Dr Greg Bahnsen - Seminary Apologetics: Worldview Issues Part 1 (Part 13)

This message was delivered by Dr. Greg L. Bonson, Scholar in Residence at the Southern California center for Christian Studies in Irvine, California, By discussing the development of a worldview. The development of a worldview. Or to put it another way, what is philosophy all about? A lot of people are intimidated when they hear the word philosophy because, well, philosophers sometimes sound so academic and abstract. They at least like to give the impression that they're intellectual and they use a vocabulary that can be intimidating. And so people are often put off by philosophy. You say, now we're going to study the philosophy of this or that. Most people just kind of, you know, they click off upstairs, they say, well, that's the end of it for me. I'm not into philosophy. I'm not abstract and so forth. And as long as that is your conception of philosophy, that's your attitude and your response to philosophy, it's doubtful that you'll be effective as a defender of the faith because the defense of the faith requires you to be basically a better philosopher than the unreligious. Now, does that mean you have to stop everything, go back to school to get a philosophy in major? No, by no means. But if you don't stop to think philosophically about what's going on in the dispute between the believer and the unbeliever, I think you'll probably be swamped in the argument. Your best hope as an apologist, if you refuse to think philosophically, just run into people who are always dumber than you. But if you study philosophy, you'll be able to talk to anybody, provide an answer from the faith to anybody who asks you. That doesn't mean you're going to be able to keep up with a PhD in Philosophy, Vocabulary and all that. But if you know what the issues are and what you're looking to accomplish, all you have to do is go slow and say, please explain that to me. Explain that to me. You'll be able to change the conversation and not be worried that he sandbagged you, or you're not able to finally surmount what he is saying. It's very important, therefore, that we begin today by getting rid of this, because animosity, at least our fear of philosophy. What is philosophy? Well, it may help you to know that if you ask 10 philosophers that question, you'll get nine answers, and I'm being generous. Philosophy is a very difficult thing to define. We all have some idea of who the philosophers have been in history. Everybody would say, well, Plato was a philosopher and Kant was a philosopher and that sort of thing. But Just what it is they were doing that constitutes a philosophy is not easy to put our finger on. In my own estimation, philosophy amounts to two basic functions that we perform intellectually. The first is a critical function. To think philosophically is to cross examine the most basic assumptions of our thought. Not everybody shares those same basic assumptions, at least in outward profession. And you become philosophical when you start saying, well now why do you believe that? And how is this conviction supported by that conviction? You start asking critical or analytical questions. That's part of the philosophy task. But the philosopher's task is not simply to be a pain, going around asking questions that people can't answer and embarrassing them because of their contradictions. The philosopher is also called upon to provide a positive statement. But the positive statement is not about any one particular aspect of human experience. Philosophers don't tell us about medical science, philosophers don't tell us about astronomy. Philosophers don't teach us, you know, about geography or about math. What is it that philosophers does? Well, the answer is everything. So nothing in particular, you know what I'm saying? The philosopher tries to give a total of human reality, experience, so that every aspect of our experience is integrated, has its place. And so you have the critical or analytical function of the philosopher, which is to cross examine basic assumptions. And you have the positive unifying construction of the philosopher, the function of attempting to develop a world view. Now I'm going to use that expression, we'll define it in a little while. To understand where philosophy comes from, I think it'd be good to first consider the inevitable process of becoming a philosopher. The inevitable process. Now let's go back to the beginning of my comments. A few moments ago I said many of you are intimidated, or many people anyway, or intimidated by the thought of doing philosophy. The irony about that is everybody's doing it. Everybody does philosophy. That isn't to say everybody does it. Well, that isn't to say everybody does it self consciously. That isn't to say everybody does it professionally. It's paid to teach it or to argue it or whatever. It isn't to say that everybody does it with a sophisticated vocabulary. And it isn't even to say that everybody knows they're doing it, but everybody doesn't. Everybody engages in some measure of cross examination of basic assumptions. And everybody has some kind of total picture where each aspect of human experience finds its proper place and is related to everything else. So everybody does velocity. I want to argue that it is inevitable, the process of developing a philosophy. And what is not inevitable, as I said, is that you'll do it well. And that's why it's good to study philosophy, to sharpen our critical tools, to consider a wider range of options, and to come up with better answers. It's good to study philosophy, but everybody does philosophy, whether they study it self consciously or not. Where does philosophy begin? Let's back up. Where does human life begin? Now we're born. What do we know about babies? Well, we know a lot of things about babies. They make messes, they cry, they get hungry. But what do we know about the mental life of babies? Well, the first thing that we see in the development of a child, to put it very simply, is curiosity. Babies take an interest in that mobile that's above their heads, or a sound that they hear, or maybe the regularity of their mother's face. But children have a natural curiosity indeed. It's when we see children not responding to their environment in curious ways that we take them to the doctor to find out if there isn't something wrong, maybe a hearing deficiency or