The third post, on “Kingdom of God” theory, is here.<\/a><\/p>\r\n The fourth, on the role of the church and pastors, is here.<\/a><\/p>\r\n A note in passing.\u00a0 Some academic articles discuss worldview theory using two words (“world view”) and some use one word (“worldview”).\u00a0 As I wrote these posts, I kept switching from one to the other.\u00a0 I tried going back for consistency, but did a bad job of it.\u00a0 So, sometimes it’s “world view” and sometimes “worldview.”\u00a0 I apologize for the laziness in editing.<\/p>\r\n Oddly, I don’t expect people to read this.\u00a0 If you do, and you find it useful, that’s great, and if you have something you’d like to comment on, please do.\u00a0 But, this is really mostly for me.\u00a0 There is an old adage that the best way to learn something is to teach it.\u00a0 A corollary to that is the best way to organize your thoughts is to write them down.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Some years ago, I became interested in inference and such in forensic pathology diagnosis.\u00a0 We have been criticized for years by people saying that we are either ignorant and disorganized in our diagnoses, or that we are biased.\u00a0 I remember, over 15 years ago, going to a conference where a number of people (including one or two forensic pathologists) got up and said we didn’t know what we were doing because we didn’t understand “deduction.”\u00a0 It shocked me, because medical diagnosis is specifically *not* deductive reasoning.\u00a0 That started a many-year interest in inferential methods in medical diagnosis.\u00a0 Then, a few years ago, our profession was threatened again by people, primarily lawyers, who claimed that we were full of “bias” in our diagnoses.\u00a0 Again, that had to be answered, and I was able to bring some of what I’d learned to bear on that.<\/p>\r\n During this period, I became increasingly interested in so-called “worldview theory.\u00a0 It looked at how we organize all the information and impressions we have into a model of the world that dictates how we approach problems.\u00a0 I’ve been knocking this around in my head for some time.\u00a0 So, I’ve decided to write it down, and see if I can describe it to myself in some coherent manner.\u00a0 I hope that you also find it interesting, and perhaps thought-provoking.<\/p>\r\n A few months ago, the Democratic National Committee came out against “misplaced claims of religious liberty<\/a>” that disagree with their perspective.\u00a0 During his campaign for the Democratic nomination, Beto O’Rourke, came out against religious freedom in a more concrete way, saying that under his administration, he would revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that disagree with his social policies<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n This is not surprising, and it is almost necessary in any coherent society. The multi-culti ideal of a diverse society of Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Pagans, etc. all living in with equal influence is a false dream. One worldview (or set of similar worldviews) must be dominant and the rest must be subsidiary. Whether the subsidiary perspectives are persecuted or tolerated depends on the perspective of the dominant perspective, but one must be dominant.<\/p>\r\n We are seeing this in politics with the battle between Republicans and Democrats in the upcoming election.\u00a0 The Democratic worldview is that of “systemic racism” in which the entire American tradition is irredeemably corrupt.\u00a0 The Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the idea of individual liberty exist as tools of oppression.\u00a0 The entire edifice of “The American Way” must be destroyed and rebuilt anew with a purely collective consciousness.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\r\n The Republican worldview is that of the “invisible hand” where allowing individual liberty will result in optimal solutions.\u00a0 While imperfect, the story of America is that of continual progress towards the ideal of allowing each person to pursue his or her dream and achieve success without constraint.<\/span><\/p>\r\n These two views are fundamentally incompatible.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n There is a third possibility that the optimum solution is to have both world views active. Sometimes it takes some intellectual gymnastics. In this scenario one hopes that the interaction or dialectic between them will result in some optimal compromise.\u00a0 But even that view acknowledges that the two worldviews cannot both be dominant.\u00a0 Thus, in the current political conflict, you have the BLM\/Antifa group acting as Jacobins to tear everything down to build it anew, you have “Trumpians” who, like the “Tea Party” folk immediately before them, cling to a libertarian ideal.\u00a0 \u00a0But you also have classical “liberals” and “conservatives,” who believe that one or the other worldview should be dominant, but that some solutions can come from compromising\u00a0 with the nondominant worldview.