God, Science and Reason: Finding the Light of God Amidst the Darkness of Atheism and Dogmatism

By Michael Bunner

Most persons have been led to believe there is a “war” between science and religion. Over the past generation, “New Atheist” icons such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have fueled this erroneous belief with provocative best-selling books which herald the triumph of science over God. To date, the scientific and philosophical responses made by persons of faith to these New Atheist a ronts have made only a little noise, like warning shots red across the bow of a ship. No more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781948282345

Book preview

References

Preface

There is no war between science and religion. That alleged war is nothing but a scheme concocted in the minds of zealous atheists. They use this storyline as a diversionary tactic to camouflage their real intent—the advancement of their godless agenda. They have weaponized the ideas of nothingness, meaninglessness, purposelessness, randomness, and undirected evolution with the intent of bludgeoning susceptible persons of faith into a stupor. After ambushing and beating them into this dazed and debilitated state, the atheists then taunt their victims into retaliating in ways that make them look weak, foolish, and stupid. These tactics have successfully instigated many skirmishes that are then held up by the atheists as proof that there is a war between science and religion.

During the uneasy truces that arise between these philosophical skirmishes along the border of faith, the atheists further incite susceptible persons by positing a false choice: either (1) believe in the real world as explained by science, and forsake the scientifically un-provable notion of God, or (2) believe in the fairy tale world of religion, and embrace the make-believe God that it champions. Realizing that most thinking persons will clearly see through the faulty premises used in this argument, the atheists have cleverly repackaged this debate as a rational choice between reality and delusion. As a result, they have lured many unsuspecting persons into their trap, causing them to erroneously believe they have to make a choice between the science of reality and the delusion of faith.

This book will make it obvious to rational and reasonable persons that the war between science and religion is a deliberate fabrication by the secular movement. It will also demonstrate that a worldview that embraces both the facts of objective science and a belief in a personal God offers mankind the most rational and complete explanation for the reality that we experience every day.

This is a book about reality and the various worldviews that attempt to explain it. It is also a book about human consciousness, and the observations, logic, facts, beliefs, knowledge, and critical thinking and reasoning processes which serve as our basis for interpreting and comprehending the world as we perceive it. The ideas and examples presented in these pages will likely challenge the views of reality that are cast in the minds of most readers. If you are a young adult who has been pulled by forces within our modern culture to forsake the God of your parents and grandparents, this book will assist you to critically analyze the motives of those cultural magnets that have invisibly pulled you toward their worldview. In the process, you will be obliged to think for yourself about the true nature of reality.

If you are a free thinking atheist, this book will force you to acknowledge and confront significant inconsistencies in your reasoning as well as serious gaps in what you believe to be a liberating worldview. If you are a Christian who believes you are standing tall for God by interpreting every word of the Bible strictly and literally, this book will compel you to hear Jesus literally telling you that many Biblical passages can be understood only when interpreted figuratively. You will also be forced to consider the impact on your faith once you realize that much of your dogma has been proven wrong by objective science.

This book is comprised of four separate and distinct mini-books with each having a unique and autonomous focus. Although each of these four mini-books can stand independently by themselves, all of them are necessary to paint a broad-brushed, holistic picture of reality. The first three books are addressed to different audiences, each embracing a view of reality that is radically divergent from the other two. The fourth book challenges all who embrace any one of these three divergent worldviews on their interpretation of the facts of science and the intent of the Bible.

This book presents a view of reality that is reasonably balanced between science and religion. Though these discussions are intertwined, the two disciplines are kept separate and distinct. They are never synthesized into a singular scientific faith system as is done by both the atheists with their philosophy of scientific naturalism and by dogmatic Christians with their philosophy of creation science. Most people are familiar with the story of Galileo and the problems he encountered with the leaders of the seventeenth century church. He ran into trouble when his objective scientific research proved that the earth rotated around the sun rather than the sun around the earth. The church accused him of heresy and put him on trial for his two claims that the earth moved and that the Bible was not a scientific authority.

