Dr Greg Bahnsen - Loving God With All Your Mind: How to Discern and Disarm Worldviews, Pt 1 (Part 2)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

It's always encouraging to an out of town speaker to see people. Come back after the morning break if I've lost you. We're on page three of the syllabus as we begin session two of our conference on loving God with all our mind. And I'd like to explain to you the nature of worldviews during this session and also talk about the conflict between non Christian and Christian worldviews. I'm going to reverse the order of what you see in your syllabus here. I'm sorry about that, but I don't think it'll confuse you too much. Let's ask ourselves what do we mean by a worldview? As we begin in Matthew the seventh chapter, we come to the end of the Sermon on the mount. Matthew 5, 6, 7 gives us the sermon on the Mount that Jesus delivered. And at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ends with the story that is well known to everybody who's gone to Sunday school. That's the story of the wise man and the foolish man. Jesus tells us that the wise man built his house upon the rock, but the foolish man built his house upon the sand. So we have two different kinds of foundations being referred to rock and sand. And then the storms of life come along and beat upon these houses. And naturally, as you know the story, the man whose house was built upon the sand comes to great destruction. And as Jesus ends this short little parable about how we build our lives and how we live our lives, he says that His Word is rock, the rock is His Word. And so we see that Jesus, in a very simple and powerful way, has been telling a story to illustrate the difference between those who build their lives upon His Word and those who build their lives outside of His Word. Those who do not build their lives upon the rock solid standard of the inspired Word of God have built their lives upon sand. And those who have the foundation of sand are going to be destroyed when the storms of life come through. Everybody's life and everybody's thinking therefore has a foundation. We can say all of our thinking is built upon assumptions, in fact, levels of assumptions as we will see in just a moment, but ultimately build their lives outside of His Word. Those who do not build their lives upon the rock solid standard of the inspired Word of God have built their lives upon sand. And those who have the foundation of sand are going to be destroyed when the Storms of life come through everybody's life and everybody's thinking therefore has a foundation. We can say all of our thinking is built upon assumptions, in fact, levels of assumptions as we will see in just a moment. But ultimately when you get down to the bottom, everybody's life, everybody's thinking has a final standard, a final foundation on which all the rest has been erected. And the Christians final foundation, that which is to be rock bottom solid for the thinking and the living of God's people is the word of God. Remember how we saw in our last session in John the eighth chapter, Jesus said if you're truly my disciple, you live in my word. The Greek word to take up one's residence. It's interesting. Jesus has said the house is built upon the rock of his word. Elsewhere Jesus says we live, we take up our house, our housing, our residence is in the midst of His Word. You see, this is what's foundational for the development of the Christian outlook on everything. On the other hand, non Christians find other foundations to build their lives on and to control their thinking by, and those foundations prove to be destructive. In your syllabus you might turn over to page four to figure number one labeled the structure of belief. For as it turns out, everybody's thinking can be characterized by what we'll call a structure or levels of beliefs. Levels of beliefs in the diagram you'll see in front of you. This is really nicely done here you see somebody's head and then we have a blow up of the cranium, right? This isn't terribly scientific but we'll get the point across inside our head in our thinking. You might think about levels of belief at the very top. Those little itty bitty things there across the top. We might call our loosely held beliefs. All of us have loosely held beliefs. For instance, you might believe that it's about 11 o' clock in the morning, but you're probably not thinking a lot about that unless I'm really boring you to tears, in which case you're watching your watch and so forth. But that's a loosely held belief. You think it's about 11 o' clock in the morning, but as it turns out you could be wrong about that and you probably wouldn't resist that. I mean if you're really enthralled with what Dr. Bonson is saying and you think it's about 11 o' clock and it turns out to be 11:45 and you look at your watch, then you change that belief that's abandoned. I think it's 11:45, not 11. Or we might hear a car, you know, going down the street outside, maybe one that doesn't have its muffler fixed and we can hear it, you know, putt, putting down the street. And as you're taking notes, you say, oh, there's a car outside. Maybe you don't even say that. You know, it just so quickly passes through your mind. That would be a very loosely held belief. Some of you might believe that Notre Dame is going to win the football game today, but you don't put a lot, you know, you don't invest a lot in that. Hopefully you haven't bet on it. You would certainly not bet on the Catholics to win, now, would you? But nevertheless, you might believe they're going to win whether you want them to or not. But then tonight, as you listen to the news, let's say you hear that they didn't win or that you did, or that they did. The point is that belief is not a real strong one, not an important one. I suppose there are people in this world who, for whom that belief is very important. It would be maybe further down for them. But for most of us, these sorts of beliefs are loosely held. You get ready to go to lunch and you've decided you're going to use McDonald's for lunch today and you believe McDonald's is open. Then you drive over there and you find out they've had some kind of plumbing problem and McDonald's is closed. So you change that belief. You all have the idea then what I mean by loosely held beliefs. We all live our lives at the surface level with these loosely held beliefs. But then below those beliefs there are more firm