Defining Terms: Worldview

If you are just starting to learn about apologetics it is good to be familiar with several of the basic terms that are used in discussions, debates, and by many of those in the creation and evolution realm.  I will start out very basic with some of these words and gradually get deeper and more complex with the terms.  If I use a word in a recent blog I will include it in the Defining Terms blogs that  I create.

Worldview – The dictionary describes it as a comprehensive conception or image of the universe and of humanity’s relation to it.  Everyone has a worldview whether or not they think a little or a lot about it.  I believe that a solid worldview must be able to satisfactorily answer basic questions about our past, present and future as well as give coherent meaning to all of the issues that we may face in our lifetime.   The human mind has a curious need to organize things and understand and make them coherent.

I have recently heard of a University of Florida student who was attending a lecture by apologist, Ravi Zacharias, and the student stood up and defiantly made the statement that “Life doesn’t have to be coherent” and demanded that Ravi Zacharias give an answer to why it should.  Dr. Zacharias responded that he would like to help the student, but before He answered that question, he had one question for the student.  Dr. Zacharias asked him, “Would you like my answer to your question to be coherent?”  The student stood quietly there for a moment and then just sat down.

What goes into making our worldview?  Everything.  Everything we experience from the time we are born until this very present moment that you are reading this blog accumulates to the sum of our world view.  Our Nurture, Our Nature,  Our Experience, Our Relationships with People (bosses, parents, peers, etc.), Our beliefs, Our Actions, the list could go on and on.  In my Christian worldview, God and the Bible,  have a big part of every single persons worldview on earth, whether they acknowledge God or not.  Someone who holds an atheist position would of course disagree.

A worldview does not have to be religious by nature.  By religious, I use the definition of a strict devotion to a supernatural being, higher power, God or gods.   Worldviews can be based solely on scientific laws and knowledge and whatever a person views as coherent and true.  For example someone who calls themselves a Darwinian evolutionist has a worldview that holds an atheistic or agnostic values.  Another worldview that I just learned about today are Raliens.  They believe that human life was seeded on this planet by extraterrestrials.

I am constantly self-examining my own worldview with the knowledge that I receive almost daily.  I want to make sure that I am as intellectually honest with myself about what I believe as I can be.  In other words, I like to keep an open mind.  Over the course of my journey in life I have found that my Christian worldview has for the most part stayed the same and I still feel that it is one that is the most coherent of all the worldviews I have examined.  The Christian worldview is durable, it can withstand the constant scrutiny from outside and internal sources.  Through out the months and weeks to come I will be examining the different aspects of my own worldview and also comparing them to other popular or mainstream worldviews.  I will do my best to offer the evidence, you can decide what you want to from the facts.

As always questions, comments, and discussions are welcome.  In the near future I will post a follow-up with this blog about the challenge by Richard Dawkins, that people basically take the worldview that they grew up with.  Indoctrination, as he calls it,  by those who raise their children into religion, he even goes to the lengths to call it child abuse.  Most likely for the reaction.

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