I believe that Galileo, who was both an objective scientist and a devout Christian, had the right model in his mind regarding the interpretation of the facts of science vs. the interpretation of scripture. During his trial, Galileo claimed (in his own defense) that science teaches us how the heavens work, and the Bible teaches us how to get to heaven. Maintaining this distinction is just as critical today as it was at the time of Galileo. I believe it is the only way to comprehend and make sense of the reality that we experience every day.

BOOK ONE

Message to Young Adults who are Skeptical about God

Surveys conducted across broad swaths of young Americans over the past several years reveal insights about your generation that are both fascinating and disturbing. Generally speaking, you are brimming with self-confidence, hopeful about the future, and you want your lives to make a difference in the world you live in. However, you are also uncertain and confused. You are skeptical. You are frustrated. You are cynical. You are hurt. You are unfulfilled. You are impatient. You are disengaged. You are stressed.

Most of you believe in God but claim that you are not religious. Although only 6 percent of you identify yourselves as atheists and believe there is no God¹, another 26 percent of you claim to sometimes have doubts about the existence of God.² Most of the rest of you, including many who identify themselves as Christians, don’t know who or what to believe when it comes to creation, life, spirituality, science, religion, evolution, God, and immortality. Nearly two-thirds of you have concluded that religion is a waste of time, and if you set foot in a place of worship at all, it is to attend a traditional holiday service, a wedding, or a funeral.

When asked questions in surveys designed to understand this social phenomenon emerging among members of your generation, you have consistently answered that you find religious people, especially Christians, judgmental and hypocritical, and that you are too busy to pursue spirituality. Many of you have also become intellectually skeptical about the truth of Christianity.³ Research organizations like the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, LifeWay Research, Gallup, and Time magazine now say that 65-70 percent of Protestant teens are leaving the church after high school. Why? Most of you say that the religion of your childhood has become irrelevant to your lives and does not satisfy your spiritual needs.⁴

Between 2004 and 2006, the Barna Group, a leading research organization focused on understanding the dynamics at the intersection of faith and culture, conducted thousands of interviews of young adults to gain insights into your views on spirituality, faith, and Christianity. Your viewpoints were candidly presented in the book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters. Following are just a few insights gleaned from their findings.

Nearly nine out of ten of you (87 percent) said that the term judg-mental accurately describes present-day Christianity.⁵ A majority of you (57 percent) say Christians are quick to find fault with others.⁶ Three-quarters of you said that present-day Christianity could accurately be described as old-fashioned, and seven out of ten believe the faith is out of touch with reality. Most you say that Christianity is confusing. Two-thirds of you say that faith is boring.⁷

A majority of you believe that the spiritual world is too complex and mysterious for humans to understand, and that life itself is too complicated to really grasp.⁸ Only one-fifth of you believe that an active faith, as defined by the currently available versions of Christianity, helps people live a better, more fulfilling life. This means that eight out of every ten of you believe that the versions of Christianity currently available do little to help you find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in your life.⁹

Despite the importance of personal relationships to your generation and your real-time digital connectedness, nearly half of you say you are still trying to find a few good friends. One-eighth of you claim to be lonely. One fourth of your generation feels unfulfilled and has a sense of emptiness in their lives. Nearly half of you say you are stressed out, which is double the proportion of the Baby Boom generation of your parents.¹⁰ A distinct minority of you live with an inner desperation that leads toward personal destruction. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among those of you who are under the age of twenty-five. (In a 2005 study, one out of every six high school students claimed they had contemplated suicide during the last year, while one out of every twelve high school students said they had attempted suicide in the last year.¹¹)

In their book The Millennials, Thom and Jess Rainer reported the results of another extensive survey of young adults in America. In that survey, seventy five percent (75 percent) of you described yourself as spiritual, but not religious.¹² However, only 13 percent of you consider spirituality to be important in your lives. Most of you claim that you never think about religious matters at all.¹³