beliefs, what we'll call the moderately firm beliefs. You could make as many levels as you want here, but I just want to get the point across that there are different kinds of beliefs rather than just the passing, well, I think I hear a bird outside the window belief. A moderately firm belief would be one which you think, no, I've got some fairly good evidence for this. I think I would stand by this. And yet it's not such a strong belief that if a friend were to present counter evidence, you'd be unwilling to give it up. You do believe that you're right about this. You think that the Dodgers won the World Series in 1964. Your friend says, no, no, I don't think so. And then what you do is you go to the almanac and you both look there and although you thought that you had pretty good evidence, proves that you did or you did not. And you might adjust it accordingly. These moderately firm beliefs tend to be a little more important to us. That's why we stand by them. But we don't want to say, I'm going to stake everything on them. But below those moderately firm beliefs, everybody has beliefs that are very firm indeed. For instance, you all believe that you have a mother and a father. Now, what would it take to shake that conviction? Boy, it's almost hard to imagine how you could be dissuaded. Now, you might be dissuaded that the two people that call themselves your mother and father are not, in fact, your mother and father. We read stories like that every once in a while. It's kind of bizarre. You probably don't believe that is true in your particular case, but you could imagine how you would come to change your mind about who your biological mother and father are. But could you come to change your mind that you have a biological father and mother without identifying the specific couple? You see, that's a very firm belief. You have a very firm belief that you have two legs. If you happen to be blessed by God to have two legs today, right? That's not the sort of thing that you can go to an almanac or you can just think about, you know, that wasn't a bird, that was a car I heard outside. These are things that you really hold on to, and you think you have very good reason to do that. And yet we can go beyond these, to put it simplistically, three levels of belief, to something that's even more basic than our firm convictions, and that is the level of our presuppositions, those suppositions which come before even our firm beliefs and which make our firm beliefs possible. The most fundamental influence in all of our thinking and the foundation for everything that we come to believe, is ultimately our presuppositions. Our presuppositions have to do with a network of, as the diagram says, core beliefs about, and as you will look here, metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. The presuppositions that are held by people are what makes sense out of all their other beliefs. If you don't happen to believe that your senses are basically reliable, then your firm belief that you have two legs because you can feel them or see them or walk on them isn't going to be a firm belief anymore. That firm belief that you have two legs is actually built upon something that you don't often think about. That's why it's called a presupposition. It's built on the supposition or assumption that you can trust your senses. So that would be rock bottom, if you will. If you were to change your conviction about the trustworthiness or the basic reliability of your senses, you would be changing your whole outlook on life, wouldn't you? In the same way I said one of your firm beliefs is that you have a biological mother and father. Again, you may be wrong about who your mother and father are, but all of you are convinced, I'm sure this morning, that you do somewhere in this world or did at some time have a mother and a father. And yet, if you were to change some of your beliefs about the nature of reality and didn't hold to the common view that you know where babies come from and so forth, you might believe that you're a God. You might believe that you just sprung into existence. You might have some kind of Hindu view about the illusion of life and not think that anything begins or ends, but we just have the illusion of being born and dying and so forth, in which case you could possibly change even that firm belief that you have a biological mother and father. I realize what I'm talking about now is very strange to the Western mindset, but I'm trying to get you to realize that you take things for granted that you don't even think about. This is the presuppositional level of your life. Your thinking takes for granted. You can trust your senses that you are a creature of nature and therefore had a biological mother and father. And on and on and on. Everybody has such presuppositional convictions. Now, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the nature of these presuppositional convictions. They've been labeled metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. And the first thing I have to tell you is that people have metaphysical, epistemological and ethical convictions even when they don't have the vocabulary to refer to them. I am not at all coming before you. It would be preposterous to try to do this and suggest that your next door neighbor, all the people that you work with, sit around thinking about their metaphysical convictions. If you were to tell them, you know you have metaphysical convictions, they might say, watch what you say to them. They may not like you talking that way. What do you mean, metaphysical? Well, what do I mean? Metaphysical? Do you all know what I'm referring to? These are the three basic areas of philosophical study. We could divide the field more finely if we wish to, but usually people think of our philosophical convictions as falling into the Areas of what is the nature of reality? That's metaphysics. How do we know what we know, which is epistemology? And how should we live our lives? What's right and wrong? That's ethics. And everybody has a base, level understanding or conviction of the nature of reality. Where did the world come from? What sorts of things are real? What do you think? What sorts of things? Are unicorns real? Is Santa Claus real? Is God real? Is love real? How about quasars? How about X rays? About warts, apples? And you start going through the various possibilities. I mean, I don't know what you said about each one of them, yes or no