maybe brain problems, whatever it may be. But in the natural development of the human being, we all begin to be curious. And that curiosity takes us to a point where we learn that knowledge is power. I don't expect any child to sit up in the crib and say, I have discovered that knowledge is power. But looking back at that experience, we can summarize it by saying that children very soon learn that their curiosity can be turned into something valuable. They learn, don't put this kind of thing in your mouth because it doesn't take taste good. I'm being very simple here. Have I intimidated anybody yet? Curiosity, which is natural in man, in fact, I think it's God given. Curiosity leads us to try to learn about the world primarily so that we can control our environment. Children learn to control their environment. Some children learn to control their parents. That amazing. The babies can outwit grown adults. They can, and they learn to do that because they start seeing connections between things like crying and getting attention, right? So they learn, don't put this in your mouth, don't touch that. This is fun. Here's how to get mom's attention. Things all of us begin, all of us eventually realize, that if we learn about the nature of things, we can better control our world. Knowledge is power. As we mature beyond early childhood, we come to desire what might be called an expanded horizon of understanding. As I raise my own ship, it was, well, every age has its own glory and joy, I realize. But it was so much fun to see them move from that Undifferentiated interest in how do I control my environment, to just wanting to learn about things beyond to gain a broader horizon. So what's it like? How do people live on the next block over? That's very minimal. But are people the same over there? And, you know, they want to know more about the world. They want to expand their horizon of understanding dreadfully in the public schools all across America today. I feel that one of the greatest insults and one of the greatest deprivations that are imposed by children is that that desire, which is natural, to expand your horizon of understanding. Understanding. It's learned because we don't deal with children, I think, in a proper way. We don't show them how to learn. And basically we try to put them in a straight jacket. And they don't learn because they have to do it in a way that, you know, is. Along with 30 other students in a classroom. But that's for another day. I'll complain about that. The point is, children naturally want to learn. They've learned the value of. Of knowledge. If I know the nature of something, I can control my environment. And they have this curiosity that wants to expand the horizon of their understanding. But as they grow beyond that early stage in elementary school, they start looking and all of a sudden start looking for a more systematic organization and interrelation of what we know. Now we. We begin to realize, well, there's a connection between what I've learned over here in the kitchen and what I'm learning here about fire, heat and cooking. Food go together. So if I knew better how to produce heat and control it, children learned I could be more effective in the kitchen and maybe cook the things that I want, whatever that is to say. We begin to realize that this world is not just a disjointed set of, you know, a marble of knowledge here, a marble of knowledge there, that things are related to one another. And so we try to organize what we've learned. And as we organize what we learned, what we learned, especially in the higher grades and as we go off to university, we engage in disciplined inquiry about a particular aspect of human experience, a discipline in free. Now it's not just curiosity developing and amassing information and trying to relate it to other things. But now we're going to have a method of learning, and now we're going to organize things, and we're going to try to systematize what we learn. So what we learn about physics has a bearing on what we learn in biology. And what we learn in physics and biology has a Bearing on how we understand man and man's response behavior. So we now are engaged in a kind of discipline inquiry, asking what are the appropriate methods for learning. And what are the rules by which we apply what we know? And as we ask those kinds of questions, we seek general laws that govern our phenomena. Now we want to know not just is water, you know, something that satisfies my thirst? Is the water hot or cold? Is the water? Well, whatever we ask, what is water? And when we find out that it's H2O, has two hydrogen molecules for every oxygen molecule, then we know something about its relationship to other things that also have hydrogen or water, excuse me, oxygen in them, and other elements. So general laws are developed to govern the phenomena, the what we might call natural laws. We try to look for the laws of physics and the laws of chemistry. And these laws help us not only to explain what happens in our experience, but to predict what will happen in our experience. It gives us a measure of control over our environment. There's really a continuity between the child in the crib, you see, who's looking for control over his environment, and the scientist who's trying to control his environment by sending a rocket to the moon or whatever. The difference between the two is not one of kind. The difference is one of degree. Now, do you understand that? Anybody intimidated yet? We all know there's this natural progression from the earliest curiosity of the child to more disciplined inquiry, to the attempt to say things which are generally true and give us predictive power over our environment. But that isn't the end of our natural curiosity, because we do push beyond that and we ask other questions. Eventually we face more fundamental questions about this discipline, inquiry and the outcome of our study of the natural world and of ourselves. We ask questions about how do all these things relate to one another? And why do they relate to one another? And how do I put together what I know about my own experience and about human life with what I've learned about the natural world? That doesn't seem like a difficult question or even a particularly relevant question when you're just specifically talking about the composition of water, you know, and how there's blood in your finger. I