Similarities, Differences, and Flaws - Worldviews Part 4

     In addition to learning about a bunch of different worldviews individually, (If you missed those topics, click here for Part 1, Part 2, and Part3) I learned similarities and differences between them, as well as their flaws from a Biblical perspective.

     Since I already mentioned many similarities and differences in the overviews of each individual worldview, I’ll summarize them. 

•    In the area of Theology: Christianity, Islam, and Cosmic Humanism all agree that there is a God, but Christians believe there is one God in the form of a Trinity (three persons), Muslims believe that there is only one God in one form, and Cosmic Humanists believe that everything is God.  These differ greatly from Secular Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, and Postmodernism which all agree that there is no God and that we are the higher power. 
•    In the area of Philosophy: Christianity and Islam agree that reality is both the natural and the supernatural, and Secular Humanism and Marxist-Leninism agree that matter is all that exists and is constantly evolving, though they disagree on what the evolution of matter applies to.  Cosmic Humanism and Postmodernism are the loners; the first believing that the supernatural is all that exists while the second believes that there is no reality. 
•    In Ethics: Christianity and Islam both teach that morals are absolute and are determined by God, Secular Humanism, Cosmic Humanism, and Postmodernism all teach that morals are relative, but Postmodernism differs from the other two in saying that morals are based on the culture instead of the individual.  The one worldview that didn’t have any similarities was Marxist-Leninism which believes that morals are based on the advancement of the lower class against the upper classes. 
•    In Biology: both Christianity and Islam believe that life was created by God, while Secular Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, Cosmic Humanism, and Postmodernism believe that life came about through spontaneous generation and evolution, though each of them have differing opinions on the specifics.  Secular Humanists believe in a very basic form of evolution, Marxist-Leninists believe that things evolved in leaps, Cosmic Humanists believe that things evolve by leaps, but they believe that it is our minds that are evolving, and Postmodernists won’t commit to one theory, other than the belief that we evolved. 

     As to pointing out the flaws in each of these worldviews from a Biblical standpoint, that could be a whole article in and of itself, but I’ll try to keep it brief and just look at a few of the bigger problems. 

     Secular Humanism, Marxist-Leninism, and Postmodernism all say that God doesn’t exist, therefore we were created by random chance.  This also ties in with the argument that the natural world is the only thing that exists.  The main flaw in these ideas to me can be summed up by this quote by C.S. Lewis, “Suppose there were no intelligence behind the universe.  In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking.  Thought is merely a by-product of some atoms within my skull.  But if so, how can I trust my thinking to be true?  But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course, I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else.  Unless I believe in God, I can’t believe in thought; so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”

     An argument against everything being god as Cosmic Humanists believe is that I would be a god.  The problem is, I don’t posses any of the qualities necessary to be a god (all knowing, all powerful, etc). 

      Another big disagreement with Christianity is the belief that there is no absolute truth, but that very statement declares itself an absolute truth.  If there are none, how can they state that?  Along with that is the idea that we should be tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs.  I should start by saying that I agree wholeheartedly!  Assuming you use the proper definition of “tolerance.”  Most people think that it means you shouldn’t push your ideas on other people and just let everyone believe what they want, however it actually means that you are to be respectful of other people’s ideas and opinions even if you are in disagreement with them. 

      Last is the idea of spontaneous generation.  This idea is one of the main planks of evolution, but it was actually proved to be unscientific by Louis Pasteur in 1862 with his swan-neck flask experiment.  I could go on and on with this; I have learned so much from this course and have enjoyed putting it to use in my daily life, and I hope you all have learned a little from reading this.

Comma Queen

Sources:

“Understanding the Times: A Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews (Revised 2^nd Edition)” by David A. Noebel