A Discussion of Worldviews

A while back, I had an interesting conversation with a gentleman at work. He is a very kind, friendly person, and the conversation at no point took on any sort of hostile tone. We began to dialogue a bit about religion, morality, and the church.

He asserted that he did not really believe in a God, or any sort of spiritual deity. He believes that man is the end of all things, the final stop in the evolutionary process, and as such, is able to determine morality independent of any external (or internal) moral code. He kindly explained that this is true freedom, in his estimation; and that if mankind would embrace this philosophy, the world would become increasingly good. He asked in a very non-confrontational way if I saw things differently, given my belief in God and the tenets of the Christian faith. I politely explained that I did, in fact, see things very differently. We then talked for about twenty minutes about some ideas relevant to religion, morality, and worldviews. It was a great discussion in that it was conducted with mutual kindness and respect, but the most important thing was that this conversation ended up providing a venue for discussion of the gospel.

The bulk of the discussion ended up centering on the idea of an objective morality. He asserted that there really was no such thing as an objective morality, meaning that morality is essentially determined by individuals and society based on certain factors. There are many things, according to him, that are universally considered wrong, but not because they are objectively immoral. They’re wrong because society has deemed them detrimental to the common good, or because they hinder the world’s progress toward an ultimately good state. He asked for my thoughts about these ideas, so I addressed them with him.

I explained that there are a couple problems with that philosophy. First, it ignores the basic nature of man. Men, left to themselves, are inherently sinful. Men are inherently selfish. Most men, myself included oftentimes, are far more interested in their own well-being than that of others. Leaving the determination of good and evil to men who are, by their very nature, evil, is a scary proposition.

Second, the position he took is inconsistent within its own framework. If there is no objective morality, how can man or society really claim that anything is immoral or evil? On what basis could they make such a claim? If there is no objective standard of what is right, there can be no determination of what is wrong. If one determines an action to be wrong, there must be some standard by which that action has been judged. There must be some standard of good or right to which an action can be compared. An objective standard of good is an absolute necessity if one wants to determine the rightness or wrongness of any given action. The atheistic/humanistic worldview can provide no real basis for objective morality. That’s not to say that an atheist or humanist cannot or does not have moral standards. Rather, I’m saying that their worldview cannot provide the basis for those morals and standards. The atheist/humanist has to borrow the idea of an objective moral standard from the Christian worldview in order to claim that there is a problem of evil that we need to improve upon. Consequently, the atheist/humanist cannot live consistently within his own worldview, which indicates a severe deficiency with the worldview as a whole. This coincides flawlessly with the description of unbelievers given in Romans 1, where the text indicates that unbelievers know the truth, but suppress it in unrighteousness.

The Christian worldview provides a consistent framework within which we can understand these very relevant questions. The Christian worldview provides real answers to these questions. It justifies an objective morality, basing it on the character of a holy God.

By Matt Monge