Worldview Studies

More people than ever before—especially in the northern parts of Europe and America—self-identify as nonreligious and reject religion. They want to live secular rather than religious lives (Inglehart 2021). The most influential theoretical framework, most of the time a merely unstated assumption to understand this latter development, is what I call the subtraction theory. It is the hypothesis that we should assume individuals or groups of people who reject religion or do not self-identify as religious abandon what they see as unnecessary, false, or inadequate add-ons to humanity’s shared view and way of life. They simply stop holding religious beliefs and participating in religious practices and organizations. They become atheists (a rejection of theism but not much of a positive statement about anything else), agnostics, religious nones, or nonreligious people. One way of stating this view is to say that religious people believe in the supernatural. In contrast, nonreligious people stop doing that and merely believe in the natural—as religious people also do. Religious believers add on beliefs about the supernatural, whereas nonreligious people make do without that add-on; they are nonbelievers and merely left with the views they share with religious believers. We can also adopt a more practice-oriented understanding of the subtraction theory and say that religious people engage in certain activities. In contrast, nonreligious people stop doing so. As such, they can be adequately described as “religious nones.” Self-described nonreligious people are simply marking an absence or standing in opposition to religion. For this reason, many scholars have been inclined to use analytical terms that are primarily negative and talk about nonreligion, religious nones, nonreligious people, or religion’s other (Lee 2015; Smith and Cragun 2019; Bullivant 2020). The core idea is that due to the changes we see in society today, we need to add the study of nonreligion to the study of religion due to the changes we see in society today. To religious studies, we must now add nonreligious studies.

I think we should challenge this theoretical framework or assumption and instead explore to what extent the replacement theory can be philosophically and empirically sustained.² Replacement theory is the hypothesis that some individuals and groups reject religion but also consciously or unconsciously replace or strive to replace it with an alternative outlook on life. As Charles Taylor (2007, 9) phrases it, they try to develop “immanent construals of human flourishing.” They try to come up with an alternative story of why we are here, what makes something good or evil, what provides meaning in life, and how we should live our lives in light of the key features of this alternative story. Self-identifying as nonreligious in this sense is not assumed to be only a matter of being without religion but also a matter of being with something else. For this reason, scholars need to develop analytical terms that are primarily affirmative (or terms of presence, not absence) and talk about “secular worldviews” and “secular people,” “secular rituals,” “secular faith,” and “secular nones” or develop similar categories. The term “secular” is used here not as a synonym for “nonreligious” but as a term that signals the embrace of an alternative worldview (of one kind or another) to the religious ones. Hence, we need to add secular studies, not the study of nonreligion, to religious studies. Consequently, sometimes at least, we have to distinguish between religious and secular worldviews.

The academic study of both religious and secular worldviews, and everything in between, can be called worldview studies. Since there are no clear-cut boundaries between religious and secular outlooks on life, it might also be appropriate to sometimes talk about semi-secular or semireligious worldviews (af Burén 2015; Jonbäck and Palmqvist 2024). The objective of worldview studies is not to understand and theorize about just the world’s religions but also the secular or semi-secular alternatives emerging in some parts of contemporary society. The idea is that conceptualizing them in worldview terms provides a better understanding and makes comparison with traditional religions more adequate than conceptualizing them in terms of nonreligion or religious nones.

According to the replacement theory, we should assume that even if not all people are religious, most people have a worldview of one kind or another. Of course, whether or not that is the case is both a conceptual and an empirical question. First, it depends on what we take a worldview to be and, second, whether we can confirm the existence of emerging secular worldviews.

The choice of the term “worldview” might lead one to think that a worldview must be all-embracing. Michael L. Peterson and Dennis R. Venema (2021, 27) say “a worldview provides a comprehensive framework that serves to fit all truths together in a relationship.” Alvin Plantinga (2011, ix) writes that “a worldview [is] a sort of total way of looking at ourselves and our world.” So, we expect and countenance only those outlooks on life that contain a whole way of looking at ourselves and our world or express our overall view of the nature of reality as worldviews. It is clear that not all people have such a comprehensive worldview. In this sense, there is evidence supporting the subtraction theory. Many, if not most, nonreligious people have not replaced Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam with some similar overarching set of beliefs, values, and practices. Do such people not have a worldview? I assert that we should resist defining and understanding the notion of worldview in such a way as to imply that they do not. Arguably, many Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims do not have a worldview in this sense either because their outlook on life is not even close to containing a comprehensive framework that serves to fit all truths together in a relationship. Hence, the idea that worldviews must be comprehensive should be rejected.