When asked to categorize your religious identity, 65 percent of you expressed a broadly Christian preference. Six percent of you claimed to be atheists, believing there is no God. Another 8 percent of you categorized yourselves as agnostics, claiming some doubt about the existence of God. 14 percent of you claimed no religious preference at all. Broadly speaking, three out of ten of you claim no religious identity. However, seven out of ten do have a cultural religious identity, with Christian being the over-whelming majority. Only 7 percent of you identified yourselves as Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, or pagan.¹⁴

Though most of you identify yourselves as cultural Christians, many of you have little esteem for the Christian values as you understand them, and you reject the Christian lifestyle because you feel rejected by Christians. You see Christians as arrogant, angry finger-pointers who believe they are better than you, who have extreme social and political agendas, who cannot live peacefully with anyone who does not believe exactly as they do, who are inwardly focused on their church and not outwardly focused on helping people in their communities, who are preoccupied with end times and hell, who are known more for criticizing the ills of society than trying to solve them, and who withdraw from society into Christian enclaves where they eat their own over doctrinal disagreement. You believe Christians are anti-science. You also believe they indulge in the depravities they condemn when no one is watching. These same Christians suggest that you attend wor-ship services at their church so you can be saved and become better people—like them.

Many of you attended church, Sunday school, vacation Bible school, and church summer camps when you were younger, and are familiar with the stories about and the teachings of Jesus. Though most of you see Jesus as a compelling figure, you have been turned off to Christianity for many reasons. You may have been spiritually wounded by words or actions of professing Christians that you believe were unwarranted, hurtful, overly critical, or even punitive. Many of you can identify with Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu political leader of India’s independence movement in the 1940’s, who kept a picture of Jesus hanging over his desk, and who told the British colonial leaders of India: I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Because of your perception that arrogant and judgmental Christians dominate individual churches today, most of you believe the church is one of the last places you should go if you are seeking God. You often see the church as an impediment to both spiritual growth and personal freedom, and as an institution that has become irrelevant. Through your generation’s eyes Christianity is viewed more as a consumer brand than as a way of life, and a bad brand at that. In the middle of a youth culture where Christianity has come to represent judgmentalism, anti-intellectualism, insensitivity, bigotry, and hypocrisy, most you want nothing to do with it, and those of you who have kept your faith and who disagree with these characterizations of Christianity are more often than not embarrassed to admit to your peers that you are a Christian.¹⁵

These surveys have revealed that, although you see Christianity as a bad brand, spirituality is still important to you, but not nearly as important as other aspects in leading a successful life. Fewer than one out of ten of you mention nurturing and sustaining faith as your top priority in life.¹⁶ Though marriage, parenthood, and other adulthood experiences have reawakened spirituality in some of you, the fact remains that a large percentage of you who are under the age of forty have put issues of spirituality and faith on the back burner of your lives, infrequently thinking about them, and rarely acting on them.

Many of the questions that do arise in your mind are not about Christianity, but about Christians. Why are some Christians so dogmatic and sanctimonious? Why do others come across as judgmental and hypocritical? Why do some seem to have split personalities—salty, selfish, and worldly during the week—then sweet, loving, and holy for a few hours on Sunday morning? Why do a few of them come across as certifiable loons and wackos?

Why do Christians seem to focus mostly on feel good issues while ignoring, and sometimes even mocking, the mind and the intellect? Why do some Christians call physics, chemistry, and biology atheistic lies? How is it that many church leaders do such a lousy job of teaching what it really means to be a Christian that most young adults who grew up in the church are unable to articulate what they believe when they graduate from high school?

In our society, which allows freedom of worship, why do certain minority segments of the faith movement have the arrogance to insist that their personal beliefs carry the same weight as the word of God? At the other end of the spectrum, why are most godless people so arrogant, angry, and condescending that they demand that all religious persons either renounce their faith or keep it locked in a basement closet so they don’t have to see it or hear about it? Why are both sides in this debate so intent on eliminating our cherished freedoms of worship and of speech from the public discourse of divergent ideas and beliefs?

