The Alternative Worldview Argument
Recently, a Christian commented to me that the fundamentalist worldview makes more sense than the atheist worldview. The idea is that either people see the world with a fundamentalist worldview or they see it with the alternative atheist worldview. The interesting thing about this is that there is no atheist worldview.
I think this stems from the confusion that some fundamentalist Christians have between atheism and secularism. Since scientific theories do not address the metaphysical beliefs in deities, many fundamentalist Christians see these secular theories as atheist theories. While it is true that most (if not all) atheists accept the secular scientific worldview called “reality” that does not make the scientific worldview an atheist worldview.
By framing science as atheism, these fundamentalist Christians can take the objectivity out of science and metaphorically write off any scientific theory or fact that they don’t like as being atheist propaganda.
The fundamentalist Christian/Creationist worldview is defined by their religious beliefs. As such, they mistakenly think that science is defined by a belief that God does not exist. The fact is that science is open to the possibility of a deity, but has not seen any evidence for such a proposition. Science deals only with the natural world (the only world we know) and not the Christian metaphysical or supernatural world. This doesn’t seem to register with these fundamentalists.
Recently, I had a conversation with a graduate from Liberty University. When I talked about how they have an obvious bias, he told me that he had also studied at atheist universities. There are atheist universities? His view was that if a University didn’t have an obvious fundamentalist Christian bias, then by default, it must have an obvious atheist bias. Atheism is the alternative worldview in his mind.
Interestingly enough, these fundamentalists rarely even consider that there are other religions out there or even other perspectives on their religion. In their minds, people either have a fundamentalist Christian worldview or the alternative atheist worldview. There are no other possible worldviews.
Filed under: Alternative Worldview, Atheism NOT Religion, culture war, Religion, science