I suggest that we understand a worldview to be a constellation of beliefs, values, and attitudes that people, whether consciously or unconsciously, hold and that constitute their basic understanding of who they are, what the world is like, what their place in it is, what they should do to live a good and meaningful life, and what they can say, know, rationally believe, or assume to be true about these things (Stenmark 2022b, 565). By belief I mean what people claim, think, or assume to be true about the world and their place therein. One might believe that God exists, that everything that exists is ultimately made of matter, that people have or do not have free will, that we are basically good or evil, or that there is or is not an afterlife. But worldviews also contain different values about what we should do or avoid to live a good life, both on the individual and collective levels. Humanists think human dignity and the values and duties that flow from a commitment to that dignity should shape our worldview. Transhumanists believe that posthuman lives would be better lives: we ought to enhance ourselves. Furthermore, worldviews also include attitudes or stances directed toward the world, other people, or ourselves. It could be said, roughly, that these attitudes express our emotional dispositions toward things, properties, processes, and states of affairs in the world. For instance, many theists do not merely believe that God exists but put their faith or trust in God.

Thereby, two things a worldview contains, among others, are our ontology—what we take to exist and how these things relate to one another and what properties they have—and our epistemology—what we can know, rationally believe, or merely assume to be true about these things, properties, and relations. A third requisite is that a worldview encompasses our ethical or moral stance—the value commitments we express in thought and action. Alternatively, and more precisely, a worldview contains those parts of our ontology, epistemology, and ethics that are central to understanding and living our lives (Stenmark 2022b, 565). A worldview is best understood as action-oriented. One can say that a worldview’s function is primarily to help people deal with their existential concerns, that is, their questions about who they are, why they exist, what the meaning of their life is, and what attitude or stance they should take towards the experiences of death, suffering, guilt, anxiety, love, friendship, forgiveness, and the like. Consequently, not just any of our beliefs, values, or attitudes will do. A worldview contains those beliefs, values, and attitudes that are of particular importance for our self-identity and the things we fundamentally care about in life.

The central idea in worldview theory is that people—whether or not they are religious—express, through their actions and what they say, a particular understanding of what the world is like, what we ourselves are like, what is most important about the world, what our place in it is, and what we must do to live a good life. While a person’s understanding might be limited or partial in several ways, it is a worldview if it is still about these important issues in life. Hence, we should not be misled into thinking that worldviews have to be comprehensive: we must allow that they might merely consist of loosely interconnected attitudes, beliefs, and values central to how individuals understand and live their lives. This is so in the same way that we should not assume that religions must be comprehensive to be religions. Like religions, people’s worldviews can be more or less articulated, comprehensive, and coherent. Nor should we be misled into thinking that beliefs, values, or attitudes must come first and practice second. The traffic, so to speak, can go both ways: not merely from what is taken to be true or of value to action, but also from how people live their lives to what they thereby take to be true and of value. At times, a worldview must be inferred from an individual’s or group’s way of engaging with the world.

One problem with using the notion of worldview as an umbrella term to cover both religious and nonreligious people’s outlooks on life is that there is a fundamental ambiguity in how the notion is used in contemporary society. On the one hand, people talk about a “scientific worldview,” which means the picture of the universe that emerges if we combine the different theories of physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology into a systematic whole. On the other hand, and in line with how the notion is used here, some people make statements about the embeddedness of science within a particular worldview, such as Christianity, Islam, or naturalism (Stenmark 2003, 928–29).

If we understand the concept in the second way, as we must in worldview studies, it follows that science alone cannot provide us a worldview, even though science can significantly contribute to forming or revising a worldview. This is so because this conception entails that science lacks certain features that characterize a worldview. It is a matter of dispute what these features are exactly, but science seems to lack two elements: values and metaphysics. In this sense (and as I have defined it), a worldview tells us who we really are, what the world is ultimately like, and what we should do to live a satisfying life. It gives our life direction and meaning and thus provides us with values. But science essentially gives us facts or non-normative descriptions of reality, not values. It does not tell us how to live or what we should ultimately value in life. If this is correct, science does not qualify as a worldview.

Moreover, no scientific discipline can tell us whether the physical universe is all there is. If scientists make such an assertion, they make a metaphysical rather than a scientific claim. Instead, a view that says that reality consists of God and all that God has made and that we should live a life according to God’s will is a worldview. The same is true for a view that says that, ultimately, reality consists of nothing but matter or physical particles in motion and that nothing possesses any moral value. Some advocates of scientism question this, arguing that the boundaries of science can be expanded in such a way that it can offer us both values and metaphysics (Harris 2010; Rosenberg 2011; Wilson 1990). However, this view is highly controversial and lacks scientific consensus.

