This paper compares four major worldviews—the Biblical worldview, naturalism, existentialism, and pantheism—by evaluating each for internal consistency and susceptibility to change over time. Drawing on Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigm shifts, Thomas Flynn's account of existentialism, and Peter Harrison's work on pantheism, the paper argues that the more physically grounded a worldview is, the more vulnerable it is to disproof and revision. Conversely, metaphysical worldviews achieve a kind of consistency but remain subject to interpretive variation across cultures and historical epochs. The paper concludes by noting how moral and ethical concerns tend to feature more prominently in spiritual worldviews than in purely naturalistic ones.
The Biblical worldview differs from other worldviews in that it is metaphysical — meaning it is immune from scientific investigation and, not being reducible to scientific or physical factors, cannot be evaluated and tested in the laboratory. In this way, it possesses a certain consistency, since its adherents need only open the Bible, read the words, and apply them to their situation, taking the text as given. Its consistency is moreover not only universal but also inter-generational: unlike science, which is a subject that changes and undergoes paradigmatic change (Kuhn, 1962), the Bible possesses an authority that outlasts any particular age.
Paradigmatic changes, according to Kuhn, are particular to the world of science or naturalism. They occur because sufficient evidence accumulates on a given subject to overthrow many of its assumptions and perplex scholars. We are each born within a certain weltanschauung — a worldview — in which we grow up believing certain things and find it difficult to dismiss those acculturations. The teachings of the Bible are an example of this: each community, society, or religious school may learn the Bible's teachings in a particular way and find it difficult to shift that understanding.
Science, or naturalism, is premised on physical evidence. When that physical evidence is disturbed, the scientific community is thrown into a state of crisis during which new ideas are tested. Scientific revolutions or paradigm shifts occur, and the students of the new scientific discipline again become entrenched in a consolidated way of thinking — one that is shaken only when further disrupting information appears. The Bible, however, being resilient to scientific attempts to prove or disprove it, theoretically escapes these paradigm shifts and thereby obtains a certain consistency.
On the other hand, we are each shaped by our own experiences and read texts through a particular interpretive lens, imbuing them with certain meanings. Authors write texts during a specific period and invest them with meanings that, when read by someone at a far later time, may be entirely misunderstood because the reader is interpreting the work within his or her own experiential and temporal context. In this way, the Bible's account of Genesis, for instance, may have meant something quite different when the narrative was originally authored. Each succeeding generation imbues it with its own meaning depending on locality and historical epoch. Their attempts to apply the Bible to their own existence and their particular comprehension ipso facto differ. In this way, the Bible also lacks a certain consistency.
As Thomas Kuhn argued in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), communities of thought — whether scientific or religious — tend to resist change until the accumulated weight of anomalies makes the old framework untenable. Biblical interpretation is not wholly immune to this dynamic; while the text itself does not change, the frameworks through which communities read and apply it shift considerably across time and place.
"Existentialist consistency undermined by historical and political shifts"
"Pantheism's ancient unity versus its contested definitions"
In short, all four ideologies — Biblical, naturalism, existentialism, and pantheism — possess consistencies and inconsistencies depending on the degree of their physicality and metaphysical character. Apparently, the more physical or natural a worldview's substance, the more open it is to disproof and the more likely it is to change over time. On the other hand, differences of age and geography also cause differences in interpretation and, therefore, inconsistency, even in worldviews that are otherwise resistant to scientific challenge.
You’re 51% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 2 sections.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.