here and there, but everybody has some way of answering those questions. It's interesting. You have two people sit down in a coffee shop, and one friend says to the other over the table, I had the strangest experience last night. Oh, what was that? I saw a ghost in my bedroom. Now, you hear, your friend said that. And you may say, no, you didn't. Friend says, well, yes, I did. You weren't there. How do you know? And you might say, ghosts aren't real. You see, you are using a metaphysical conviction when you dispute your friend's interpretation of his experience. Everybody has some foundational understanding of what exists and what does not exist. Now, I don't mean that. That means everybody has a commitment as to how many things are. How many different kinds of things within a category may exist. You may not know all the different kinds of birds. I know I don't. That mystifies me. I say all this plethora different. I don't know the extent, but I do know that birds exist. You see what I'm saying? I have some idea of the scope of what is real because I would say birds are included. But now I'd have to go out and do research to find out how many kinds of birds or how many birds there are and so forth. But I do believe that there are birds. Now, somebody else might want to get into a discussion about how many kinds of angels there are. But there are people saying, but angels don't exist. Birds exist. Angels don't. That means they have a view about reality, what the nature of reality is, or people have different views about where the world came from. If you read different religious traditions in the world, you'll find, for instance, among the ancient Japanese, a view that once reality was something of a primal brine or soup. And a warrior, an ancient warrior, took his spear and he stirred the brine, and certain chunks came up out of the soup. And that's what we now call the Japanese islands. Now, some people, I don't think many today literally believe that, but throughout history, some people have believed that's where the world came from, that kind of procedure. Other people will tell you, oh, no. Reality was once condensed into an infinitely small speck. And for some reason, I mean, I love this big bang idea. For some reason, who knows why, the little infinitely small speck exploded and began to expand in what would become an infinitely large expanse. I mean, exactly the opposite of what it was, you know, so one thing becomes another, and some people think that's very sane and rational and physically credible explanation of where the world came from. It would be an interesting study that we can't do this morning, but trust me, it would be an interesting study to find out what makes things credible and believable to people. Why is it that that story is not looked at like the story of the warrior with a spear stirring the primal brine? Well, this story doesn't have a warrior and a spear in it. Well, that's not the difference. What is it? I mean, some people thought the warrior with the spear was a credible physical account at one time, and now today we have another. Some people think that there was a God who always existed as a spiritual being and with the power of his word spoke the world into existence. We read about that in the Bible. These are metaphysical convictions. And everybody, everybody's worldview includes some view of what is real, the kinds of things that exist, where the world came from, and we might include in there what is the nature of man and what's his place in the universe. That is very important one, philosophically. In our day and age, when you talk to people and witness to people, you need to realize that when you talk to somebody, you have to understand their view of human life if you're going to get through to them. Is human life sound in fury, signifying nothing? Are we nothing more but some kind of accident of evolution? Well, if we are, it shouldn't surprise you that there are Jeffrey Dahmers in this world. Men who will sexually abuse and even cannibalize their victims and apparently not think a whole lot of that, whereas you find that grotesque. I'm even sorry to bring it up as an illustration. I find it so reprehensible. But there are people in this world like that, and it's not as though they truly feel guilty. And down deep in their heart, they have just this shudder and horror about their life, but they hide that from us. This is the frightening thing. There are some people who live that way and don't think a whole lot about it, or if they do think it's wrong, you get the impression it's like a little mistake. I picked up eggs at the store rather than apples. A mistake like that, you know, oh, yeah, well, I ate my victim rather than honoring his dignity as a human being. You know, they don't see the depth and the horror of the sin that they're involved in. That's because they have a different view of human life, don't they? They don't see human life the way you do. So everybody has views about reality, what man is, man's place in the universe, where the universe came from, and the kinds of things that are real. That's what we call metaphysics. But if you move over to the next column, there are also fundamental presuppositional convictions people have about epistemology. Epistemology comes from the Greek word episteme, which means knowledge. Epistemology, then, is the study of knowledge. It's knowing about knowing, if you will. Epistemology is not the study of what we know. It's the study of the knowing of what we know. If I could put it to you that way, what are the limits of human knowledge? What are the things it's possible to know? And how is it that we know? Do you know that JFK was once assassinated? Do you know that? Most people, I think, in the room say, I know that's true. Now, if we study epistemology, we are going to ask certain questions about that. We may ask questions like, well, how do you know that? Were any of you there that day? Did you actually see him die? I doubt that any of you were. I wasn't. I happened to be alive that day, though. Somebody says, well, then, you know, because you saw it on tv, right? And I did. I saw certain images on a TV screen and so forth. But now it so happens that I was in Southern California looking at this little plastic box with the glass screen, seeing certain images on it. Now, do I know that what was being reflected to my eye in that TV screen is actually a reflection of something that was taking