\u00a0 An old-style liberal starts from the collectivist worldview but believes that conservatism can provide some tools for practical solutions — a little bit of individual liberty can be useful.\u00a0 An old-style conservative starts from the individualist worldview but believes that some solutions require government coercion and collective action.<\/p>\r\n The rejection of Donald Trump by the “neocon” or “Lincoln Project” Republicans is a perfect example of this.\u00a0 These folk actually stand in the collectivist tent, but they differ from liberals in the degree to which they are willing to look to the opposing libertarian worldview for solutions.\u00a0 However, when a candidate arrives who rejects the collectivist worldview entirely, they first look to defend the collectivist worldview and embrace collectivist positions that they would have argued against vehemently a decade before.\u00a0 This is because they have moved from seeking practical solutions to particular problems and into worldview defense.\u00a0 John Kasich, Bill Kristol, George Will, etc. are people who basically have a collectivist\/authoritarian worldview, but believed that libertarian conservatism provided useful tools for practical solutions and a propaganda tool for social control that allowed implementation of a broader agenda.\u00a0 But they are appalled by the thought that libertarian conservatism would become the dominant worldview.\u00a0 The old saw that a neocon was “a liberal who had been mugged,” is exactly right.\u00a0 They are still liberals, but they have decided to use some conservative tools.\u00a0 \u00a0Today, you see this in the large number of liberals who are buying guns in response to the social unrest in liberal enclaves.\u00a0 Suddenly they recognize the value of individual liberty when it comes to self-defense.\u00a0 But they certainly have not changed their basic worldview — and they would re-create the same conditions they despair of were they to start anew.<\/p>\r\n The current battle between the collectivist\/authoritarian worldview and the individualist\/libertarian worldview reflects a much older and more determined battle between the secular\/antichristian and Christian worldviews.\u00a0 This battle has been going on ever since the rise of the secular worldview at the time of the Christ.\u00a0 It should be remembered that the paganism of ancient Rome that persecuted the Christians was essentially an atheist perspective.\u00a0 By the time Christianity arose, the aristocracy of Rome took a fairly abstract view of the Roman gods — much like mainline churches of today that have come to view the story of Christ as an archetypic myth.\u00a0 The Roman gods represented archetypes and allegories of the human condition.\u00a0 Thus, when the Romans stated that the emperor should be worshiped as a god, this was a political rather than spiritual statement.\u00a0 The primary criticism of early Christianity was that upper Classical society believed them to be atavistic — throwbacks to primitive beliefs in real “gods.” This is why the early apologists worked so hard to recast Christianity in terms of neoplatonic philosophy — they had to prove that they weren’t a bunch of ignorant primitives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n Today,\u00a0 if Christians are to withstand modern (but almost identical) assaults on the Christian world view,\u00a0 we must understand how faith is the glue that holds our worldview together.\u00a0 If we understand how worldviews are built, and the importance of Christian structures and traditions in maintaining and defending the Christian worldview against the violence that the antichristians are preparing to unleash, we can slow the movement of the world into darkness.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n We all have an idea of what a worldview is, but most of us don’t spend a lot of time looking at the nuts and bolts of it.\u00a0 \u00a0It just comes naturally.\u00a0 In the next post, I’ll discuss what a worldview is in more structural sense and how it is built.\u00a0 But here’s the general idea:<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n This is best understood by looking at the idea of “theory of mind<\/a>.” This theory recognizes that we cannot experience being another person in the real concrete sense, so we cannot “know” exactly what another person is experiencing or thinking directly.\u00a0 Instead, we build models of other people based on our understanding of them.\u00a0 We use that model to infer what the other person is thinking, their motivations, and predict how they will react to what we say.\u00a0 When we interact with that person, we observe them and modify our internal model of them to accommodate those observations.\u00a0 People with autism have difficulty creating these models, which interferes with their ability to interact with other people.<\/p>\r\n The key here is that when we interact with other people, we are “really” interacting with a model of that person we have in our head.