mean, that is a call for a lot of. But what else do I know about myself? I know that I make decisions. Sometimes I don't live up to the commitments that I've made. Sometimes the decisions I've made conflict with other people. I know that there's this element of contingency or freedom and creativity about me. And yet I don't see that in the natural world. See the natural world operating in a fairly uniform, predictable way. Now, that naturally raises the question, am I part of the natural world which operates in this uniform way? Or is the reality that I'm in fact free and I make the decisions that I do, and I'm a creative, personal kind of entity? Now, when we start asking questions like that. And by the way, many people get discouraged at this point because it's so hard. And they say, ah, well, don't worry about it. Well, you do have to worry about it because in the end it makes a difference as to how you live in this world. Right? Let's say that we find somebody guilty of murdering his wife. Now, should we do anything about that? Most of us would say, well, of course we need to do something about this person ought notice that ought to be punished. But in a world where there is no ought, there's just the way things happen in a world, predictable way, ought is really a ridiculous thing to say. That's why many people argue we shouldn't punish criminals. They may want to reprogram them or try to re stimulate them so they have the right connection with this kind of behavior and rewards. But it won't do any good to punish them because punishment only makes sense if you think there's moral culpability. Moral culpability only makes sense if you believe in human freedom. But in a world where everything is controlled by natural laws, there is no human freedom. So when we push beyond our scientific learning and start asking about how do we interconnect? How do we relate the various things we know about the world and about ourselves? When we start asking questions like can we know everything there is to know by natural science? Is what what we've learned in natural science reliable? Is it always going to be that way? Things like this force us to become more abstract, more general than even the general laws of science. We're going to ask questions about what's real. Are quasars real or are they just a way of talking? Is love real or is that just a way of talking? We're asked about what's real. We're going to ask about how we know what we know. You know, everything that we claim to know relies in large measure on memory. What's memory? What controls memory? Is memory reliable, by the way, can you tell? Can you test the reliability of memory without relying on memory? That's one of the toughest questions in systemology. How we can know what we know if everything we know is dependent to some degree on memory. And you can't test memory without relying on memory. Then we've got a real problem here, don't we? By asking questions, more general questions. Than just what do we know about ourselves and observing the world. We might ask about how we should use this information. Should I use the information I've learned about particle physics and so forth. To develop a bomb that can hurt a lot of other human beings? Is it appropriate for me to go ahead and hurt those other human beings? Maybe even kill them if they don't do what I would want them to do? What if they get in the way of what I predict is the best line of behavior for people? Should I just eliminate them? Okay, so the natural curiosity of the child. Develops into more disciplined inquiry. Which develops into general laws and evaluations. And those questions raise further questions, even more general than that. Where does philosophy come in? Well, I tricked you. Because that last level of questions that I call just more general questions. Are what we call philosophical questions. What is the nature of man? How does he fit into the world? How should he live his life? How does he know what he knows and what is basically real? Philosophy ought not to intimidate people. Because everybody does philosophy. This is not everybody has either the stamina or interest. Or maybe, you know, ability to do it really well. Eventually, we face the fundamental questions. Which are at the very heart of our thinking, at the very center of our thinking. Those questions that control what we will consider to be real. How we know what we know and how we should live our lives. And in answering those questions, we are not only trying to be cool, critical and analytical. So that we have a reliable foundation for what we believe and what we do. But we're also seeking an overall or general unity. Among the fragmented items of what we know. That is, we're looking for what might be called an integration point. Or a picture. By which we can put everything in our experience in its place. And when we have that picture, that integrating point in our thinking. That helps us to evaluate everything else we do. To interpret the experiences that we have. And to apply what we have learned to the world. So this orientation, this integration point. Might be called your worldview. Let me give you a definition of a worldview. A worldview is a network of presuppositions. That are not verified by natural science. But in terms of which every aspect of experience is interrelated and interpreted. A worldview is a network of presuppositions. Not verified by natural science. But in terms of which every aspect of experience is interrelated and interpretive. When we talk about a person's worldview, what talking about his or her most basic beliefs. Most basic beliefs. Those which are most foundational, or if you want to use a different image, more central to the web of all the other things that they believe. So that's why in my defining of a worldview, I use this word presuppose, that which is pre. All my suppositions, all my opinions and thinking have something which goes before them and is prior to them is the lowest foundational level or in the center of everything, my presuppositions. In my definition, I have said that there is a network of presuppositions. Reflect on that for a moment. People don't have just one opinion at the center of their life. The first reason why that's the case. We're going to come back to this later. The first reason is because it's impossible to believe just one thing. Ever think about that? If you were