place in reality in Dallas, Texas, at that time? And did I actually see JFK expire? Or did I see some of the events before and after and along the way and so forth? When you start asking questions about, now, do you really know this? Or for many of you younger than me, or perhaps not interested at the time, who didn't watch the TV that day, you might say, well, yeah, I know that JFK was killed. I read it in the paper. I've read history books. Or I know it because it says it in the encyclopedia. But that raises questions about whether you can depend upon the encyclopedia. Can you rely upon the newspaper? There's a good one for you to think about. Can you rely upon the newspaper? Might it be true that jfk, like Elvis, is in hiding somewhere these days and they're working on a new rock band that's going to be revealed sometime? Can you trust what the newspaper tells you when you ask these kind of critical questions? All I'm getting at is you're asking questions about how do I know what I know. It turns out that none of you are watching a TV screen watching JFK die right now. None of you are reading an encyclopedia about it or the newspaper accounts and so forth. And so if I would have asked you, did JFK get assassinated in Dallas in 1963 when you said yes, you actually are relying on what? Memory. But then, is memory reliable? Certain psychological studies suggest that our memories are not nearly as reliable as we think that they are. But is memory reliable at all? Now, there's an interesting connection between the two things we've been talking about, metaphysics and epistemology. It turns out that you can't study or come to convictions in one area without simultaneously coming to convictions in another area. That is, what you think about how you know things is going to be affected by what you think the nature of reality is. And what you think is real will be affected by your convictions about how you know what you know. It's not as though you can have views in one area. But then I, you know, I really haven't thought about how I know these things. But here's what I know. No, when you assert that you know something, you are implicitly resting on or even saying something about how you know that. And also when you talk about how we know the things we know, you've got to talk about the things that you know in the process of describing how you know them. It is impossible, ultimately, to separate metaphysics from epistemology. You tell me. Well, Dr. Bonson, I know that JFK was assassinated in 1963. And I know that because I'm relying on my memory. I say, oh, you remember back to 1963? Yes, I do. I was glued to the TV set that afternoon and evening and saw all these dreadful events. I say, yeah, but as a matter of fact, the world was created just yesterday, and we were all created with these memory banks of a previous life. And so forth. Now, can you rely on your memory when it turns out that your memory, given my view of reality, is something that was just created yesterday? Now, I don't happen to believe that, and I'm not trying to shake you all up by, oh, how do we answer that problem? But I think you can see the point from this extreme illustration that what you know and how you know relate to one another, because you wouldn't count on memory if you didn't believe there was a past history that was real. In the same way, people can't imagine that what we know is based upon certain unseen, say, laws of logic. If their view of reality is, there's nothing that's unseen or immaterial, your view of logic is going to be affected by your view of metaphysics and vice versa. Now, there's a third column here. In this most fundamental level of a person's worldview, everybody has a certain view of what's right and what is wrong. Everybody has a certain view of ethics. Again, not everybody knows that they have a view of ethics. Not everybody has the vocabulary to describe their view of ethics, but everybody has a certain view of ethics. I'm waiting for the day, every once in a while I get people when I go out, especially in secular universities, to try to, you know, play the devil's advocate and say, oh, no, I don't have any convictions in this area. I'm waiting for the day that I consistently find some. I find somebody who consistently says, I have no ethical convictions, I'm going to drive his car home that night. You know, it just isn't true. There's, you know, a lot of people. It's shameful the way unbelievers, especially in universities, like to come out and say everything's relative, you know, nobody knows anything for sure. Try taking his wallet and find out how much he knows for sure and what's right and what's wrong, you know, or if you're a student in one of the classes where these professors, you know, ballyhoo that everything is culturally relative and, and all of our views are right and wrong are just a reflection of the society in which we grew up. And there aren't any absolutes. Ultimately, it's just a matter of what will make you successful and help you get along in this world. I've had professors like that. Maybe some of you have as well. And when I had professors like that, I was always tempted to cheat on the final exam. You know why? I mean, I never did. Because I thought, you know, as a Christian My reputation would be besmirched and it'd be hard to convince people I was trying to make a point and so forth. But wouldn't it be fun to make that point? You know, cheat on the final exam and then have this professor come and say, you know, I've got to give you a failing mark because you were cheating? You say, hey, wait a minute. There are no absolutes. You can't condemn me for cheating. That's just a culturally relative perspective. You're just imposing your capitalistic, oppressive views on me. You taught me the only thing that counts is getting ahead in this world and being successful. And you know what? This guy knew more about the material than I did. And so if I was going to be successful, I decided to copy his paper. Yeah, people like to pretend they don't have ethical convictions and there's no ultimate right and wrong. But you can't live your life that way. Everybody has some kind of fundamental ethical conviction about attitudes that are right or wrong, conduct that's acceptable and appropriate, conduct that's unacceptable and inappropriate. Okay, now let's see if we can define what a worldview is. I've told you, there are different levels of conviction, different kinds