The discussion about the proper limits of science goes beyond what can be argued for in this article,³ but let me at least exemplify. Sam Harris thinks science can determine human values. His basic idea is that “questions about values—about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose—are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures. Values, therefore, translate into facts that can be scientifically understood” and justified (Harris 2010, 1–2). Moral truths are simply facts about human wellbeing. Science can tell us what human wellbeing is and what kinds of actions promote it. Harris acknowledges that there might be practical problems in doing this, but in principle, science can determine what is morally right and wrong. It is certainly correct that science can inform our moral choices. Given, for instance, that we do not want to jeopardize present human wellbeing or the wellbeing of future generations, science can offer us guidance on how to limit the severe climate changes that threaten our long-term wellbeing. However, an obvious problem with Harris’s proposal is that it is unclear why we should take human wellbeing as our fundamental value. How does science know this is the correct value to embrace? Why human wellbeing rather than, say, the wellbeing of Earth’s ecosystems? The answer to this value question could not possibly be a scientific finding. Hence, the core value assumption of Harris’s “scientific” ethics does not come from science.

Therefore, in the worldview study discourse, we should call Harris, Alex Rosenberg, and Edward O. Wilson’s outlook on life a “scientistic” rather than a “scientific” worldview. This use of the analytical term “worldview” is, of course, compatible with the observation that some individuals think science qualifies as a worldview. Still, we call such a view “scientistic” because it extends upon the current conceptions of what science is and what it provides.

What we gain by using the notion of worldview—rather than the notions of religion and nonreligion—is an analytical category where both religions and secular outlooks on life can be studied in positive or affirmative terms. We also understand that the reason some thinkers have their view about science and religion depends on their prior acceptance of a secular worldview of one kind or another. This is similar to the views of other thinkers that are colored by their prior religious commitments. If essentially everyone has a worldview, then the discussion about science and religion is not between religious believers and “neutrals”—noncommitted people or nonbelievers—but between people who embrace different, sometimes rival, worldviews.

Therefore, we must pay attention to whether one line of reasoning depends on the prior acceptance of a particular worldview in the science–religion debate. We need to distinguish between worldview-transcending and worldview-immanent arguments. A worldview-transcending argument contains premises or reasons that surpass people’s different outlooks on life. Their force does not directly depend on whether we accept a Christian, Buddhist, scientistic, or secular-humanist worldview. Worldview-immanent arguments are arguments containing premises or reasons that depend, directly or indirectly, on the acceptance of one particular worldview or a subset of them.

As I have already indicated, I propose that religious people should not be contrasted to nonreligious people or religious nones but to secular people. The outlooks on life that—consciously or unconsciously—the latter embrace or develop in their lives ought not to be called nonreligion but secular worldviews. We can then distinguish between two types of worldviews, while not denying that there are many borderline cases. Specifying the distinction is difficult, but we could say that religious worldviews affirm or assume the existence of a transcendent, divine, or spiritual dimension of reality and uphold its importance for understanding and living our lives. However, religious people can understand this dimension of reality differently. Secular worldviews deny or doubt the existence of a transcendent, divine, or spiritual dimension of reality and instead maintain or assume that reality has a different makeup, and it is the basic features of this reality that are important for how we should understand and live our lives. However, secular people can understand this alternative outlook on reality differently (Stenmark 2022b, 573–74).

The worldview many reflective atheists in the Western world embrace today contains, roughly, the view that reality is made up entirely of physical particles in fields of forces brought into existence in the Big Bang and reality’s tendency to produce increased complexity over time on Earth (and perhaps elsewhere in the universe) is the result of purely unintended causal processes and natural laws that happen to exist (Clark 2015). It is against this background that we must understand ourselves and how we should live our lives. In this sense, nature is all there is and ever will be. Within philosophy, this secular worldview is often called naturalism (de Caro and Macarthur 2004, 2–3). Graham Oppy and N. N. Trakakis (2009, 301) maintain, “Many atheists have been concerned to develop alternative worldviews to the kind of worldviews that are presented in the world’s religions; and, in particular, many atheists have been concerned to develop naturalistic worldviews that leave no room for any kind of supernatural entities.” Naturalism could be developed in different ways,⁴ but two of the most influential are scientism and secular humanism (LeDrew 2016). Advocates of scientism privilege science in all areas of life and are consequently suspicious of everything else. Science alone should guide us in understanding our world and how we should live our lives. Secular humanists, on the other hand, reject the hegemony of science. Instead, they maintain that secular people should be guided by humanism, a belief in human freedom, autonomy, and dignity.⁵