to carry out this observation, reflect on it, it would revolutionize your approach to apologetics. It is impossible to believe only one thing. Try it. Let's see if we can do an experiment in believing just one thing. Let's see if we can just believe that elephants are heavy. Can you believe only that elephants are heavy? No. Because you need to know what an elephant is, right? You also need to know how the English word elephant is used. And that means you have to rely on your memory and previous experiences, and you have to believe that those are reliable. I mean, if I were right now to say, I don't know how I could actually be just this radical in my skepticism. But if right now I were to say, I don't think any English word I've ever learned has been learned properly. If I were just totally say, I can't speak English, I'm not sure of English, of course, then I could use the English sentence to say, I'm not sure about English, right? Can I completely eradicate all my memories of the use of the English language? The many times that I've said, you know, please open the door, and somebody did what I thought was the right response and opened the door. Can I put all that aside? Elephants are heavy. It requires me to rely on my understanding of the English language and my understanding of elephants. But my understanding of elephants, what does it require? You know, some knowledge about zoos, maybe, or maybe more sophisticated knowledge of the animal world and mammals and the place of elephants in it. So I also have to understand the use of the word heavy and the concept of heavy. And to do that, I can't just think about elephants, because remember, we're supposed to only believe one thing. So elephants are heavy requires me to think about something more than elephants. To understand elephants and to understand heavy, I have to understand more than just elements. But it turns out it's impossible to believe just one thing. Every belief we have is tied into some other beliefs that we have. As far as I like to put it in my popular seminars, beliefs come in clusters. They aren't marvelous. All of our beliefs are clustered, and one belief supports another belief with various kinds of relationships of meaning and evidential support and application. All of our beliefs are clustered. Nevertheless, there are some beliefs which are more basic than other beliefs. Though it's going to be a cluster of beliefs, not all beliefs are held with the same degree of tenacity. Let me tell you a couple of things that I believe. I believe that you can't have a plum that's as big as a pump. One of the things I believe I thought about writing songs about that. I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows. I believe a plum will never be as big as a pumpkin. Something else I believe is that I have a mother and a father. Now, I believe what I believe about plums and I believe about belief about parents. Now, would anybody think that, nevertheless, those beliefs are on an equal footing in terms of how strongly I hold to them? What would it take to convince me that I'm wrong about plums and pumpkins? Well, it may take a lot, and it may be that it isn't possible, but at least it's easy to understand what would lead me to give that up? Somebody were to work on some genetic destruction distortion and a plum, and he got one that began to approximate a small pumpkin. I might say, wow, I think maybe I'm going to have to reconsider my belief about farms and pumpkins. You can imagine me giving up that belief under some circumstances right now. Would it be just that easy to have me give up the belief that I have a mother and a father? Now, I'm not saying to give up the belief that the person I call are the people I call mom and dad are in fact my mom and dad? You know, that'd be strange and it'd be hard to do, but I can imagine circumstances under which I would say, wow, I was adopted. No one ever told me so these aren't really my mother and father. But I wouldn't draw the conclusion. I don't have a mother and I don't have a father believing that you have parents. That's something that we believe is something that's far more basic, if you will, than what we believe about the characteristics of the natural world. Plums, pumpkins. So everybody has beliefs. These beliefs come in clusters. And some of those clusters are more authoritative, more tenaciously held onto than others. So there are more basic beliefs. Now, the most basic beliefs, we have those beliefs which are prior to all of our other suppositions we call our presuppositions. And our presuppositions come in clusters. I've already explained that to you. So in my definition, I say a worldview is a network of presuppositions, plural. By calling it a network, I'm recognizing that clustering effect, but I'm doing more than saying that it's a cluster view because, as you know, a cluster of grapes need not be ordered in any particular way or whatever order we do. See, we don't necessarily think it's special or significant in itself, but the cluster of presuppositions that a person holds is networked. That is to say, they are adjusted to each other. They aren't just arbitrarily thrown together. Today, at some point I'm going to be talking to you about worldview types and various orientations, and you'll see that a certain view of reality never goes with a different view, which is conflicting in character of epistemology. There are only certain kinds of views of reality that fit in with a particular view of knowledge and vice versa. And so whenever somebody holds to, well, let's say, the idea that everything we know is based on a particular sensation, you'll find out that that person never holds to a worldview that says there are general things, what are known as universals that exist. People who have the approach that we can only know our particular sensations never draw the conclusion that nevertheless there are universal realities. Epistemology and metaphysics go hand in hand, as I kind of warned you in previous lectures in this course already. So there's a networking effect among our basic cluster of beliefs, our presuppositions. Everybody with me so far you nod your heads. I told you you didn't have to be worried about this. Please turn the cassette over at this time. Okay, so a worldview is a network of presuppositions. What are the presuppositions address? Well, three questions that are really