Here's the essay I wrote for worldview class. It's not the best one I've ever written because I stayed up till 12:30 the night before it was due and then typed it up and polished it the morning it was due.

Christian theism was the major worldview and moral compass of Western Society for the majority of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, over the past 100 years the Judeo-Christian way of looking at life has experienced a decline which has drastically accelerated over the last 50 years. Generally, it has been replaced by various forms of naturalism and the descendents of naturalism—nihilism and existentialism. Here we will examine deism (which is the brief, transitional philophsy between Christian theism and naturalism), naturalism, nihilism, and existentialism with the generalist of overviews and in comparison of the Biblical worldview.

Deism is the prideful sin of a Christian Theist seeking autonomy from his Creator. A deist has a strong belief in his own ability to reason. So strong, in fact, that he no longer feels the need for God to directly tell him anything, which is sometimes called special revelation. The deist is confident that he can figure it all out through the study of God’s creation with his own intelligence. As the deist studies the physical universe, he notices that it’s governed by laws. He decides that just as God has not done any special revelations or interventions in mankind, God does not insert Himself into the physical realm either. The deist deduces that the universe is a great, cosmic machine. The deist puts two-and-two together and concludes that the Creator fulfilled His work quota by creating and starting this machine, and has left a polite message directing enquiring mankind to the Logic and Reason Department and/or to the Science Department.

Most deists are quite happy at this conclusion. The have no problem of origins to solve; they also have no fear of death because that will just send them to whatever retirement community God went to. They adhere to Biblical ethics under the title of ‘Natural Law Written Down’ rather than ‘God’s Law Written Down for Man’. They believe that mankind is important, despite being part of a machine, because we alone reason, which is attributed to being created in God’s image. Deists happily assume that the machine of God’s creation has been happily clicking along, as it is now, since the beginning and will continue doing so for infinity or until God gets back, which is a doubtful possibility.

However, the deist bubble is quickly popped with the next natural disaster or human crime. If the universe is a machine which God created and started on its endless chain of reactions and products, why did He program such things as floods and greed into His creation? If God is a twisted and evil being who made tragedy on purpose why do we have good things, like beauty and love? The inconsistencies caused by dismissing the Biblical fall of man and the battle between good and evil, personified in Christ and Satan, are a constant puzzle and torture to deists.

Deism leads very quickly to naturalism. In deism God is inactive past creation. Naturalism gives the job of creation to chance and declares that there is no god(s) or spiritual dimension. All there is is uniform matter. The implications of this are that everything is meaningless. There is nothing special or significant about humanity, which denies history any significance either. There is no afterlife; the matter that was you will only change forms by decomposing. There is nothing bigger than matter which can transcend it and see an absolute standard; therefore there is no way to know right from wrong or even to know at all.

Because of this, naturalism as a way of life requires selective reasoning, which most naturalists happily and obliviously employ. The naturalist says that God is dead and everything is permissible; yet he shoots an intruder into his home and prays when he is in the foxhole. The naturalist is absolutely sure there are no absolutes.

The naturalists that do see these inconsistencies become nihilists. Nihilism might be said to be the Negative Philosophy. This sad person has rejected any form of god(s) and refuses the easy, but illogical, escape of naturalism. He defies goodness, knowledge, beauty and their opposites and declares none of them to be real. To him, everything is nothing and adds up to nil.

No matter how you look at nihilism, it can’t be sustained for long. It is a contradiction by definition. In order to defy everything you must admit that everything is there, which is the very thing you say is false. In order to declare everyone to know nothing you must have some way of knowing that. Nihilism is a one word oxymoron.

Existentialism is the reasonable atheist’s only way out of nihilism, barring suicide. It is the last charge of the Eorlings out of Helm’s Deep but with no Gandalf or huorons to save them. They see no reason to die nobly in a worthy, yet hopeless, battle, but they find comfort in at least fighting. There is no benefit to dying in battle, rather than dying while cowering in a hole, except the value you find in trying to stop the unstoppable. The existentialist finds meaning in the act of facing the meaningless world and declaring himself to have meaning--before he’s crushed by the final nothingness of death.

Mankind is always attempting to get away from God. Individually and collectively, humans keep trying to climb away from our Creator on ropes of illogical uniform matter or contradictory defiance that we create; but anything one can make is not strong to hold one’s self. Eventually, we will all reach the end of our rope to find out that we haven’t got away from God at all. As the atheist hangs over the pit of hell with death approaching, at the end of his frail rope he sees that God has followed him. Jesus holds out His hands for him to grasp. The atheist has some choices now. He can defy God and leap into hell. He can hang tightly to his self-made rope, shut his eyes tight, and say that there is no God or hell and hope his rope holds. Or, he can throw himself upon the Savior.