Introduction

Last month’s blog provided a general overview of James Sire’s works. One of the works highlighted in that overview is the one for which Sire is probably most remembered by Christians who follow his writings, The Universe Next Door. The subtitle of that book by Sire is A Basic Worldview Catalog. Sire delineates what he designates as nine worldviews, exploring how each worldview answers what he calls eight prime questions. As stated in last month’s blog, Sire’s The Universe Next Door went through six revisions, 2020 being the latest and last revision. He had originally delineated seven prime questions, and then added the eighth in the 2020 updated version of his book. The eight prime questions that each worldview seeks to answer are: 1) What is the prime reality or really real? 2) What is the nature of external reality (that is the world around us)? 3) What is a human being? 4) What happens to a person after death? 5) Why is it possible to know anything at all? 6) How do we know what is right and wrong? 7) What is the meaning of human history? 8) What personal life-orienting personal commitments are consistent with this worldview? There are many worldviews that challenge the worldview of what Sire calls Theism, and thereby Christianity, but one major worldview battle that Christians face emerges from the philosophy of Naturalism. That will be the focus of this month’s blog discussion.

Although those who have been given the epithet the New Atheists, (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens,) claim that their position is based on science, naturalism, nonetheless is a worldview. The battle between naturalism and Christianity is not between religion and science, but between two conflicting worldviews. To get a solid understanding of this worldview conflict, a good work to read and study is John Lennox’s God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God. Lennox presents a thorough study of how these worldviews are indeed in conflict, and how the conflict between them historically came about. I hope to explore Lennox’s work sometime in the future on this blog.

The World View: Naturalism

What is the Prime Reality or Really Real?

Any worldview will seek to answer the question regarding the nature of existence. In naturalism, the nature of the cosmos is considered to be primary. Since there is no creator God, the natural realm becomes eternal, but not necessarily in its present form. Sire quotes Carl Sagan’s claim regarding the cosmos: The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Although naturalists can agree and disagree as to the form of matter having always been the same, where they agree is that there is no spiritual or transcendent force that gave rise to the cosmos, nor did anything spiritual or transcendent emerge from matter or the cosmos. Sire states regarding this worldview: In short matter is all there is. Ours is a natural cosmos.

What is the nature of external reality?

The cosmos exists as a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system. There was a time when naturalists or materialists held that the world was similar to that held by deists, the view of the world a machine, analogous to what is called a clockwork mechanism. However, modern scientists rightfully see the universe as more complex than a simple machine. Nonetheless, from their perspective, the cosmos is a closed system. What this entails is the view that the cosmos is not open to any kind of alteration or reordering from the outside by a transcendent creator (because no such Being exists), or by self-transcendent or autonomous beings. Sire points out that the naturalist worldview aligns with the Humanist Manifesto II (1973) that straightforwardly denies the existence of a creator and the miraculous. Naturalism is a pervasive worldview. The question emerges: In a naturalistic closed system, can one logically believe in free will and the ethics of right and wrong/morality and immorality?

What Is a Human Being?

From a consistent naturalistic worldview, human beings are viewed as complex machines. Human personality is the the epiphenomenon of chemical and physical properties of which we lack full understanding. The experience of consciousness and mind tends to challenge this idea, even from the perspective of some naturalists. However, to be consistent, the majority of naturalists see the mind as a function of machine. The human being is seen as a machine. Hence, according to naturalism, the self and soul are jettisoned, at least from a the perspective that such a notion describes the essence of being human. As human beings, we are part of the cosmos, which contains one reality: matter. Such reductionism can be over-simplified. Naturalists, such as Ernest Nagel point out the complexity of being human. . . . a mature naturalism attempts to assess man’s nature in light of his actions and achievements, his aspirations and capacities, his limitations and tragic failures, and his splendid works of ingenuity and imagination (Sire quoting Ernest Nagel). This brings up the thorny question again of free will and determinism. While some naturalists are strict determinists, others see a place for what they consider limited or restricted freedom.

What Happens to a Person at Death?

For the naturalist, death means the extinguishing of individuality and personality. Since human beings are made of nothing but matter, this position is the logical conclusion of naturalism’s view of the human being. Again, the Humanist Manifesto II states straightforwardly that the personality is a biological entity that functions in a social and cultural context. According to the Manifesto, there is no evidence that the personality survives death. The natural body is the sum of what human beings are.

Why Is It Possible to Know Anything at All?