the outline or the divisions of what we call philosophy. Your presuppositions can address the nature of reality in philosophy. That's called metaphysics. Questions about the nature of reality. Your presuppositions will address how you know what you know. Your theory of knowledge. Theory of knowledge is the epistemology. And then your presuppositions will also address the most fundamental question about what's right and wrong, how we should consider conduct ourselves or your ethics. So metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Not all of our metaphysical, epistemological, or ethical opinions are at the presuppositional level. I'm not saying that. I am saying, however, that everybody's got a basic cluster of beliefs about reality, knowing and living. Everybody's got that. And then they develop higher levels and other convictions based on more fundamental convictions. They build out from that. But at the center of everybody's set of beliefs is a network of presuppositions. Now, the next thing in the definition that you want to notice is that these presuppositions are. Are not verified by natural science. And that's going to bother some people right away. People who say everything we know, we have to know on the basis of natural scientific, you know, technique are going to say, well, then we don't have any of these presuppositions because we can only know the things that we know by natural science. Well, I realize there are a lot of people in the world who say that, but there are a lot of people who aren't very intelligent in what they say, too. So the fact that a lot of people are saying it shouldn't automatically worry you. Anybody who says everything we believe, we believe on the basis of natural science needs to be asked at least one more question, right? And is what you just said something we learned by natural science? This ain't natural. Natural science can't answer all questions because it can't answer questions about itself. There may be other defects in that point of view as well, which we'll come to. But the reason why natural science does not verify our presuppositions is because it's our presuppositions that guide our use of natural science. What if your presupposition is the physical world is Maya and is nothing but chaos and any semblance of order has been imposed by the illusory imagination of my mind. That's pretty radical. But if you believe that, you're obviously not going to spend a whole lot of time in the science lab trying to find, you know, a cure for polio, are you? Because what you're studying in the lab, there's nothing to study there. It's all illusion and Whatever you find, you spun out of your own imagination anyway. So you wouldn't bother to do that. Now, when I use that kind of radical illustration, some people will say, oh, yeah, But I mean, so what? You can't find people like that. Oh, yeah. Have you ever been in the eastern part of the world? There are a lot of people who don't trust our experience that comes through sensation and observation. A lot. We got to deal with those people, too. We can't just say, oh, no. We're only going to have a theory of knowledge that talks to people on our block. You know, people who are in our culture, people who are like us. If you're going to be philosophical, you have to entertain some radical alternatives. And it turns out that natural science itself rests upon superior certain presuppositions, doesn't it? Certain presuppositions about the reality of the physical world, about the regularity of events in the physical world, about the reliability of my sensing organisms, about the reliability of my memory, the appropriateness of applying my logical theories to the world in which I live, and on and on and on. Now, all I'm trying to point out here is, is that a person's presuppositions in the nature of the case could not be a matter that's verified by natural science, because natural science has its own presuppositions. Okay, well, they aren't verified by natural science, which itself depends on presuppositions. Then our most basic presuppositions are held. Held by faith, aren't they? Everybody's got a basic faith. I quickly add, for the sake of those who have been misled on the use of the word faith, that faith doesn't mean a blind leap. All I'm saying is it's not based on observation. But there are a lot of things that we believe that aren't based on observation. Sometimes we believe in the loyalty of a friend, even though what we have observed would seem to stand against it. What's that based on? Well, that's a faith commitment about the character of the person. And even though there's contrary evidence, or apparently contrary evidence, you continue to believe that. We believe that the toothpaste is going to squirt out of the tooth tomorrow morning when we squeeze the tube and we say, well, we have seen that. We've seen it in the past. But what we haven't seen is that the future and the past are connected. To use a figure of speech, that what happens in the future is going to be what's like our Experience that it's like our experience in the past. We don't see that all of us have things that we believe without drawing direct eyeball inspection. Whether it's about interpersonal relationships or the operation of the natural world, or that we're the same person that was in that second grade elementary school picture. I mean, we didn't watch ourselves from the day of that picture. Every moment to make sure there was no change of personality. We by faith assume a certain idea about human continuity. That was me when I was younger. Anyway, the presuppositions that we hold are held by faith. But that isn't to say that there's some kind of arbitrary willy nilly leap like I'll just believe anything. That's what some people think faith is. Faith is just, you know, having this commitment to whatever you want to be committed to, regardless of the evidence. So as long as you don't interpret the word faith in that way. And what I'm saying here is that a worldview is a network of presuppositions held on faith. And by the way, not only is it held on faith, those presuppositions are held religiously. Okay, now we have to understand religion, right? I gave us a little caveat about faith a moment ago. Let me say something about religion. Most people make the mistake of automatically thinking of ritual when they hear the word religion. Maybe that's not the