Today, any worldview that aims to be intellectually credible needs to take into account the theories and discoveries of science. However, most major religious worldviews, and certainly Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and Taoism, did not emerge to prominence in a culture as dominated by science (as we today understand its key features) as ours. Therefore, their core conceptions and ideas were not formulated in a scientifically infused culture, and their compatibility and coherence with contemporary science became a natural question. One important exception is the so-called New Spirituality (or “New Age Spirituality”).⁶ Not surprisingly, its advocates have consciously chosen a scientifically inspired vocabulary to express their religious views. Hence, the language of the New Spirituality frequently contains terms such as “energy,” “frequency,” “vibration,” “dimension,” and “quantum,” and they even sometimes talk about the science of yoga, reiki healing as a science, or occult sciences. Moreover, the worldview of the New Spirituality is often expressed in educational terms. Sometimes, the gatherings or meetings are described as workshops, lectures, and classes. As James R. Lewis (2007, 211) writes, “Large New Age gatherings such as the Whole Life Expo resemble academic conferences more than they resemble camp meetings.” Lastly, perhaps more than in most other religious worldviews, there seems to be a degree of consensus about the need for science and spirituality to come together in some higher, holistic unity, even if they might have different understandings of how to obtain this unity. These ideas of some higher, holistic unity are, of course, not lacking in the other, more traditional religious worldviews. Still, they were essentially formed in a prescientific age, and these historical roots are essential for Christians, Hinduists, and Muslims’ self-understanding, for example. It also means their vocabulary is more “old-fashioned” and less scientifically influenced. On a surface level, at least, this places them in a disadvantaged position compared to more recently developed religious or secular worldview alternatives.

Nancey Murphy tracks the origin of secular worldviews, or what she (as philosophers typically do) calls naturalism, in the Western world to the writing of David Hume’s corpus and Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature in the second half of the eighteenth century. Naturalistic traditions during the subsequent centuries included the writings of intellectuals like Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as contemporary contributors to this tradition, such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel D. Dennett. In Murphy’s (2008) terminology, a tradition is essentially a worldview thought of in terms of its historical development. She refers to James Turner’s startling claim that disbelief was not a live option in the United States until roughly between 1865 and 1890. Hence, secular worldviews emerge in a scientifically infused culture, some more motivated by theories in social sciences, others more by those in the natural sciences, but also due to changing social conditions (better life expectancy, less loss of children, and better social safety nets), as many sociologists have pointed out. Perhaps we can talk about four emerging subtraditions: the Humean trajectory leading to skepticism, the Freudian trajectory leading to scientism, the Nietzschean trajectory leading to nihilism, and the Marxist trajectory leading to secular humanism.

Not surprisingly, advocates of secular worldviews try to take advantage of outlooks on life being formulated in a scientific age. For instance, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker maintains that the worldview that guides the moral and spiritual values of an educated person today is the worldview given to us by science. He writes, “The findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken” (Pinker 2013). It is just that not all people, including many scientists, have understood this yet.

How to Relate Science and Worldviews

How could and should we then think about the relationship between our different (religious or secular) worldviews and science? I suggest that we essentially have six options to choose from when expressing how we see the relationship between our worldview and science today. The relationship concerns the compatibility, coherence, and relevance of science for the particular beliefs, values, and attitudes that, taken together, constitute our worldview. We could embrace one of the following options:

• 1)  Our worldview is entailed by science; it starts from and stops with science.

• 2)  Our worldview privileges science but nevertheless goes beyond science.

• 3)  Our worldview goes beyond science, but science can support or add to its credibility.

• 4)  Our worldview is compatible with science, but that is all we can ask for since science and worldviews do different and unrelated jobs in our lives.

• 5)  Our worldview is incompatible with contemporary science, but as science progresses, it will become clear that our worldview is compatible with, and perhaps even supported by, science.

• 6)  Our worldview is incompatible with science, but that is what we should expect because these commitments go against reason—including scientific reason.

Notice that the way these six alternatives are expressed here is a shorthand version for a more precise statement, which also contains the denial of a central claim of the previous option. So, alternative (2) should be understood in the following way: our worldview is not entailed by science (as in alternative 1). It merely privileges science or is grounded in science but still goes beyond what science can tell us about reality. According to alternative (3), our worldview is neither entailed nor guided by science because its central motives or grounds are obtained from or provided by other sources. Still, there is contact between our worldview and science, so science can support or add to its credibility. Advocates of alternative (4) do not think that science supports or adds to the credibility of their worldview. However, they see nothing problematic about this because science and worldviews do different and unrelated jobs in our lives; they occupy separate domains at a sound distance from each other. Still, they take their worldview to be compatible with and not in conflict with what science teaches us—and this is all we can ask for.

