Worldview as it Relates to Philosophy Research Paper

Worldview as it Relates to Philosophy - Research Paper Example Through experience and education individuals develop these perspectives and implement them as a means of living their daily existence. When considering myself I recognize that my worldview has changed drastically over the course of my life and has been greatly influenced by experience and philosophy. This essay considers my current worldview and the way my past worldview has been influenced and changed through philosophy. Before taking this course my worldview was strongly rooted in religious doctrines. Throughout the formative periods of my life I grew up in an environment that was strictly Christian. Within this environment my parents and most of my peers believed in the major tenants of the Christian religion. Growing up in this environment I learned to adopt most of the religious principles that are espoused by the Christian religion. In terms of the creation of the world I believed that Earth and the universe had been created by God. I believed in morals as they related to the c oncept of good and evil as established by the Bible. In these regards, morality was presented as an easily understandable concept – if an individual adhered to the law and the tenants of the Bible then they were a moral and good person. I also embraced a concept of the afterlife. If individuals adhered to the Biblical principles and allowed God into their life then I believed they would go to heaven. Conversely, if they disregarded these aspects, they would go to Hell. My relation to science and logic were complex. While I embraced the principle of science in an overarching sense, I came to believe that oftentimes science could be wrong or mistaken. Specifically, in terms of evolution and cosmology I believed that while scientists had approached the concepts of existence and biology with their greatest ability, they were ultimately flawed in their findings. I understood that that ultimately their current scientific investigations would be proven wrong and they would ultimatel y discover that God and Biblical principles were the true reality of existence. When I look back on my worldview during this period of my life I recognize that I was greatly influenced by my personal surroundings and parents’ influence. As I gradually became more exposed to new ideas and new people my worldview drastically changed. In large part, the philosophical ideas I was exposed to in this course shaped and sharpened my worldview in a variety of ways. One of the major notions that I came to recognize through my research in philosophy emerged in terms of Christian morality. While Christianity noted that there were easily understood concepts of good and evil, my exposure to philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil led me to understand that moral actions couldn’t easily be broken down into concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ but often involve a complex number of philosophical implications (Nietzsche 1993). Another profound such changes that I experienced occurred in my understanding and eventual embracement of scientific principles. As I previously indicated that I had believed science did not properly understand Christian understandings of the world, as I became exposed to more scientific thought I came to understand that in large part the principles behind such concepts as evolution are supported by substantial scientific research. In these regards, I learned to increasingly embrace the notion that many of the claims made in the Bible may be wrong. As I became exposed to earlier notions of mythology, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, which contains a flood story, I further came to recognize