best word, but they think of worship or synagogue, church building, going through certain actions, certain kind of somber tones of voice or something. Religion has to do with engaging a certain kind of ritual. And so then we think people who don't go through these kinds of somber rituals in some kind of personal, some group or individual setting are not religious. But I think that is an impoverished view of religion. Religion has to do with our ultimate commitments, what we're willing to live for and die for. Although not everybody is true to their religion. But they act like this is what I would die for, this is what I'm living for. Everybody has some kind of ultimate commitment. Even if they don't have a liturgy for their ultimate commitment, they've got an ultimate commitment. And their ultimate commitment helps systematize their experience. Their ultimate commitment gives meaning to their life. One, what are we here for? What should I live for? What should be my purpose tells me how to live my life and how to evaluate other things, how to assess what's valuable. And those ultimate commitments don't turn out to be beliefs about whether there's a train outside right now. I believe that there's a train outside, please. There was rarely here. See, that was one of my beliefs. Did you have that belief when you heard that train? There's somebody else out there, too. Yeah, you do have these beliefs. But, you know, because I didn't draw attention to that. You listened to that train, you had that belief. And probably if I had waited another five minutes and asked the question, you might not even have been able to remember if there's a train outside. Sometimes RB beliefs are so temporary, they're only a few seconds long. Isn't that incredible? Other beliefs we hold on to and in fact, we don't want to let go of. They are so central, we are so committed to them that to give them up would require a major disruption in our thinking or our living. A major disruption. And that's because, to use the figure of a small spider web, they're so central to the web that you break those beliefs and the whole web goes whack. You know, it's just going to mess up your entire life. Now, from what you've learned of human experience, are people generally inclined to allow for their entire lives to be totally disrupted day by day by day by day? They kind of like that, right? Like all my relationships to all other people are going to be fundamentally changed today and tomorrow and the next day. And the way in which I see the world and what's real and how I know what I know. Well, I'll tell you, who knows what I'll be thinking on Saturday when that rolls around. Nobody likes to do that. It's uncomfortable. It's not only uncomfortable, it's entirely inconvenient because now we got to reorganize everything. How many people do you know who go home, everybody day and open all the drawers in their dresser and throw everything out on the floor, pull everything out of their closets and say, let's reorganize? Well, it's probably good to do that occasionally, but once you've done it, what do you do? You usually sit down and go, man, I've got that done. I've got years ahead of me before I'm going to change the organization of this house. People don't like to reorganize. They don't like things to be all but upheaval. That's true. Mentally and intellectually. Intellectually, too. And so the most fundamental convictions that we have about life, those things which are our ultimate commitment, we don't like to see them tossed up and down and shaken and so forth, and then having to reorganize and so people hold on to them. Sometimes they hold on to them because they're scared to change their point of view. They don't know what will happen if I give up. These things that have helped me organize my life, help me understand things. And sometimes they're lazy, intellectually lazy. It's easier to say to the preacher who is really pushing me hard about my sin and coming under the judgment of God. It's easier to say, I don't have time for this, than to now have the next few days totally disrupted by wondering, what if I were to die and I have to face God? Am I right? Don't people do this? People are lazy when it comes to their religion. People are scared. And so, philosophically, that cluster of beliefs which is networked together, that's at the center of the web of our lives by which we understand what is real and how we know what we know and how we should live our lives. That cluster is held religiously, tenaciously. It gives meaning to us. And we know we can't negotiate those beliefs without a major disruption. And most of us don't like to reorganize the closet. What a handful of mixed metaphors. But you all say what I'm saying here. Okay, so a worldview is a network of presuppositions, and it's not verified by the process of natural science. Therefore, presuppositions held by faith and held religiously. There may not be a liturgy, may not be ritual that goes along with it. There may be, you know, if you're a Hindu at your most basic level, you may go through Hindu ritual. Please. The ritual is not what defines the worldview. It's the worldview that defines the ritual. So let's just get that straight. Everybody's got a network of basic beliefs, presuppositions not verified by natural science. And it's in terms of that network of beliefs that every aspect of our experience will now be interrelated and interpreted. How do I tie the various parts of my life together? Your worldview is going to help you do that. All right, so you're a university student. In the morning, you go to the psychology class, and there you learn certain things about human nature. Let's say you're in a behavioristic psychology class. Man has got a white rat. Maybe not white, but nevertheless, he's a rat. And he's been programmed. You know, he's been stimulated in a certain way that he responds now to the stimulus. And it's almost predictable. If you just knew all the factors you could actually get people to do what you wanted. So you learn that in the morning and then in the afternoon you take a polysaccharide. And here the poli sci instructor is calling for us to rise up against our authoritarian masters who are oppressing us and to gain human freedom so we can finally realize the dignity of every human being. You know, your worldview is going to be called into play now. You can say, how do I relate