of beliefs that we have. Some are loosely held, some are moderately firm, some are very firm, and some are foundational. They're the rock bottom that condition. All that we think about, what is possible, the nature of reality, man's life in this world, how he should live his life, what's right and wrong, how he knows the things that he knows. These metaphysical, epistemological and ethical convictions are crucial to what we call a person's worldview. Those of you who are taking notes, I'll go slow here. I'm going to give you a definition of a worldview and then go back and talk about this definition. But let's first get it into our notes. A worldview is a network of. Of presuppositions. A network of presuppositions which are not verified by natural science. A network of presuppositions that are not verified by natural science, but in terms of which every aspect of experience is interpreted, interrelated. Once again, a worldview is a network of presuppositions which are not verified by natural science, but in terms of which every aspect of experience is interpreted and interrelated. Everybody has just such a. A worldview. Again, that doesn't say that they have the vocabulary or that they've even been self conscious about what their worldview is. But everybody functions with a worldview example I like to use, maybe you've heard it before, if you've heard my tapes, is, you know this old beer commercial that says you only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can get. And you may have a neighbor that lives like that. Here's a guy who lives for the ball game and a good beer. That's it, you say, well, he's not philosophical, Dr. Bonson. I mean, he didn't go to college. He certainly wasn't a philosophy major. He would have no idea what epistemology is. He doesn't have a worldview. His view is, hey, you only go around once in life. Where after all the gusts that you can get. But ask yourself, is that a worldview? Of course it is. You only go around once in life. What does that say? Hey, you only do this one time, you live this life and then it's all over. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Now I can give you a fancy name for that, by the way. That's a materialistic metaphysic. But it's unimportant that he calls it by its technical jargon. What's important is that he believes this and he lives this way. Grab for all the gusts that you can get. That's an ethical conviction. What should we do in this world? Seek all the pleasure we can get. Now the tactical name for that is hedonism. The highest good is pleasure. In fact, if we want to, we can even draw very fine distinctions between the hedonism of Aristippus and the hedonism of Epicurus. For you see, Aristippus said, you should grab for all the quantity of pleasure you can get. That is, the important thing, is the amount of pleasure. Epicurus, on the other hand, was more refined. He said, no, it's the kinds of pleasure you need to have, the higher pleasures. And so though we in our day and age speak of the Epicurean lifestyle as the life of excess, you know, the fact is Epicurus said, you know, a little wine, a little bread and cheese and conversation with friends, that's the highest pleasure. Epicurus was not the party animal that we make him out to be today. That was Aristippus. And so you can imagine having this conversation with your beer guzzling neighbor, right? Well, actually you're, you're committed, I think more to Aristippus than you are to Epicurus here. Now he doesn't know the vocabulary, he doesn't give a frit about what you're talking about. But he does have a worldview. He has a view about the nature of human life and how it ought to be lived. And although the little ditty you only go around once in a life, grab for all the gusts you can get, doesn't tell you the epistemology, if you pressed a little bit, you could find out why he believes this and how he believes this. What is the basis for his saying that? What justification does he have for holding those convictions? Everybody has a worldview. Now, let's look at this definition and pull out certain elements of it. First of all, notice that I said a worldview is a network of presuppositions. A worldview is not made up of just one belief because no one can hold only one belief. I realize that that should be obvious, but we don't usually think that way. Beliefs are always held, always held in clusters. Now, some clusters are bigger than others, but my point is, you can never hold one single belief. It'd be an interesting test. You know, I can put this to the audience. Say, I offer $1,000 to anybody in this audience who can believe only one thing. Okay? You may sit there and say, oh, I know. I believe only one thing. I've got it. So you raise your hand and I say, you believe that you believe only one thing? You say, yes, I do. And I say, well, now you believe too, because you believe that you believe these things. But it's more than just that. I'm not playing a little debate game with you here. The fact is, you can't believe what you believe without having certain other views that support that belief and give sense to it. Maybe you believe that there's a ladybug on the rose bush outside. You say, that's the one and only belief I have. My whole life is tied up in that one belief. But you see, in order to assert that there's a ladybug on the rose bush outside, you need to know that there's a difference between you and the rose bush. So there is another belief, and that is a belief about the identity of objects, and you're not the object being referred to. In fact, you've got a belief that there's a difference between bugs and bushes. You have a belief about the nature of ladybugs to some degree. It may be naive, but the fact is you're not calling it a bee, you're calling it a ladybug. And you're not calling it a peach tree, you're calling it a rose bush. And on and on and on. And you say, oh, yeah, well, we can take all those things for granted, but that's my point. Every belief is tied to other beliefs. Some of them may be taken for granted, but you can't hold just one belief. A worldview is a network of beliefs. Everybody's got a cluster of beliefs. But by calling in a network rather than a cluster, I'm trying to make the point. These are not just loosely thrown together. The fundamental beliefs that people have are always comported to each other. They're, if you will, adjusted to one another. A moment ago I said, you're not going to believe