Does it make sense to say that a world view is true?

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

So I hear many people ask question or making claims of the sort "christianity is true" or "what is your evidence for the truth of atheism?", which to me sounds completely wrong and comprehensible. Don't get me wrong, I understand perfectly well what do you mean when you state "christianity is true", I don't need anyone to explain it to mean what people mean when they say that, my issue is either or not the sentence is correctly formed.

So onwards with my objection.
When I hear the phrase "christianity is true" I mentally deconstruct it into "christianity" (what is being affected) and "is true" (how is it being affected), and during the process I try to pinpoint what those things reference. I.e. What is "christianity"? and What is "is true"?
Well "christianity" is a specific belief system regarding the divine nature of the figure of Christ. And true we all understand what that means so I will skip it.
So when I put back the phrase with its meaning, this is sort of how it sounds like in my head:
"The specific belief system regarding the divine nature of Christ is true"
But now what exactly do you mean? The "specific belief system regarding the divine nature of Christ" does exist and it doesn't make sense to ask if it is true or false, however the specific statements that are believed may or may not be true. Even tough what we mean is the later what it sounds like is the former.

On my previous conversation, Darkprophet232 stated:

I were to say "Evolution is true," you would instantly know that I am saying that the theory and fact of evolution are evidenced and demonstrable.

Which I don't think that there is a good comparison, because the word evolution when used in discussion generally has more than one meaning.
The first form of Evolution meaning the statement that "the variety of life forms on earth is caused by changes in hereditary traits on populations of organisms".
The second form of Evolution, generally referred to the "Theory of Evolution" means the "collection of knowledge and theoretical/abstract concepts related to the study of the variety of life forms on earth caused by changes in hereditary traits on populations of organisms".
While I don't see an issue in asking "Is evolution true?" in the first sense (i.e. "Is the variety of life forms on earth caused by changes in hereditary traits on populations of organisms true?")
But I take issue when you ask "Is Evolution true?" in the second sense (or "Is the theory of Evolution true?"), because I perceive it to be malformed. (i.e. "Is the collection of knowledge and theoretical/abstract concepts related to the study of the variety of life forms on earth caused by changes in hereditary traits on populations of organisms true?")

So I hope my initial issue with it is made more clear.

It maybe nitpicking because in the end of the day I understand what you mean, but I'm afraid that when trying to openly discuss this topic and that when this sort of malformed questions are made, people (generally creationist) don't realize that this things are not a specific statement but rather a collection of things that sort of misses the point what exactly you want to know.

 

[forgotten observer]

How do you define "Worldview" ? If you mean a set of base assumptions then a "World-view" Can't be true as much as it can be productive. If I say I have a scientific worldview, this means I May have assumptions such as there is a physical world, It can be examined, it has known properties that are unchanging and this allows it to be predicted, and this can produce practical applications. The scientific worldview has produced practically anything of any value at all, and this is probably why it is the most productive worldview. Meanwhile a religious may start with the base assumption that god exists, this however only clouds judgement and forces all of reality to conform to it, Which doesn't produce anything of any worth and as a result is as unproductive as possible. Do you agree? Also I kind of struggled to understand some of what you said I apologise if this doesn't answer the question.

 

[Vivre]

Thanks for the topic,
'cos I too stumbled across this "Christianity is true" for being a nonsense statement. But I also took into account that it might already be a kind of commonly used idiom with a specific [or rather vage on purpose?] meaning which I could try to assume by the wider context.

To me Christianity is a collective group of people, current and pre-existent, following a specific leader and his e.g. rules. The above statement might fit as answer to a question in a quiz show.

But maybe 'true' is meant to imply its sophisticated meaning like truthful, veritable or authentic. Then I could conclude the statement wants to express that anything coming (emerges) from this group (script/talk/action/belief-system) can't be a lie or based on one. If so, then it's wrong nonetheless.


Does it make sense to say that a world view is true?