what I learned in psychology to what I'm learning in political science? Your worldview helps you relate all these things, and that's a high level. I mean, I gave you an example of high level beliefs about the nature of man as free or as programmed and determined. But our worldview helps us relate all of our day to day mundane affairs too. You know, like how much money I have in my pocket and whether I can buy a loaf of bread at the store. It's conceivable to have a worldview that says, well, those aren't related. Why not? Well, because I take what I want, I don't buy it anyway. So you didn't even think about that option, did you? Because you're all Christians. Your worldview said, well, of course, if you don't have the money, you can't buy the bread. But you see, there are some people who really don't draw that connection. In fact, they laugh at people who do. They say, what an unusual way of living life makes, right? I just take it. And because other people, people have that strange view, they're going to try to, you know, capture me and punish me if I do it. So I have to kind of get along in this world with the people that have that strange. That is my belief. Your worldview helps you integrate and interpret everything that happens to you. To interpret everything that happens to you. You wake up in the middle of the night and you realize the reason that you have awakened just because there was a noise. And it's not as though you're now hearing the noise. But have you ever had that experience where it's almost like it's trailing off? It's like I was just hearing something and that's why I've been awakened. For some of us, embarrassingly, it was my snoring that I was hearing and that's what awakened me. You wake up and you say, what was? Oh, that was me. But you wake up in the middle of the night and say, it's not so easy. And at that you're snoring and say, what was that noise? How shall I Interpret what's happened to me. Maybe there are ghosts in the house. Why do some people worry about that and other people don't? To be very honest with you, and I'm not being macho macho man here, I never worry about ghosts being in my house. There was a time when I did. Now I didn't about worry, but I mean, there was a time when I would entertain that question when I was a child. But I don't now. Why? Because my worldview precludes that hypothesis. Since I don't believe in ghosts, I don't worry about ghosts. I don't even. It's not like I said, okay, now here's the full range of possibilities. Let's start, you know, checking them off. Go find, go do the ghost test. No, not a ghost. I don't even worry about that when it's not even on the list. Maybe someone's broken into the house, maybe one of my children's sick, so forth. Those are realistic given my worldview. But I interpret my experience on the basis of what my worldview tells me are the possibilities. Why is it that when you give evidence to somebody of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a historical fact, they can accept that and say I'm not a supernaturalist, though that's because their worldview is naturalistic. So they'll say, well, okay, if that happened, it happened in some natural way and we don't know what the factors are. We can't explain it right now. But I'm not going to move from that to the conclusion God's been active in history because I don't believe in God. The interpretation of your experience is governed by your worldview. Okay, I trust everybody's with me. Worldview is defined as a network of presuppositions not verified by natural science, in terms of which every aspect of experience is interrelated and interpreted. Everybody has one. It's inevitable. That process of philosophical development is inevitable. I didn't say it was inevitable that you become a good philosopher, a self conscious philosopher, a sophisticated philosopher philosopher. But everyone does philosophy because everybody's got a worldview. I'm anticipating where I'm going in the course. I'm not going to develop this right now. But I just want to ask you this question. Do you think it's possible for people in the process, inevitable process of developing a worldview to have discordant elements in their worldview? Is there anything automatic about people being utterly rapid, rational and consistent? Have you ever known people to be inconsistent? Okay, keep that in mind. I Say, everybody has a worldview I have not taught you. Everybody has a rational and consistent one, but everyone has one held by faith, held religiously. For those of you who have not studied philosophy, either on your own or as majors in college or whatever, I'd like to give you a list of key philosophical questions. Now, within everyone's worldview, there are basic or key philosophical questions that are going to come up, and I'm going to divide. I'm going to do this in two ways. The first set of questions I give you is going to be divided into the three basic categories of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Everybody is going to ask questions or have some kind of basic understanding with respect to the nature of reality. Metaphysics. What's the. What is the nature of man? What is the nature of man? Everybody's got to have some view of that. Is man an animal? Is man good? Is man bad? Is man free? Secondly, everyone has a view of the nature of the universe. Where did it come. Everybody's got a view of that. Sometimes you hear people say, I take no stand on origins. The reason I chuckle is because you can't help but have some operating idea of what this world is. Was it always here? Now, there are people, I think, who act as though it was always here. I think that's a silly position to hold. But there are people who act that way. And there are some people who act as though it wasn't always here. There are some who think it came as just Boingo from chance, and others who think there was an intelligent personal God who created it. There are always so many views, but everybody's operating on some view. What's the nature of the universe in which we live? And then what's man's place in the universe? Right? What is man? What is the universe, and what's man's place there? The prevailing view in our culture, by the way, is that man is an insignificant speck in the impersonal machine, like running of the universe. I'm not talking about precise theoretical views that would be stated in this way. But