Are there no answers to these questions? Is there no such thing as truth? If there is truth, must it be quarantined from society to prevent it from repressing people or from causing them to have personal anxieties? If there is no truth, what becomes the guiding light for our life, giving us direction, meaning, and purpose? Is it possible that the only universal truth of mankind is that we are born to endure physical and mental suffering, and then to die?

Observations and Definitions to Help Guide You through the Maze

In this book, we will wind our way through this maze of seeming imponderables. The purpose of this excursion is not to tell you what you should think. Rather, it is to make you think. By using your gift of reason, you will be able to reach your own conclusions.

The following observations and definitions will set the stage for the discussions that follow:

•Either God exists, or he doesn’t. These two options exhaust all possibilities for reality.

•The following realities emerged into the physical world either by natural or supernatural means (that is, they either just happened or they were caused by God):

○Physical universe

○Biological information

○Life

○Human consciousness

•Atheism is the belief that there is no God

•Theism is the belief in a God who created the universe and everything in it, and who continuously interacts with his creation

•Agnosticism is uncertainty or confusion about God. It is the inability or unwillingness to make an informed decision about the existence of God, not a belief system unto itself.

•Science explains the natural world by following the scientific method, a rigorous discipline of observing, hypothesizing, testing, measuring, replicating, and verifying data in order to explain how the physical universe functions. Things which cannot be observed, tested, or measured are beyond the reach of science. For example, science is unable to explain purpose or intent. Science generally answers the questions of What? and How? Subsets of science include:

○Biology : the study of plant and animal life. Other biological topics include:

○Microevolution: the study of genetic changes within a species, such as variations within dogs, moths, birds, or humans

○Macroevolution: the study of incremental genetic changes over immense periods of time that are postulated by many biologists to cause one species to evolve into another species

○Darwinism: the study of macroevolution, as proposed by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book, The Origin of Species

○neo-Darwinism : the modern synthesis of Darwinism with Mendelian genetics (Gregor Mendel discovered genetics in the mid – 1800’s)

○Biogenesis: a scientific law stating that life can only come from life. It cannot spontaneously generate from matter.

○Abiogenesis: a discipline that seeks to discover naturalistic mechanisms that can cause non-living matter to spontaneously generate life.

○DNA: a nucleic acid molecule that contains the genetic information and assembly instructions required for the development, functioning, and replication of life.

○RNA: a nucleic acid molecule that transports the genetic information from DNA to synthesize proteins necessary to sustain life.

○Chemistry : the study of the structure and properties of matter

○Physics : the study of matter and energy and their interactions in the fields of motion, sound, light, heat, electromagnetism, radiation, and nuclear structure

○Quantum Mechanics : a study of physics that interprets the behavior of subatomic particles and light, which do not obey the laws of traditional physics.

○Neuroscience: the study of the brain

○Psychology: the study of the mind

•Philosophy explains non-material entities which are beyond the reach of science, and cannot be subjected to the scientific method. Philosophy attempts to explain purpose and intent. Philosophy generally answers the question Why? Subsets of philosophy include:

○Scientific Naturalism: proclaims physical nature to be the only component of reality. All of nature is comprised of energy and matter and is self-originating. There is no God, soul, spirit, purpose, or meaning. If something cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted, or measured, it does not exist. All causes are purely natural, and can only be explained by science.

○Mind-Body Dualism : proclaims that reality is comprised of two distinct components—physical and spiritual. The physical is comprised of energy and matter; the spiritual is non-material and invisible in nature. The spiritual component is found in human consciousness, considered by adherents to be the realm of God. Consciousness consists of entities such as character, awareness, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, knowledge, reason, logic, desire, intent, wisdom, and willfulness. The physical realm is constrained by space and time. The spiritual realm is viewed as infinite and eternal.