Before I further explore and exemplify the differences between these options, notice that compatibility or consistency is a binary relation—something is either compatible or incompatible with something else. In contrast, support or coherence is a matter of degree. The evidence we have could increase the likelihood of one of our beliefs p to a limited extent, or evidence could increase it so much that we would not merely say we believe p but know p. We have minimal support, maximal support, and everything in between—besides, of course, the possibility of no support. With this in mind, let us go through each option one at a time.

Concluding Remarks

The starting point of my discussion was an observation, namely, that a significant number of individuals, particularly in regions like northern Europe and northern America, no longer identify as religious. This change, I argue, should make us see the relationship between science and religion in a new way, explicitly taking into account that today, there is a three-way relationship that should be explored between science, religions, and secular outlooks on life. We can only fully understand some of the standpoints in the science–religion debate if we consider that a third party is involved, implicitly or explicitly, in the discussion—namely, secular worldviews. The notion of worldviews was introduced to cover both religious and nonreligious people’s views of life. I also pointed out that it is crucial to establish an academic discipline that investigates secular people’s outlooks on life and juxtaposes them with religious ones. This is the task of the emerging field of worldview studies.

What we gain by using the notion of worldviews is an analytical category wherein secular outlooks on life, and not merely religious ones, can be studied in terms of what they positively affirm about reality. It then becomes evident that the reason some thinkers have the views they do about science and religion depends on their prior acceptance of a secular worldview of one kind or another. This is similar to the views of other thinkers, colored by their religious commitments. If essentially everyone has a worldview, then the discussion about science and religion is not between religious believers and “neutrals”—noncommitted people—or nonbelievers but between people who embrace different, sometimes rival, worldviews.

Therefore, we must pay attention to when one line of reasoning depends on the prior acceptance of a particular worldview in the science–religion debate. We need to distinguish between worldview-transcending and worldview-immanent arguments. A worldview-transcending argument contains premises or reasons that surpass people’s different outlooks on life. Its force does not directly depend on whether we accept a Christian, Buddhist, scientistic, or secular-humanist worldview. Worldview-immanent arguments are rather arguments containing premises or reasons that depend, directly or indirectly, on the acceptance of one particular worldview or a subset of them.

We have also seen that the significance of science for worldview formation and revision depends on how relevant we think science is for the particular worldview we embrace. I suggested that six options are available today to religious and secular people alike. One’s stance could be that their worldview is entailed by science; it starts from and stops with science (the scientistic view). A second possibility would be to deny that one’s worldview is entailed by science and instead maintain that it merely privileges science while still acknowledging that it goes beyond what science can tell us about reality (the extension view). A third option is to maintain that the central motives or grounds of one’s worldview are obtained from or provided by other sources than science but still stress that science can support or add to its credibility (the contact view). A fourth alternative would be to say that one’s worldview is merely compatible with science but assert that that is all we can ask for since science and worldviews do different and unrelated jobs in our lives (the independence view). For those who embrace the extension, contact, or independence view, it becomes essential to distinguish between things that are “nonscientific” and those that are “unscientific,” whereas, for those who endorse the scientistic view, these categories essentially coincide.

Science criticism plays an essential role in forming some people’s worldviews. The last two options try to capture this stance. One option is to grant that one’s worldview is incompatible with contemporary science but maintain that as science progresses, it will become clear that it is compatible with, perhaps even supported by, science (the tension view). The last option is more radical: the stance that one’s worldview is indeed incompatible with science, and that that is what should be expected because one’s core worldview commitments go against reason—including scientific reason (the irreconcilability view). Presumably, few people embrace this alternative, but it is essential to include because some claim that other people’s worldviews are of this kind. These critics then assume irreconcilability to be a vice and not a virtue.

If my analysis is correct, then an essential question to explore is the relevance of science for forming and revising our different worldviews, both religious and secular. Worldview theory also makes it easier to understand and conceptualize that the main reason certain nonreligious individuals have a specific view of the relationship between science and religion is not always due to how they conceive science or religion but rather because of the secular worldview they embrace. This could be the case whether or not they are aware of this fact. The recognition that most, if not all, people have a worldview of one kind or another makes it possible and desirable to develop a more symmetrical explanation of some religious and secular individuals’ views of science and religion.