Before moving on to evolution, a little more should be said about World View that has been mentioned previously.
There is a difference between believing and living as if everything, including you, came from undirected processes over millions of years, and believing and living as if everything, including you, came from the plans and intentions of a supreme moral being. The first leads logically to nihilism, the belief that existence and life is meaningless, and theism, the belief in value through rational design for a purpose.
A world View is a personal philosophy. Or a set of coherent answers to basic questions about the nature of existence. Every world view has to answer the question ” What is the fundamental from which everything else comes?” The prime reality. By the end of the 19th century, elite intellectuals posited that matter (and energy) as the eternal prime reality that has existed from eternity past from which everything else comes. This included of course natural selection and mutation as an expression of matter - referring to ‘evolution’. Nancy Pearcey suggests that since evolution selects on pressures from environment, and not selecting on truth, evolution cannot have any truth claim.
In biological literature today one finds that there are many scientists, even evolutionary theorists, who are calling for a new theory of evolution. They recognize that natural selection and random mutation have very limited creative power. The mechanism of Darwinism is being increasingly questioned in the scientific literature while there is no hint of that in a modern biology textbooks or media. There is a huge disparity between the public presentation of Darwin's theory and the actual status of the theory.
In explaining the Christian world view one has to start with the first words in the book of John (in the beginning was the Word) or the first words of Genesis (in the beginning God said…) The theistic worldview as conveyed by the Bible is that thing from which everything else comes is God. God who is a spirit has a mind, intentions and ideas, who brought matter into existence and then shaped it and designed it. The materialistic worldview is just the opposite. It is the idea that God is not the thing from which everything else comes, but matter is eternal and self-existent. Freud's idea in the 19th century that God did not create man - man created God, and is a concept in the mind of man. In the theistic world view we are capable of making free choices and we can be held accountable for our actions. In atheistic world view everyone is determined by their genes and environment. There is no free will. A well-known commentary in cartoon depicts the accused standing before a judge who says “not guilty by reason of millions of years of evolutionary selection for aggressive behaviour”. In this world view no one is accountable for their actions, and everyone is a victim of their genes.
The gospel of Jesus claims that there is only one way. Sceptics say this claim is offensive. There is a name for this: the Scandal of Particularity. How come we do not ask the same questions of the laws of nature or of any assertion that lay claim to truth. Truth, by definition, is exclusive. That is what truth claims are at their core. To make an assertion is to deny it’s opposite. The question is, how do we really know the truth?
A world View can, if you are not careful, be cluttered with many items of belief. This will be difficult to recall should someone ask you. Below is a four-part framework on which to hang all the other details
A worldview offers answers to four necessary questions at a minimum: origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. Each of these answers must be correspondingly true, and, as a whole, all answers put together must be coherent. In other words – consistent. Then also the three tests for truth must hold : logical consistency (is it logical from premise to conclusion), empirical adequacy (does it have sustainable persuasive body), and experiential relevance (in its personal application, putting all of life under the Lordship of Christ.)
The Christian message is utterly unique and meets the demand for truth. You may recognise some of the elements below have been discussed in previous chapters.
Origin: Creation formed by an intelligence. Intelligibility and information can only be explained by an intelligent agent. Besides the Singularity of the “Big Bang”, there are other Singularities: Abiogenesis (formation of life from inert matter) and speciation (sudden formation of diverse life forms as seen in the pre-Cambrian period).
Meaning: The creation, including humankind, is designed for a purpose as described in the OT and NT, chief of which is that the Creator so relished the relationship in the Trinity that humankind was designed to extend that relationship. This then denies nihilism, which is the belief in purposelessness and ultimate oblivion.
Morality: Because humankind is designed in the image of the Creator, all human life is sacred: sanctity of life. This covers from capital death penalty, to euthanasia, to murder, to abortion. Humankind was designed with freedom of choice (in naturalism choice is determined by genes and environment) – to choose love for the Creator, or to choose ‘sin’, which can be described as ‘missing the mark’ apropos the created purpose. Morality also includes property rights (theft), lying, adultery, homosexual acts, lust, greed, idolatry, hate, etc. When Jesus said that ‘no-one but God is good’, he was conveying that the Creator is so good, that all forms of wayward behaviour is abhorrent. Temporal justice is for the state, but ultimate justice is the province of the Creator. The concept of ‘evil’ can only be objective if there is a Creator, else it is relative or even nonsensical.
Destiny: What happens at the finality of all things physical? This is shrouded in prophetic language in Revelation, Daniel, Isaiah, Psalms, Jesus, etc. Of the total of 1817 prophesies predicting some 735 separate events, 596 have already happened, leaving some 20 for before the return of Christ, and 119 after the return.
Another way to cut the worldview cake is: Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Every worldview has some story of where everything came from — Creation or from nothing, ex nihilo. Then each worldview proceeds to tell us that something is wrong with human society — the Fall, or the downward tumble of the cosmos, morality and genetics — and then each worldview offers a solution — Redemption, how the world is returned to it’s original intended purpose. Using this tool you will be better able to diagnose a worldview and whether it speaks the truth.
A Zogby/Forbes poll asked respondents what they would most like to be known for. ‘Intelligence’ ‘Good looks’ ‘Sense of humour’. Half of all respondents said they would most like to be known for their being authentic. The world is searching for authenticity. That which will most satisfy its craving for authenticity is the person of Jesus Christ. They can only see Him in our lives and our answers to real questions.
I close this section out with a quote from Ravi Zacharias: “Consider the empirical test of the person, teaching, and work of Jesus Christ. A look at human history shows why he was who he claimed to be and why millions follow him today. A comparison of Jesus’s teachings with any other claimant to divine or prophetic status quickly shows the profound differences in their claims and demonstrations. In fact, none except Jesus even claimed to be the divine Saviour. His offer of grace and forgiveness by being the perfect sacrifice of our offense is profoundly unique.
I position the sequence of fact and deduction in the following way: Love is the supreme ethic. Where there is the possibility of love, there must be the reality of free will. Where there is the reality of free will, there will inevitably be the possibility of sin. Where there is sin, there is the need for a Saviour. Where there is a Saviour, there is the hope for redemption. Only in the Judeo-Christian worldview does this sequence find its total expression and answer. The story from sin to redemption is only in the gospel with the ultimate provision of a loving God.
But the question can be pushed back further. Does this not all assume that there is a God? Yes, it does, and there are four stages in the argument. The first is that no matter how we section physical concrete reality, we end up with a quantity that cannot explain its own existence. If all material quantities cannot explain their own existence, the only possibility for self-explanation would be something that is non-material.
Secondly, wherever we see intelligibility, we find intelligence behind it.
Thirdly, we intuitively know that our moral reasoning points to a moral framework within the universe. The very fact that the problem of evil is raised either by people or about people intimates that human beings have intrinsic worth.
Fourthly, the human experience in history and personal encounter sustains the reality of the supernatural.’ (Ravi Zacharias)