the power to find world by making or co-creating truth when they claim that adult male is God ( 1 ) . In the terminal, everyone will finally go godlike and entire integrity will be restored ( 1 ) .
Cosmic Humanist doctrine may be summed up in the phrase non-naturalism, a belief which states that nil is natural and everything is supernatural ( 1 ) . This goes manus in manus with pantheism. Once we reach our inner godlike province so we will intuitively cognize truth without bounds, although truth may be interpreted otherwise
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harmonizing to persons ( 1 ) . If everything is God so everything is religious, non material, and will shrive into void when integrity is achieved ( 2 ) .
The one ethical absolute the New Age motion supports is single liberty, which puts authorization for judging values in the psyche of persons ( 1 ) . When there is no absolute authorization by which to step ethical motives, moral relativism ensues ( 1 ) . This in bend leads to the blurring between good and evil and karma, which states that the entire consequence of a individual ‘s actions and behavior during each stage of being determines the individual ‘s fate ( 1 ) . The oxymoron that messes up the whole ethical system of Cosmic Humanism is found in the one regulation against judging others ‘ beliefs ( 1 ) . If you can non judge others but judgment is portion of the integrity of world, so how will the judgment be done? Numerous other jobs stem from this really regulation, exposing this worldview as a false belief.
The 3rd atheistically grounded worldview is Postmodernism ( 1 ) . One bookman defines Postmodernism as “ a general cultural phenomenon, it has such characteristics as the challenging of convention, the commixture of manners, tolerance of ambiguity, accent on diverseness, credence ( so jubilation ) of invention and alteration, and emphasis on the constructedness of world ” ( 9 ) . Postmodernism is a slightly obscure worldview that encompasses many thoughts and covers a broad range of subjects. Postmodernists believe that “ ‘God is dead ‘ because He ‘s incredible, non because He ‘s unprovable ” ( 2 ) . However, along with the decease of God comes an absence of ultimate world or ageless truth ( 1 ) .
Objective world is virtually non-existent to the Postmodernist ( 2 ) . He believes “ world is the subjective building of human idea. ”
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He besides self-refutingly denies cosmopolitan truth, rejecting anything related to a metanarrative, which is “ an account that purports to unite the universe in a wide, over-arching narrative, ” while therefore making a metanarrative ( 2 ) . This anti-realism point of position encourages spiritual pluralism because no 1 can hold on one individual truth or faith so there must be an credence of different faiths ( 2 ) .
Postmodernist moralss are based on cultural relativism, which is the belief that truth and ethical motives are comparative to one ‘s civilization ( 1 ) . Moral truth for persons depends on the communities people live in because of the non-existence of a universal, expansive narration ( 2 ) . Postmodernists “ mold world in conformity with [ their ] demands, involvements, biass, and cultural traditions ” ( 9 ) . But our single positions or penchants can non impact world and hence Postmodernism is false. World and truth remain the same despite one ‘s ideas and feelings towards it ( 1 ) .
Both Christianity and Islam are monotheistic and rely on the godly nature/supernatural while Secular Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, Cosmic Humanism, and Postmodernism are non ( 1 ) . Christians believe in the absolute truth of the full Bible and the divinity of Christ while Muslims deny both and replace them with the Qur’an and Muhammad. Christians believe redemption is the lone manner to acquire to Heaven, and Muslims believe you must hold more good workss than bad workss to come in Heaven. Islam merely supports the truth of New Testament and non the Old Testament ( 1 ) . Islam does non admit the infallibility of the full Bible, and that is where it is glaringly inaccurate ( 1 ) .
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Secular Humanists do non accept the religious, taking to trust on scientific discipline entirely, which straight opposes the positions of Christianity and Islam and aligns with Cosmic Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, and Postmodernism ( 1 ) . They refuse to accept moral absolutes, such as those in Islamic and Christian philosophies, and alternatively keep ethical relativism ( 1 ) . This creates a job because anything can so be good or bad as judged by the person and his state of affairs ( 1 ) . Secular Humanists tend to stress the point that scientific discipline and ground will drive people from Christianity when it is really much the opposite ; Christianity may be proven by these agencies alternatively of refuted ( 1 ) .
Unlike Christians and Muslims, Marxist-Leninists see God as non merely non-existent but an hindrance, or an enemy to scientific, mercenary, socialistic values ( 1 ) . The thoughts of a God and a heaven purportedly deflect the public attending from them ( 1 ) . To the Marxist, philistinism is truth and world ( 1 ) . Marx wished to subvert the theistic foundations of society every bit good as banish all hints of faith, which is what all the other five worldviews are basically ( 1 ) . Feodor Dostoevsky acknowledged, together with other theists, “ the job of Communism is the job of godlessness ” ( 1 ) . Since everything is invariably altering, harmonizing to dialectical philistinism, Marxist thoughts and communism are ephemeral, and Marxism itself can non last ( 1 ) .
Cosmic Humanism, although it has a divinity, teaches neither Christianity and Islam ‘s theism, nor Secular Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, and Postmodernism ‘s godlessness. Cosmic Humanists do non hold with the Christian or Muslim pattern of sing the Bible or Qur’an as important because they are the word of God ( 1 ) . It contradicts Secular Humanist, Marxist-Leninist beliefs because of the philosophy of a
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supernatural kingdom of religious relationships ( 1 ) . But at the same clip it differs from Christianity because it says every individual and all world is God, and hence any “ truth ” our inner ego discovers is God ‘s truth ( 1 ) . It rejects the God of the Bible because of its roots in Romantic poets ‘ doctrine ( 1 ) . “ Cosmic Humanist doctrine, like Secular Humanism and Marxism-Leninism, is monistic-all world is one-but in a really different sense ( 1 ) . In Cosmic Humanism, ultimate world is religious instead than stuff ( 1 ) . The Cosmic Humanist God, a “ cosmic force, ” is impersonal, unlike the Christian God and consists of creative activity entirely every bit opposed to the separate entity that Christians worship ( 1 ) . This God is different besides because Cosmic Humanists believe people can happen their interior God to detect truth, but Christians believe they can detect God ‘s will and truth merely through particular and general disclosure ( 1 ) .
Atheism is the theological anchor of Secular Humanism, Marxism, and Postmodernism. Postmodernists emerged from the Marxist unbelieving tradition, and, although Postmodernism has thoughts, such as godlessness, socialism, punctuated development, and the socially constructed ego, it is by and large a reaction against the Marxist worldview ( 1 ) . Postmodernist moralss is invariably germinating ( 1 ) . It differs from Christian and Islamic moral absolutes which are based on God ‘s character or moral edict ; Secular Humanists, Marxists and Postmodernists ground their ethical system in godlessness, naturalism, and development ( 1 ) . Despite similar beginnings, Postmodern moralss do differ from those of Secular Humanism and Marxism ( 1 ) . Postmodernists do n’t give a new statement for their unbelieving positions so their beliefs can non be seen as more valid than other atheist worldviews ( 1 ) . Psalm 14:1 declares atheists, those who believe “ there is no God, ” to be foolish ( 8 ) .
