02.04. Presuppositions and Worldviews
Presuppositions and Worldviews The first thing that we should do is eliminate all the wrong worldviews and presuppositions that go along with them. The laws of logic demand that only one worldview can be true since mutually exclusive views cannot be true. This is a brief list with a short description of each item. A list of resources is provided in the Bibliography for further study.
Atheism. There is no way to prove that God does not exist. Science requires that there be a “supernatural” creator.
Deism. There is no way to prove this. You would have to be God in order to know that God just created the universe and then left it.
Agnosticism. There is no way to know that you cannot know truth or that truth is not knowable. This is a self-defeating philosophy since by affirming that you cannot know truth or that truth is not knowable, you are in fact making a truth claim.
Polytheism. Any religion that proclaims multiple gods is false since the gods would all lack something that the others have and therefore not be truly God. In order to truly be God, God needs to be totally complete and be of a consistent character.
Pantheism. The belief that everything is a part of god does not work either. For example, people are different, with very different views. If they were all part of the same organism, then the views would be consistent. No one could proclaim anything to be true, since there are so many different views among people. Since we are finite beings, how can we be infinite at the same time? With this view there would be no such thing as stealing, since, if everything is a part of god, then it all belongs to everyone anyways. How do you kill a part of god? There is no such thing as relative truth since even stating that as a truth, violates its own statement.
Non-personal gods. As we have already stated, in order to know truth, you have to know past, present and future. Aside from this, a god would have to be a personal god in order to communicate to people. Without this communicating ability and actually communicating to people, we could never know anything. A non-personal god cannot communicate anything including truth, history, future or a worldview philosophy.
I have my truth; you have your truth. This is also a self-defeating view. If you have contradictory or mutually exclusive beliefs, then they both cannot be true. They can both be false, but not true. This is similar to saying that we should “tolerate” or “accept” all the different views. This is self-defeating in that accepting all views, you accept views that exclude your own view. They cannot both be true at the same time. In order to be able to intelligently discuss any of these ideas, we need to accept and use the laws of logic or the discussions become totally meaningless.
Science holds all truth. The Concise Oxford English defines “science” this way
1 the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
2a systematically organized body of knowledge on any subject. Of note here is that science studies the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. You cannot directly observe and experiment with the past or the future. You also never know if there will be something that does not fit the present hypothesis. The history of science shows this as theories from the past have been either rejected or modified. No one can ever know if we have discovered all relevant information. By its nature, science can never determine absolute truth, it can only provide low or high probabilities on any subject related to the natural universe. By this definition, the systematic and organized study of Scripture would also qualify as science.
Big Bang and Evolution. This is also rejected because of logic, reason and science.
This universe had a beginning and is running down in energy. Science does not allow for everything from nothing.
Life does not come from non-life.
Information does not come from non-information.
The fossil record demonstrates that complex life forms are in the “lowest” layers and appear fully formed. There is no evidence of the numerous transitional forms that would be required
If everything is just random, then you could never know anything or be able to assume that there are consistent patterns, yet “science” assumes and demands this uniformitarianism.
There would be no such thing as truth, right or wrong. No one would be able to assert anything at all since everything is just a random chemical process.
Judaism. While Judaism accepts the Old Testament, they also have other writings that they hold to. Jesus referred to this
Aside from this, the main issue is that the Hebrew text foretold the coming of the Messiah with many prophecies that were fulfilled in the coming of Jesus, they reject Jesus as the Messiah.
Islam. While Islam “accepts” the five books of Moses, the Psalms of David and the Gospels, they say that they are corrupted. There is no evidence to this effect. Consider that Muhammed came on the scene around 600 BC. Since he accepted these books at that time and we have texts that predate him, it is obvious that the texts that we have are not corrupted. While the Old Testament prophets and Jesus performed miracles to attest that they were proclaiming the Word of God, Muhammad did not perform miracles. Islam rejects the crucifixion of Jesus and His resurrection among other things.
After eliminating all of these proposed possibilities, the only viable candidate for a correct worldview is Christianity. It is the only worldview in which there is a cohesive, logical explanation for all that is and is the only one which has a viable way of knowing. God attested to His Word through the miracles that He performed, especially during the Exodus and the life and ministry of Jesus. The textual, archaeological and scientific evidence affirm the truth of the Scriptures.