that the laws of logic are immaterial. If, on the other hand, you don't believe anything's real, that's immaterial. The ancient philosopher Plato held to the view that the way we know the things we do is by recollection. This is a longer story than the morning will allow me to tell you. But in simple terms, what Plato was getting at is before our souls were imprisoned in the body where they are now found, our souls lived in the realm of ideas. And now that our souls have come into the body, as we go through this world and we see something. So I see a chair over there. What I'm actually doing is having a sensation that reminds me of the idea of a chair. I'm actually remembering from a previous life. Now, the secular version of Plato's view is to talk about intuition, that we all have certain ideals or ideas that we intuit, and the way we know then is not through sensation. Sensation just, you know, stimulates the remembrance or the intuition of the idea. But you see, Plato could hold that view because he also thought that the real world was the immaterial world. Plato thought there was something unreal or at best, less real about matter than about ideas. Now, if you come and you take another philosopher, let's say David Hume, who doesn't believe that there's a realm of ideas that is abstracted from the material world, you would not expect David Hume to have an epistemology of recollection. Then his theory of knowledge is not going to depend upon recollection because his theory of reality says there's nothing to recollect. And when we talk about worldviews being made up of a network of beliefs, I'm referring to this idea that a man's epistemology, his metaphysic, and his ethic in one way or another are networked. They're related to each other. They're not like just different marbles all thrown into the bowl together. You know, so you Take a little bit of this philosophy and a little bit of that and throw it together. No, in some way, not always rational or cogent, but in some way, people think that their fundamental convictions have been accorded to each other, are appropriate to each other. So a worldview is a network of convictions about reality, how we know what we know and how we should live our lives. The worldview is a system of sorts. Secondly, I said, it's a network of presuppositions not verified by natural science. These beliefs are not held because of the scientific method. Rather, these beliefs are what makes sense out of the scientific method, what we call the method of science. Going out and observing, making hypotheses, verifying or disconfirming them through further experiment and so forth. That approach to learning things itself assumes something about human nature, something about the nature of reality, something about the nature of knowledge and how we ought to live our lives and so forth. What we call the scientific method is not the rock bottom of somebody's worldview. The scientific method itself presupposes a certain view of the world. And that's why in the Hindu cultures of history, the scientific method was never developed. For, you see, Hindus do not see the world, do not view reality the way the Christian sees the world, and therefore were never inspired to develop a system of exploration and experience experimentation. According to the Hindu, the world out there that we experience in daily life is illusion. It's a chance world. You can't count on anything. It's not predictable. Well, if it's not predictable, then why bother to study those things that will be projected into the future and help you predict what will happen? There is no predictability. It's all illusion. And therefore, the scientific method is not the basis for a person's worldview. Rather, the scientific method itself reflects a certain kind of worldview. We don't come to our convictions about how we know what we know because we've gone out and explored and used observation and discovered the answer to that question. Think about that. Whenever you talk to somebody who says everything that you know must be based upon observation, make sure you ask them, do you mean everything? Everything we know is based on observation? If a guy says yes, then I would suggest you try to illustrate the contradiction in what he has just uttered in the following way. Let's make a list of the things that we know. I know that there's a ladybug on the rose bush. I know that bacteria causes disease. I know that pumpkins are heavier than plums. I know that horses don't Fly, we'll go down the list and so forth. We could make a long, long, long list. But we try to get various kinds of things that we know, okay, now, what observation or set of observations verifies this one? What observation or set of observations verifies this next one? So forth and so on. But now what if we add to the bottom of the list this belief? All knowledge is justified by observation. So now we got this long list of things we know. One of the things we know, I said, is that pumpkins are heavier than plums. Now you can imagine what observations are called for in order to prove that or to know it. Or maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe some plums are heavier than pumpkins, I don't know. But the point is you can imagine what observations you would consult in order to verify or disconfirm that belief. When you get to the bottom of the list, what observation can anybody go to to show that knowledge, all knowledge is based on observation? Now, if you have a sophisticated unbeliever, he might say something like, well, everything else in this list was verified by observation. And so those are the kinds of observations that prove that all knowledge is based on observation. And you see the fallacy right away, don't you? Oh, but this statement says all knowledge. Now, no one's denying that some things are known on the basis of observation. This pumpkin plum stuff, okay, we know that from observation. But you're talking about all knowledge. And the fact is you haven't observed all cases of knowledge. And if all knowledge is based on observation and you haven't observed all cases of knowledge, then you don't know what's true about all knowledge. Moreover, people don't observe the way that we know. Okay, you may observe things about plums and pumpkins, but you don't observe the observation process and the knowing process. And so it turns out that he makes reference in his statement when he says all knowledge is based on observation