Welcome Back. This week we will investigate the worldview of naturalism and some of the many aspects of its foundation. Enjoy!
The Worldview of Naturalism
Contrary to the Christian worldview is the worldview of naturalism (which is an essential tenant in similar worldviews such as humanism, materialism and atheism). Keep in mind that when a person mixes naturalistic thinking with God's Word, their starting point is really man's word. Once fallibility is introduced into one's starting point - then that starting point is man's word, even if it is mixed with God's revelation. As was mentioned in the beginning of this series, there are ultimately only two worldviews.
The thinking behind naturalism goes something like this: the world and universe as you see it is all there is. There is no God, no Creator, no one to whom humans give an account of their lives. The naturalist believes death marks the end of life in this world with no prospect of life beyond, in any form. For the naturalist, the universe is a closed system and therefore there is no need for humans to seek the involvement of a transcendent being.
Naturalism is a worldview that assumes it has succeeded at getting God out of the picture in every area of life. It is also intent in getting the Biblical God and His written revelation out of our educational process. In large measure, it has been very successful due to an often subtle influence as well as an overt and militant influence. The naturalistic worldview is the basis for the development of the public education curriculum of our public schools. As Ben Stein so aptly but it - God has been "expelled."
I contend that for the most part, this is a subtle fact among educators today. I doubt that most of them are even aware that they are part of the naturalist indoctrination. Try asking this question of your public school leadership: "What is the worldview or educational philosophy behind the curriculum of your school?" They will probably find it hard if not impossible to answer. If probed, they may think that Judeo-Christian principles are at the core of our public education system curriculum. Many educators are committed to the "Character Counts" movement, which borrows certain Christian values, but is completely mute on the source of those values.
Honestly, I believe that many educators would be greatly concerned if they were aware of the naturalistic presuppositions beneath their work. One of the problems is they have been convinced that including God and His Word (the Bible) is religion, but eliminating them results in a neutral position. They don't understand there is no neutral position! One is either "for Christ or against Him." What they perceive wrongly as a neutral position is in reality an anti-God position - it is a religious position - the religion of naturalism/atheism. We have much work to be done in pointing this out to the Church, let alone the secular world.
The naturalistic worldview holds steadfastly to the idea of evolution and the millions of years, as "the" explanation of the origin of life. The two are virtually inseparable in the Western mindset. If there is no God, and if the physical reality is all there is, then life must have come into being by itself... and somehow. That's where evolution (which means millions of years to even be postulated) comes in. What is "evolution"? Dr. Michael Behe, who is basically a theistic evolutionist but is against pure naturalism, in Darwin's Black Box, defines it this way:
Evolution is a flexible word. It can be used by one person to mean something as simple as change over time, or by another person to mean the descent of all life forms from a common ancestor, leaving the mechanism of change unspecified. In its full-throated, biological sense, however, evolution means a process whereby life arose from non-living matter and subsequently developed entirely by natural means. That is the sense that Darwin gave the world, and the meaning that it holds in the scientific community.
Join us next week as we discover why naturalism survives in our culture and what we can do about it...
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Shane <><
Lighthouse Publications <><
"Dedicated to the Never Ending Search for the Creator's calling within You" (TM)
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