\u00a0 Sometimes, when the person’s actions do not fit the model, we are put in the awkward position of either having to change the model or ignore (or reinterpret) the response.\u00a0 We see this all the time, in which we discount what a person says or we assume some sort of occult motivation that belies the obvious one.<\/p>\r\n This same principle applies to our entire existence,\u00a0 and in particular, how we view the world we live in.\u00a0 We “live” in a world model we created in our minds, and use our experience, perception, and received “facts” to test and modify that model.\u00a0 When we have experiences that are inconsistent with that model, we are put in the same kind of awkward position. Of course, models sometimes have to be tested against cold hard realities.\u00a0 A famous example from history is the war between the Shawnee and the United States led by Tecumseh and the prophet Tenskwatawa.\u00a0 Tecumseh established a confederacy of Indian Nations to oppose the westward expansion of the United States.\u00a0 Tenskwatawa claimed that he had spells that would make his fighters immune to bullets.\u00a0 It didn’t work, and the confederacy was broken at the battles of Tippecanoe and Moraviantown in 1811, which helped usher in the War of 1812 (due in part to the US belief that the British had supported the Tecumseh Confederation).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n But without these models, the world is inchoate and incomprehensible.\u00a0 We have to balance challenges to our world views against the benefits of having a necessary way of comprehending our existence.<\/p>\r\n Now, don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 I am not saying that reality doesn’t exist.\u00a0 I’m not a postmodernist denying the existence of ground truth.\u00a0 I’m talking about how we organize, accept or refuse to accept, and connect those ground truths and mix them with received “truths” that are basically accepted on faith to form a coherent whole.<\/p>\r\n 1.2\u00a0 Our world views are inherently subjective.\u00a0 While we may use “science” in creating and testing our world views, our world views are inherently not “scientific.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\r\n This world model is centered around our immediate existence, but extends far, far beyond it.\u00a0 I know a great deal about my neighborhood and neighbors. I know a fair amount about my little town and how it works.\u00a0 I know a moderate amount about what goes on in the large city near my little town.\u00a0 I know a fair bit about how my State works.\u00a0 I have some ideas about how my country should work,\u00a0 but I am constantly presented with disappointing surprises.\u00a0 I have a vague idea about how the international community works.\u00a0 I have a hand-wavy idea consisting mostly of buzzwords about how the sun works.\u00a0 I have a slight idea about what’s going on in the solar system.\u00a0 I have minimal literacy in how the galaxy works.\u00a0 I don’t pretend to know how the universe works.\u00a0 I have no idea what’s beyond the universe.<\/p>\r\n And we are all like that.\u00a0 We all create models of our existence that include beliefs about the nation, the world, the solar system, the universe, and everything that’s in it.\u00a0 Sure, we accept that there are things we don’t know, but we still often act as if we do know these things when those beliefs impact our actions.\u00a0 The technical term for this is that our models are “underdetermined,” at least in the large.\u00a0 A theory is “underdetermined” when there is insufficient evidence to choose, in some real probabilistic sense, between competing ideas.<\/p>\r\n Strictly, “underdetermined” applies when two or more ideas are equally likely, but in a practical sense, it can also apply when it is impossible to say that one theory is overwhelmingly more likely.\u00a0 This is because of three important findings about belief.<\/p>\r\n The first is that most of the probabilities we “know” about things are very noisy, if not wrong.\u00a0\u00a0 Every week, there’s a new finding that shows that things we “knew” and held as “settled science” are false.\u00a0 Worse, much of it is hearsay.\u00a0 We don’t critically read the studies ourselves.\u00a0 Instead, we accept some pre-digested story in a newspaper or blog or conversation.<\/p>\r\n The second is that “belief” is not a logical function.\u00a0\u00a0 One can make probabilistic statements about things — sometimes —\u00a0 but “belief” about something is entirely subjective.\u00a0 In medicine,\u00a0 questions about causality are often evaluated using the “Bradford Hill Criteria” that invoke things like dose relationship, temporality, and such.\u00a0 While these have been used as a checklist, Bradford-Hill called them “viewpoints,” not “criteria,” and pointed out that there is no algorithmic way to determine causality.\u00a0 Bradford-Hill denied that there were hard and fast rules for belief about causality, and noted that belief was fundamentally intuitive.<\/a><\/p>\r\n The third is that the amount of evidence necessary for belief is a function of utility and importance to one’s immediate life, not some absolute value.