itself is not observed. He doesn't observe the universality of the cases of knowledge, nor does he observe the knowing process. And so now you see why the person who says all knowledge is based on observation has already refuted himself. Because if all knowledge is based on observation, and he didn't observe that, then he doesn't know that all knowledge is based on observation. He has, without even knowing it. And many Christians don't realize this, he has, in the very utterance of that view, refuted himself. And so people are not always real clear on how to get their metaphysical and their epistemological and their ethical views together. In fact, I believe that's an affliction that all unbelievers have. We'll be talking about that after lunch. But my point is everybody has convictions. And those convictions are not based upon observation, but rather they are the convictions that make sense out of observation or lead them to use their senses to observe and to know things. The look and see method of knowing does not authorize itself. Now, this tells you something about the nature of apologetics. If I can just take a minute here and go down a blind alley with you. Not a blind alley, but I would like to pursue an ancillary thought here. It is often thought that when we defend the faith, what we are doing is pitting the faith against science. Some people use the scientific method of observation, other people have the eyes of faith. But I hope that in terms of what you have learned right now, you can already see that that's not the way to conceive of the conflict between the believer and the unbeliever. Everybody has a faith commitment, even the scientist, even the person who believes in observation is the basis of most of the things we know. He too has a fundamental conviction about the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge, and how he should live his life. He has a faith commitment, and the Christian has a faith commitment. And so apologetics is not faith versus science. It's what? It's faith versus faith. It's one worldview versus another worldview. Now, when I call something a matter of faith, I want you to understand immediately I don't mean automatically irrational. Not all faith is irrational. Some faith is. There are some people who believe, absolutely believe, that Elvis is still alive. And we make jokes about them. We have a good laugh about that every once in a while. But some people take that very seriously. And they would say, I just have faith that the King is still alive. And I'd say that kind of faith is irrational. But I happen to believe that my redeemer lives. I believe that Jesus was not held by death, and that when I say I believe that on faith, I don't mean a faith that's just some kind of leap into the dark, kind of like a suicide of the mind. And so I'll believe anything I want. So when I say that people hold these convictions by faith, I'm not talking about the nature of the faith. It may be blind and irrational, may be contradictory. It may be very well founded, it may be very credible. It may have authority behind it. But my point is our convictions are not ultimately scientific. Everybody comes into this world as a child, at least those with normal intellectual ability. Everyone comes into this world curious. I believe myself that God makes us curious. That's part of the cultural mandate. But that curiosity is not real intellectual at first. You know, you might see a baby just looking at a mobile, you know, hanging in his crib, and he's just curious about that. May reach out for it, may want to touch it. And of course, it's always wonderful from parents when children get to the age where everything has to be put into their mouths to be explored. You know, you gotta be very careful about the extent of their experimentation when that happens. But the point is, babies are curious. But the day comes when the curiosity of a child develops into a desire to control his or her environment. That's a real fancy way of talking about it. It's one thing for the baby to be curious about the difference between things that are in the crib and outside the crib, but the day comes when the baby says, hey, I don't want to be in the crib. I'd like to get outside this environment. I'd like to control the conditions of my life. Most children don't talk to themselves in that way, but we can do a rational reconstruction and look at them that way. They're saying, not just, oh, that's interesting. There's a colorful thing to touch. But, hey, there's a colorful thing across the room. I'd like to hold that. I walk across the room and get it. And so now the mental development has gone beyond curiosity to some attempt to control the environment. But at the early levels of cognitive discovery, those who wish to control the environment Aren't necessarily systematic and disciplined in the way that they do it. That is, the baby may not be thinking in law, like patterns of conduct and behavior, but there will be a day when the child will do that. The first time the child touches something hot and goes, oh, wow, that wasn't much fun. The child begins to develop generalizations, beliefs that are not just momentary. Hey, there's a colorful blue thing I want to touch. But now the child begins to learn that anything that emanates heat might also follow with pain. And so it's not what we would consider a great scientific discovery or something you might want to write an essay about. But the child learns you don't touch a hot stove. Then we send our children to school, and allegedly in school, they start to organize their systematic and disciplined understanding of the way the world works into generalizations that allow for predictions to be made. And at the Highest level of the university, you have people who study physics and biology and medicine and so forth. But I hope that you can see there's a continuum here in terms of the learning process. First, curiosity, a desire to control the environment, then an attempt to be systematic and disciplined in controlling the environment, then to draw generalizations in terms of which you can make predictions about the environment and live your life more successfully, happily or whatever it may be. But that is not the end of the thinking process. For you see, once you get to the level of thinking what we will call more scientifically in terms of law, like predictions, you still have other questions that have to be asked about the limits