○Determinism: stipulates that human decisions and psychological phenomena are predetermined by prior natural causes. It is sometimes called predestination .

•Chemical Determinism: a subset of Determinism which holds that free will is an illusion, and that all thoughts, intentions, and actions of a person were predetermined by chemical balances in the fertilized cell at their moment of conception.

○Emergence : holds that new patterns emerge in nature over time, and that they have a cause. The two basic schools of Emergence are:

•Weak Emergence : holds that causes of new patterns in nature are undirected, natural, bottom-up processes that self-assemble. Weak Emergence and Scientific Naturalism occupy the same space on the philosophical spectrum

•Strong Emergence : holds that causes of new patterns in nature are new agents or processes which have emerged in nature over time, and which require both top-down and bottom-up processes for assembly. All causes are presumed to be natural, but they do not exclude God. Strong Emergence lies between Scientific Naturalism and Mind-Body Dualism on the philosophical spectrum.

○Creation Science : is not a science, but a philosophy developed by the Creation Research Society and the Institution for Creation Research during the 1960’s as a counterbalance to the philosophies of Scientific Naturalism, undirected Darwinism, and atheism. Creation Science holds that the universe was created in six solar days approximately 6,500 years ago, and that all geological features on the earth are explainable by the Genesis Flood.

○Creationism : often confused with Creation Science , but is a completely different philosophy. Creationism is the view that God was the ultimate cause of the universe, life, and human consciousness. Those who believe in Creation Science are called fiat creationists ; those who believe God created the various life forms over billions of years are called progressive creationists ; and those who believe God guided a process of macroevolution to create the various life forms on earth over billions of years are called evolutionary creationists , or theistic evolutionists .

○Teleology: holds that original causes exist in nature, and that natural processes can be directed by these original causes to a definite end having an ultimate purpose. Original causes can be either natural or supernatural.

○Theology : is man’s disciplined approach to understand and explain purpose and intent as observed in nature, experienced in our consciousness, and revealed from books such as the Bible.

•Though many persons view the Bible as the written, inspired word of God, there are no written inspired instructions from God explaining how to interpret it.

Park these definitions in your mind for a little while. We will return to them during this book. First, we will take a quick look at the Information Age and the new worldviews that it is spawning.

Upheavals of the Information Age, and Their Impact on Your Life

You have the good fortune of being born at one of the best times in all of history. You live in the Information Age, a period like the Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, when human reason emerged as the primary source for legitimacy and authority in western societies. It was a period, beginning in Europe and crossing to America, when belief in science and rationality caused people to begin questioning traditional truths.

Emerging out of the Enlightenment were new ideas, knowledge, and values that radically altered the face of Europe. The Enlightenment also led directly to the American Revolution with its idealistic dream of a government of, by, and for the people. At the core of the Enlightenment was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, cultures, customs, and morals. Reason prevailed, and the old traditions that could not pass the muster of human reason were thrown onto the trash heap of history.

Today’s Information Age is not a repeat of the Enlightenment. It is something much more profound. If the Enlightenment was a simple flood, the Information Age is a destructive and transformative tsunami. The upheavals of the Information Age have caused ideas, cultures, and values to break, morph, intertwine, and merge across geographic and political boundaries at near warp speed. It is a window of time that has witnessed virtually all of mankind’s accumulated knowledge being made available to anyone with access to the internet and a modicum of curiosity. Mankind is currently developing new knowledge at unprecedented rates, perhaps faster than the collective minds of humanity can absorb it and put it to productive use.

