Meaning has been lost in our culture today. This loss of meaning was brought forth by the loss of truth. Freidrich Neitszche is the father of nihilism, the philosophy which declares all things as meaningless. Many people today have difficulty finding meaning in their lives, and whether they know it or not, it is because they are slowly following down a dry and lonely path that leads to nihilism. The dominant perspective on truth in the western world today is one of relativism. By declaring truth relative, one essentially declares truth as nonexistent. This is how Nietszche understood the world, and he was dedicated enough to the pursuit of his philosophy to follow it wherever it led; in the end of his life, it led to insanity. He lost the will to live, because he knew that his life could hold no meaning. This should be a frightening example of where the erosion of truth can lead. Without truth there is no meaning, and without meaning there is no purpose.

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Does our study of the universe point to a creator? The Cosmological argument answers that modern astronomy, which posits the Big Bang Theory as the explanation of the beginning of the universe, does indeed point to a creator. Astrophysics at the highest level has long since accepted that the universe is expanding, and this expansion points to an initial time at which the universe began. The cosmological argument takes this information and applies it to classical philosophical arguments dating back to Plato. The history of this argument and the ways it has changed throughout the history of philosophy will aid in understanding its importance today.

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Of the four classical arguments for the existence of God, the ontological argument is the most questioned and least understood. Ontology is the study of the nature of being, or existence. According to definition, the ontological argument is an argument for God’s existence based upon the nature of his existence. Within the bounds of the ontological argument, in order to understand the nature of God’s existence, you must simply define your concept of God.

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Perhaps the most basic issue that should be settled before your exploration of the Veritas internet resource is recognition of your personal worldview. In order to understand this fundamental idea, we will work through the definition of worldview and end with the practical application of this knowledge in your everyday life.

Worldview. If you have not had any formal training in philosophy this word probably means nothing to you, but let me assure you that you have spent the majority of your life working, building, and refining a worldview that is one hundred percent unique to you. Put simply, a worldview is quite literally the filter through which someone interprets, defines, and engages with the world around them. Your worldview assists you in making every decision throughout your day. From flippant thoughts, the ones passed over and forgotten in a second, to the ultimate questions, such as “who am I” and “why am I here,” you operate every moment within this epistemic framework. Let me be clear, this is not an elaborate system of personal philosophy. This is the fundamental result of our experiences during the formative years in our lives, yet most people will live out their life never thinking twice about the reasons behind their presuppositions. James Sire, in his book The Universe Next Door, provides a more explanative, albeit lengthy, definition of this concept.

            A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.

We can work through his definition one point at a time to get a full perspective of the nature of a worldview. As a commitment, we would consider the fact that our worldview has an inescapable depth and dimension to it that goes far beyond our making a rational decision. As Christians, we would hold that our most fundamental belief about God is that he exists. If someone asked you to provide an argument for that, most professed believers could not do so, but it does not change the fact that within their heart, they know or presuppose that He exists. The same is true of the naturalists explaining that God does not exist. They developed a separate worldview, many points of which cannot be expressed or proven, but, nonetheless, it remains fundamental to the way they live their lives.

This brings us to the fact that our worldview can be expressed through propositions. A single proposition does not encompass it, but a group of propositions can be used to form a story that expresses our worldview. For an atheistic naturalist, the story would follow Darwinian evolution pushed by survival of the fittest, or natural selection. For the Christian, our worldview can be expressed by the story of creation, the fall, and the redemptive work of Christ. 

These propositions which we use to express our worldview may be true, consistent, or conscious. They could also be false, inconsistent, or subconscious. If my proposition is that God exists, someone else could just as easily propose that he does not exist. One of those propositions is true, but the veracity or fallaciousness of the proposition does not need to be known in order for it to be incorporated into someone’s worldview. People are frequently inconsistent in their worldview. For example, the naturalistic worldview holds that humans are simply the next animal in the long line of creatures left in the wake of natural selection, but naturalists would also say that humanity has a certain dignity above that of other animals. These people are not acting within the framework of their espoused worldview, which brings us to the final point.

Our worldview is best evidenced by the way that we live, not the words that we say. We could claim any worldview as our own, but in truth, it is something that is so profoundly engrained in our subconscious that we may not even know our own worldview without serious analysis of the way we live our lives.

This brings us to the most crucial aspect of the way that worldview interacts with our daily lives. David Naugle wrote a book entitled Worldview: A History of a Concept. David Naugle rightly claims that “the formation of a Christian worldview among other worldviews is a primary function of grace and redemption in Christ: salvation has fundamentally to do with the transformation and rectification of one’s worldview.” The redemptive work of Christ does not just capture the heart of a believer; it radically reorients the way that a person interprets, defines, and engages the world around them.

With the close of the 18^th Century, we began to see a new form of philosophy begin to shape.  Scientific questions were then a form of the current metaphysical branch of philosophy, known as natural philosophy, which sought answers through empirical knowledge (epistemology).  With the development of modern science and the birth of the scientific method, natural philosophy simply became an empirical and experimental activity, unlike the rest of philosophy.  The birth of the scientific method therefore separated metaphysics from natural philosophy, and metaphysics became a sole philosophical enquiry into the non-empirical and non-experimental questions of life and the nature of existence.  As the scientific method has evolved, it has become the popular belief that metaphysics and the scientific method can no longer co-exist together to be reliable.  Herbert Fiegl contended in the 1954 Journal of Philosophical Studies that there are “no philosophical postulates of science.”  He continues to say that the “scientific method can be explicated and justified without metaphysical presuppositions about the order or structure of nature.”[1]   

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