This question gets at what philosophy designates as epistemology. How do we come to know things? What degree of certainty can we possess regarding our knowledge of things? The naturalists point to autonomous human reason granting our ability to know and understand to a limited degree the universe in which we are situated. This autonomous human reason they equate with the methods of science. It is this understanding of the mind and its operation that leads naturalists to pit science against religion. Those who hold to a theistic and Judeo- Christian worldview are labeled as anti-science. From the standpoint of naturalism, reason developed over a long period of time via the mechanism of natural evolution. The human being’s ability to reason is simply an innate ability that came about for humans via the mechanism of natural selection. Human knowledge then is the product of natural human reason and its perceived ability to grasp the truth of being in the world. The question that emerges is can we really know the world accurately? Many naturalists today would claim that language allows us to live successfully or unsuccessfully in the world. Hence, they turn to pragmatism as a philosophical approach to living. However, they hold that it is highly dubitable that we can know truth as truth about the world. More modern and poststructural positions see science in a different light from those who lived during the Enlightenment. However, consistent naturalists ground human reason in human nature – a product of nature – itself.

How Do We Know What Is Right and Wrong

A thorough worldview will take a stand on ethics, morality versus immorality. From the standpoint of naturalism, however, ethics did not play a major role in its historical development. Metaphysical notions gave rise as a logical extension of the a priori notions naturalists held regarding the external world. For quite sometime, naturalists held, for the most part, to ethics of their surrounding culture. The Humanist Manifesto II contain ethical norms similar to traditional morality with exceptions. However, the longer the existence of God is jettisoned as a legitimate belief, the wider the disagreements will become between a theistic and naturalist worldview. We are seeing that play out in the militancy by which the New Atheists attack Christianity. For the naturalist, ethics is autonomist and situational. Life has meaning, according to naturalism, because human beings themselves create such meaning. Hence, we are witnessing a split between what naturalists, especially those designated as the New Atheists, call science and the humanities. Postmodernism has brought its effect on science. However, many of the postmodern persuasion question whether science can offer human beings any accuracy regarding the world. The question that ethics gives rise to is: how do human beings derive an ought from what is?

What Is the Meaning of History?

From the standpoint of naturalism, if there is no Creator nor any transcendent meaning to existence, then history is simply linear with no overarching purpose. Human history is swallowed up by natural history. Human beings are merely along for the ride wherever natural history takes them. Since the goal of evolution was not focused on the emergence of human beings, there is nothing special and meaningful about human existence. Human beings appear on the naturalistic scene, and as self-aware creatures can make meaning of their existence, but the history they make has no inherent worth, nor is there an overarching goal to history. History will last as long as human beings last. When they go, then history will go.

What Personal Life-Orienting Core Commitments Are Consistent with Naturalism?

Naturalism itself implies no particular core commitment. Like ethics, commitments are chosen unwittingly, autonomously, and situationally. The naturalist claims that each individual is free to choose his or her core commitment. This raises the knotty question once again regarding the possibility of human freedom in a naturalistic system. Naturalism in practice is worked out in various forms of humanism. Humanism as a whole holds that human beings have dignity and value simply because they exist. One form of humanism is called secular humanism. This form of humanism is framed within a naturalist worldview. Such humanists would fall comfortably in responses to questions 1 through 6 above.

The second form of humanism is Marxism. Marxism and naturalism share certain assumptions, but Marx’s materialism was historical and dialectical, placing an emphasis on the economic factors of life as the primary determinants of history. Hence, history for Marx has meaning, and that meaning is found in class struggle. The goal of history is the new socialist individual, who will be less individualistic, working for the good of others. Marx likewise rejects any moral values as a basis for human motivation. Human beings create themselves through their work, and their work should be for the good of others. The sticky question that emerges with any worldview similar to Marx’s is can human beings really become good if they have the right environment? And then, what is the right environment? Marxism, like any form of naturalism, does not provide people with meaning and purpose. They are simply caught up in the dialectic of history that somehow will lead to Shangri-La.

Conclusion

The raging battle between worldviews of naturalism and theism is not a battle between religion and science, as individuals like the New Atheists would have everyone believe. Instead, the war is between two worldviews. Naturalism, as a worldview, posits no creator, no meaning in history, and that what people attain in this life perishes with them when they die. As a form of humanism, it provides no purpose and meaning for human beings. The church, however, has a challenge before it that has been with it since the Advent of Christ. What are we witnessing, as Christians to the world, what we and life in Christ are to be about? The history of the church has witnessed horrible persecutions of one another, the ugliness of religious wars, and petty divisiveness that has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the faith. If we are to be the light and beacon on a hill that the church is called to be, then we must understand our calling in Christ, living out our worldview, which is diametrically opposed to the worldview of naturalism.

[References

Lennox, J. (2009). God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Oxford, UK: Lion Hudson plc.

Sire, J. (1976). The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. (Originally published in 1976, Sire’s The Universe Next Door underwent six editions over the years, each building on the previous edition (1976, 1988, 1997, 2004, 2009, 2020).]

John V. Jones, Jr., Ph.D./December 14th, 2025

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT/Worldview