This new knowledge, when absorbed and processed by creative human minds, has vast potential for achieving incredible accomplishments. These include curing diseases, raising third world cultures out of ignorance and poverty, feeding a hungry world, and developing renewable energy sources for all of humanity’s future needs. Since the Information Age has made the power of knowledge accessible to all who seek it, we are living through the cultural equivalent of a severe global earthquake and tsunami. Tectonic plate shifts across cultures and political boundaries are creating the opportunity for intellectual and economic equality for all of mankind for the first time in history. These changes are permanent. The cultures of mankind, from this time forward, will be impacted by the advent of the Information Age. We are truly living in a New World.

The Impact of Information Providers on Your Values and Beliefs

Misinformation and manufactured truth currently reigns supreme in virtually every communications medium available to you. The internet, smart phones, cable and satellite TV, and other real-time forms of communication make your experience of life radically different from that experienced by any other generation in history. Though most of you have maintained good relationships with your parents after entering adulthood, many of you have rejected the values they tried to teach you. Instead, you have embraced many of the values which agenda-driven media providers have planted into your mind. Your rejection of much of your parents’ teachings, coupled with your mastery of digital information gadgetry that your parents struggled to learn to use, perhaps makes you the first generation in human history ever to teach your parents more than they could teach you.

If you were born after the sex, drug, and rock ‘n roll cultural upheaval of the late 1960’s, your definition of truth, and the way you learned it, is radically different from truth as defined and understood by virtually all previous generations of humanity. Looking only at American history and culture over the last three hundred years, each generation of children learned truth as personal values instilled in them by their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, teachers, and members of their church—all of whom had personally known the children since birth, and who interacted with them daily.

It was a labor of love for each of these adults, investing their time to benefit the children, not themselves. The values they instilled in their children included such things as personal responsibility, hard work, self-reliance, thrift, helping others while expecting nothing in return, treating others as you would like to be treated, accepting disappointment as a part of life, toleration, decency, love of family, love of community, love of country, and love of God. These have come to be known as traditional values in America, but they are not nearly as universally subscribed to now as in previous generations.

Since the 1960’s, even if your parents tried to instill these traditional values in you, the alternative values promoted by the new Information Age culture have often prevailed. Even the most successful parents could claim only partial victory in passing their values on to their children. Your generation has been the target of more advertising, marketing, and media spin than any generation in history, including the boomer generation of your parents.

Truth is now imparted into you by advertising executives on Madison Avenue, script writers and celebrities in Hollywood, talking heads on twenty-four-hour TV, charismatic politicians, college professors, fashion moguls, songwriters, rock stars, search engine company executives, web-sites, e-mails, online chats, text messages, blogs, tweets, and YouTube. Most of you have been unaware of this silent shaping of your beliefs by the media moguls who now have twenty-four-hour access to your eyes, ears, and mind. Unless you have been living in a cave, these information purveyors have profoundly impacted your thinking. They have also given your generation a collective mind-set that is incredibly savvy, jaded, and uncertain—all at the same time.

The truth these outside sources have collectively led you to embrace is fairly universal and homogenized, and it generally makes a clean break with traditional values. Some of these modern values include:

•There are no ultimate truths.

•There is no right or wrong, no good or evil; all morality is situational and relative.

•Religious truths were created by man to repress broad swaths of humanity.

•All beliefs of all people are equally valid in all situations.

•Personal views drive reason. It is not objective.

•No one is responsible for their own actions. The real causes of bad behavior are faulty genes and chemical imbalances in body cells.

•Government is more competent, just, and compassionate than the power of God working through the hearts of mankind. You can trust the government to take care of you.

•Science explains everything.

•Families headed by a father and a mother are primitive institutions.

•Religion, especially Christianity, is irrelevant both to society and to individual lives.

•The Bible is archaic; Jesus was just a teacher; and the kingdom of God is a myth.

•We are purposeless, meaningless, random flukes of undirected evolution.

These values and truths, which have been accepted in whole or in part by many young Americans, have been imparted into you by anonymous information purveyors. They, more than your parents, implanted many of the values you now accept as true. You have been largely unaware of this quiet manipulation, but your use as a pawn in a greater game of cultural chess has been by the intention and design of others with ambitious agendas.