of what you can know, what is possible in this world, what is not possible, what the consequences of believing certain things might be. So when I talk to a scientist who has learned a lot about hot ovens and quasars and all the rest, and he has all these fancy scientific theories, I can still ask him a question about whether he knows everything there is to know. He'll probably say, well, I don't personally, but if we could collect everything, if we could observe everything, then that would be everything you could do know. But then we can ask the question, well, would you observe that? That's the limit of what people could know. You can't ever observe the limit of what observation can show you, because then you'd have to do it without observation, wouldn't you? That is to say, everybody finally comes to the place where they ask philosophical questions. For instance, if a scientist tells me all the things he knows about hot ovens and quasars and all the rest of. I can still ask him, is that always true, or is that only true sometimes? Well, he can only tell me that it's always true in a scientific way. If he had experienced everything and observed it always without any interruption, is it possible that that's illusion? Is it possible there's another world beyond that? Are there things that can be known that are not available to science? What are the limits of possibility? What are the consequences of believing certain things? Now, if I believe certain things about nuclear fission, can I, in a scientific way, answer the question whether I should use nuclear fission to zap some culture of people because I don't happen to like the color of their skin? Can science answer that question? So what I'm getting at is everybody's system of beliefs in this cognitive process we're talking about, everybody's system of belief eventually takes them to some kind of philosophical or faith commitment about the nature of knowledge, the nature of reality, the range of possibilities, and how we should live our lives. Apologetics is not faith versus science. It's one kind of faith that uses science and another kind of faith that uses science. And. And it's a discussion of which philosophical or faith commitment makes sense out of science. Unbelievers have a faith commitment about the nature of the world that doesn't really fit into their scientific method. For instance, unbelievers don't think that there's a creator God who sovereignly controls everything in this world. That's kind of Sunday School superstition. That's our irrational leap of faith that we are Christians. But now it's interesting. We're not the only ones that have a faith commitment. As I've just said, the scientist, the unbelieving scientist has a faith commitment as well. And what's he believe about the world? Is there a God who controls everything that takes place? No. Well, then you have to ask him, well, is everything possible then? Is this a chance universe? Is it a random universe? Yes, it's a random universe. You say, okay, well then is it possible for you to do your scientific exploration, to use your scientific method if you believe everything's random? Now, you see, the scientist, for the first time in his life, has to be philosophical, and many don't like it. By the way, you'll find that the psychological way in which people negotiate that intellectual tension is to ridicule your question or say, oh, who cares about that? Oh, you're getting philosophical. I love it when people say that to me. They say, well, now you're getting philosophical. And I say, yes, I am. And now what's the answer to that philosophical question? Because everybody's got to have an answer to it by comparison. Do you see that the Christian's faith commitment makes science possible? Since we believe in a God who is reliable and controls the world, it's not random, it's not chance. We can explore the world and expect law like generalizations and predictions to be possible. But if the unbelieving scientist lived up to his presuppositions, he wouldn't do science at all. The world would be random. It wouldn't be law. Like, there's no reason to think that the future will be like the past, or there's uniformity in nature at all. Apologetics is a comparison of fundamental worldviews, therefore. And what we want to ask is not which one is verified by science, but rather which one makes science possible. In Romans, chapter 1, the apostle Paul tells us that all men know God and they live in terms of that conviction, but they will not give thanks to God. Now, twice in my life I've had the terrible experience of open heart surgery. And in both cases, as far as I could tell, my surgeons were not Christians. And yet these men know a great deal about human anatomy. And, you know, and I thank God for what they know about surgery and about the function of the heart and how to keep me alive while they replace my aorta valve and all the rest. But again, as far as I can tell, I'm pretty sure these men were unbelievers and fairly crass unbelievers. They don't give thanks to God for what they know. The apostle Paul says they couldn't do what they are doing in this world if they didn't know God. My surgeons realized because they've had lots of past experience in cutting open people and working on the heart, they know a lot about the function of the human body, how to preserve life, replace valves and all the rest of the. And they just took it for granted that when they operated on me that what they had learned in previous cases would be applicable to my case. But they had no right to believe that if they think this is a random universe, do they? They have no reason to think the future is going to be like the past. Things could change. Things could change radically. And so they should be giving thanks to God for their medical ability. I certainly give thanks to God for their medical ability, but they don't. The Apostle Paul says they must know God to live in God's world successfully. And yet they won't turn around and acknowledge God and give him thanks for what they're able to know. Everybody has a network of presuppositions. Everybody has a worldview, and their worldview is not scientifically verified. It's something that's held by faith. It's a philosophical commitment. But not everybody, not everybody's worldview makes sense. The worldview of my surgeons does not make sense, whereas the worldview of the Christian does.

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