most people have this idea. I'm just an insignificant. I'm just like a leaf floating through, you know, the air. I'm just something in this universe that is too insignificant. I don't make much of a difference. I'm subject to the universe. So the Christian view that you really rise above the universe, being closer to God than to the animals, and that what you do has so much significance that it will last for all eternity. This blows people's minds? No, no, no. I'm just the evolutionary outcropping of an original slime, you know, a puddle one day started to develop again. These are not intellectually precise points of view, but in terms of the general feeling people have, they have a view of man. They have a view of the universe and man's place in the universe. The existence of God is a metaphysical question. Does God exist? What's God like? What does God do? What does God care about? Does God care about anything? Metaphysics ask questions about the nature of change and development. And when you push, what is the nature of history? Why do things change? How do things develop? Is development design or is it random? If it's random, is it development? Why do things change? How do things change? Is it even possible for things to change? Okay, well, if you caveat, because I see these smirks on your faces, a lot of people think philosophers waste time asking irrelevant questions like why do things change? And how do things change? We all know things change. Oh, do you? You know that things change? The philosopher was, when somebody's so cock sure that they start saying, we can take that for granted. Really? So. So we go back to the ancient Greeks and Zeno in particular. Zeno of Elia said, well, if you're so sure that things changed, maybe you could explain something to me. And then he would tell stories like the flight of the arrow and just say, now if you know that things change, then you should be able to answer these questions about change. And then people get all tied up in knots, and it turns out they ultimately say, I can't explain to you change, but I experience it. I said, oh, well, now we're back to the original problem. Do we know that things change if it's an experience that we can't make? Rational philosophers seem to waste a lot of time on questions like that that don't help you earn a paycheck and raise your children. So many people want to dismiss philosophy. The reason why philosophy ask this question, can we go back to Richmond just for a moment? Is because that natural curiosity with which we all begin in life has developed into a systematic inquiry, a disciplined inquiry, and has led to general laws and so forth about which we have to ask questions. Philosophy, by nature, is at the abstract end of things. We know that. But the reason why philosophers ask these abstract questions is because we've been led into some kind of conundrum. Is man free or is man determined? Much of our experience would tell us everything in this world is predictable and therefore is determined. But if man is part of this world. He certainly is. He's got a physical body. He walks through this world, seems to be part of this world. Then it would seem that man. Man is determined. And yet we also feel the need to punish people who do what we think is, quote, unquote, wrong, immoral. There's aught in our thinking as well. So the philosopher says, well, how do you take those two things and bring them together? That's at the abstract end. Okay? When you're getting ready to cook dinner for your family, you're not too concerned about whether motion is real. But there are problems in our lives and our thinking that lead to one kind of conclusion and different problems and needs that lead to another conclusion. And it's the philosopher who has to sit back in the armchair and go, hmm, should we say that motion is an illusion and that what we rationally can put together is what's real? Or should we say that our reason is not. Not adequate to this and our experience of motion is what we should count on? Anyway? That's a very fundamental question. So anyway, when I give you some of these abstract questions that everybody's got to answer in their worldview, again, I realize they don't ask the question explicitly, but everybody's got some approach to these things. And it's the philosopher who abstracts and says, let's now address this. What should we do with this? What's the nature of change, development and history? Another metaphysical question is what's the character of laws? What's the character of concepts? What's the character of universals? What's the nature of uniformity in our experience? The character of laws? I'm not asking what the laws are. That would be an epistemological or an ethical question. So we have laws of logic, we have laws of morality. But the metaphysical question is, what is a law? What is not? What are the laws in terms of their character? But when we talk about a law, what kind of thing are we talking about? Does it taste like chocolate? Is it that kind of thing? No. Oh, is it kind of like a dream then? No, it's not that kind of thing. What is a law? That's a metaphysical question. In light of the summary of questions that I've given you so far, I wonder if you can see as a Christian, that we have a specific metaphysic. What's the nature of man? Is he good or is he bad? Well, we have a story about creation and fall, don't we? Where did this universe come from? Doctrine of creation. What is the nature of change and development, the doctrine of Providence. Where is everything going? What's history all about? Doctrine of the consummation. Earlier, I told you that as I see it, philosophy and theology are addressing the same basic questions, but just in different vocabulary, approaching it differently, but they're the same issues. We have a Christian philosophy, therefore, inherent in our Christian theology. If you read the opening chapters of Van Till's the Defense of the Faith, that's what he's trying to get across. He's trying to express the Christian worldview. And so he looks at the Christian view of reality and the Christian view of knowledge and the Christian view of behavior. He's just addressing the philosophy categories, the subdivisions of philosophy. And he says, this is what our theology would tell us. So let me give you your theology in the language of the philosopher. This message is continued on the next tape.