The information and knowledge they have planted in your mind has been manufactured with considerable forethought to provide benefits to them both now and in the future. Much of it is reasonably harmless, to entice you to buy products and services, or to otherwise convince you to remove money from your pocket and put it into theirs. However, some of it is much more menacing, and sometimes even diabolical.

For example, the ease with which these information purveyors have been able to manipulate and deceive many members of your generation can be seen from the simple observation that many of you accept the validity of the statement, ‘There are no ultimate truths.’ This statement of fact is nothing but a cleverly repackaged version of the Liar’s Paradox that is familiar to most persons who have studied higher mathematics and logic. This paradox is found by analyzing the statement I am telling you a lie. If the person making this statement is indeed lying, then he is telling the truth. If, on the other hand, he is telling the truth, then he is lying. Either way, the statement is self-refuting, and therefore nonsensical and meaningless.

In the same way, if we assume the truth of the statement there are no ultimate truths, then the statement proclaiming this truth is false. Just like the Liar’s Paradox, it refutes itself and is therefore nonsensical and meaningless. Yet many of you still blindly accept it as true. You then use this nonsensical belief as the basis from which you doggedly argue that it is impossible for any moral teachings to be true.

Such are the tactics used by well - funded and focused ideologues with anonymous faces and ominous plans. They are scheming to bring about a radically different kind of society and culture than we have today. They prefer to operate in the shadows as invisible chisels that continuously sculpt your philosophical worldview. Their key objective is to get you to reject the notion of certainty because an uncertain person in the hands of a skillful manipulator is like a block of granite in the hands of a master sculptor.

Your Philosophical Worldview and How It Defines Your Reality

Your philosophical worldview is the lens or the eyeglasses that you look through to define your reality. During your life, you have formed beliefs about facts and observations of nature as well as beliefs about values. One set of beliefs is about what you can physically sense (things you can see, smell, hear, touch, taste), and the other is about what you consciously think (including ideas about purpose, meaning, intent, and morality).

While these two types of beliefs are different, they effectively interweave and act as a tapestry of truth inside your philosophical worldview. Information from outside sources filters through this tapestry of truth before reaching your mind. Once filtered, this information assists you in making decisions about how you should think about an idea or how you should behave in a given situation. This activity takes place in a conscious mental state and is your process of reasoning.

Exactly what constitutes truth? Libraries could be filled with books purporting to answer this question, but we will keep it a lot simpler than that. Truth, in its simplest construction, is that which explains to our conscious minds both what we see and why we see it. Thus, truth is more than an observation of reality. It also has the power to explain that reality. In an age of overwhelming information, you are constantly being bombarded from all sides by radically divergent claims and assertions of truth, many of which are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. How do you know which ones to believe, which to reject, and which to invest more time in understanding? This is where your philosophical worldview engages on your behalf, and your reasoning process takes over.

Your worldview is a framework that exists within your consciousness. It is constructed with beliefs that have developed during your life. It interprets and explains to your mind the world you live in, both seen and unseen, and how all things in your reality relate to each other. It is your worldview which filters all the claims and assertions coming from the outside world and determines for you which are true and which are false.

All of us have this worldview framework built around our minds, though many of us are unaware of it, and would be unable to describe it if asked to do so. Your framework of beliefs is as unique to you as your genetic makeup. Your worldview provides a framework for your thought processes, interprets and explains your observations of nature and the facts of science, creates a harmony between things seen and unseen, establishes a resonance between reason and faith, controls your behavior, prioritizes your time, and guides your life.

A critical difference between the worldview of a person of faith and the worldview of a scientific naturalist is in the interpretation of non-material entities such as thoughts, information, intent, meaning, and purpose. Persons of faith believe them to be real entities that exist in their consciousness, and which are spiritual in nature. Since they cannot be observed, tested, or measured, they are beyond the reach of science and are therefore categorized as philosophy or metaphysics