No.
Not without interpretation. (or regarding idiosyncrasy)
Yes, depending who is addressed. (as e.g. means of propaganda)
Yes for sure, if it's mine ;-)

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Meanwhile a religious may start with the base assumption that god exists, this however only clouds judgement and forces all of reality to conform to it, Which doesn't produce anything of any worth and as a result is as unproductive as possible. Do you agree? Also I kind of struggled to understand some of what you said I apologise if this doesn't answer the question.

However to answer that question you would ask "Is Christianity productive?" or "are the claims believed in Christianity true?", or whatever variation seems appropriate, but never "Is Christianity true?".
For a C++ geek, it is like Christianity is a class that can have Boolean variables, but Christianity is not itself a Boolean variable, so it only makes sense to test it by referencing its variables, but if you try to test Christianity itself only tells you if the pointer references a valid section of memory which is not what you want to do.

 

[BleedingClear]

I think the title is a little misleading as when you specified "world view" I instantly thought of the physical state of the world and how the progression of the human race is going so far.
But nevertheless I totally agree with you.

But on a different note about how a view can be true, how can any view be proven as 'false'?
It is a view, a sight that one sees when they open their eyes.
That view can only be changed unless you put the effort in to change it manually, but generally if one likes the view they see, they will not bother to push it aside.

Lets look at this from a physical point of view.
If you were to put a pair of glasses on and they had a scratch right in the middle of one of the lenses, no matter where you turned your gaze, you would see that fault line in the glass over top of everything else you're trying to look at.
You will forever see that scratch until you, or someone else, manually removes the glasses from your face.
Although you see the scratch on top of whatever it is you're looking at, the scratch isn't actually there on the scene where others can see it, only you can see it unless you were to hand a pair with the exact same scratch to someone else.
And when those glasses are removed, although you can no longer see the scratch, you can still remember the impact it had on your vision (But that's not really a necessary note).

Now lets put this back into a more relative view.
When someone takes a look at this world, they see it through the lenses that have formed from personal experience, what others have told them and a million other variables that only add thickness to their lenses.
Every one of those variables is another fault line in the glass.
If one has been taught how to see "the miracles Jesus our savior has provided", then that is what they will see forever until something or someone manually moves it, but as we're not talking about a simple pair of glasses anymore, to do so can often require a great amount of effort, sometimes it might even be close to impossible if the fault line is deep enough.
But who's to say what they see is false?
Just because you don't see it, it doesn't mean it isn't there.
I have recently finished playing the new 'Bioshock: Infinite' game and there are 2 quotes from that game that I find very relevant to this topic:

"It's all just a matter of perspective"; where you're standing, you may see the world as a very dark and gloomy place with no hope and no true meaning. Or maybe you do see the broken pieces of the world, but you also see all the great and miraculous things that are occurring.
But no matter where you're standing, there will always be someone who is standing on the exact opposite side of you see who things from the exact opposite perspective.

"There's a world of difference between what we see, and what is"; Just because you don't believe we were created by a greater being, doesn't mean that we weren't, although I am no one to say we were, there is a chance that one day you'l either be proven correct, or you'l be proven incorrect. But even with this understanding, there isn't anything going against the fact that we could have been the effect of a 'Big Bang'. Maybe 'The Big Bang' was what happened when another universe tried creating another universe, with that in mind we were still created by a higher being that so many refer to as 'God', and that universe could have well shaped that religion by some crazy insane chance, but at the same time we were also what came from 'The Big Bang'.

Everything is possible, you can never truly prove a view to be wrong.

And there's my half a cent worth to the actual topic of "Does it make sense to say that a world view is true?".

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Just so we are clear the point I am presenting is not a philosophical issue but rather a problem of semantics.
It is not that "it is sort of relative to say that something is true or not", it is rather a matter that the sentence doesn't make sense linguistically.

 

[BleedingClear]

I gathered that it wasn't philosophical but I felt an urge to express my opinion any way.

 

[Aelyn]

Everything is possible, you can never truly prove a view to be wrong.

You can't "truly prove" a view to be wrong, but do you need to ?
You can't "truly prove" the sun will come up in the east tomorrow either, yet nobody has ever gone wrong thinking it would.