\u00a0 It is a cost-benefit issue.\u00a0 It is very important to know the facts when determining whether or not a mushroom you picked in the woods is safe to eat, because if you are wrong you may die.\u00a0 It’s not so important to have much information when deciding whether or not to believe there is sentient life on other planets in the universe, since it makes little difference in your life (probably).<\/p>\r\n All of us have relatively small collections of “hard” information, and only slightly larger collections of\u00a0 “soft” data, but we have acres and acres of received information that we accept as “fact.”\u00a0 From that small collection of hard data, we sift through all the rest, choose what we like, and build this huge, largely coherent worldview.\u00a0 The key here is that because the really known data set is so small, most of our world view is either inferred or collected from accepted “facts” that other people give us.\u00a0 We accept them mostly because they are consistent with the world view we already have.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n 1.3 Every world view is different.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\r\n We build and modify these world views as we grow.\u00a0 As we build them, we build connections between the things we “know” that reinforce our way of “knowing.”\u00a0 If we are successful, as we mature our world view becomes more coherent and less easily challenged.\u00a0 Because of this interaction between things we know and things we accept, two people who accept the very same data can perceive them in dramatically different ways because the interconnections between them are different.<\/p>\r\n Every person has a different world view.\u00a0 Every man and woman *is* an island because we live in different perceptual worlds. Sometimes, the worlds of two people may be very similar and largely overlap, sometimes not.\u00a0 This reflects how we think in general.\u00a0 In his book on inference in intelligence work, Schum notes:<\/p>\r\n \u201cThe problem is that most inferences involve processes or variables that are nonindependent in various ways, with genuinely interesting evidential subtleties. A causal assumption of complete independence among identified processes would in most cases invite inferential calamity. So we have no choice but to do our best at capturing what we believe are avenues of probabilistic dependence among processes of concern. To do so, we link nodes representing these processes by various patterns of arcs. I can think of no inference problem, outside <\/em>the classroom, whose structure is either provided for us of immediately apparent. Constructing a network representation of an inference problem is a purely subjective judgmental task, one likely to result in a different structural pattern by each person who performs it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n (Schum DA. The evidential foundations of probabilistic reasoning 1 ed. New York:Wiley, John & Sons; 1994.)<\/p>\r\n Just as our inferential processes are idiosyncratic, so are the worlds we build from them.<\/p>\r\n New information we receive is viewed in light of our world view, and if possible, is made to conform to it.\u00a0 Otherwise, it would require modification of the world view, which can be difficult.\u00a0 Often this is done by accepting the objective evidence, but assuming missing data to be such that it fits into the world view.\u00a0 Thus, for instance, a Progressive who sees Joe Biden threatening the Ukraine in order to get a prosecutor fired sees it as a reasonable act for which there is almost certainly an innocent explanation, and sees a phone call from Trump to the Ukrainian President as a clear attempt to influence and election because of implied, but unstated, meaning.\u00a0 A Trump supporter will see the same evidence, and make the opposite interpretation.\u00a0 Both can do this because they can assume there is missing data makes the known information fit their world view.<\/p>\r\n Often, arguments about “facts” are based primarily on consistency with one’s model more than whether or not they are “facts.”\u00a0 For instance, when Atheists denigrate Christian beliefs, they frequently do it not because they dispute direct observations that Christians put forward, but instead, simply point out that there are coherent alternative explanations in the Atheist world view.\u00a0 The Atheist argument against God is simply that God is not “necessary” because their world view is coherent without Him.\u00a0 Since God is not necessary in this world view, then He must not exist.\u00a0 I will expand on this in the section on apologetics in a later post.<\/p>\r\n However, of course, the flip side of this is equally convincing to a Christian.\u00a0 The existence of God is completely consistent with the Christian world view, and the will of God is a coherent explanation for all observable facts.\u00a0 It is not possible to “prove” that God does not exist.\u00a0 The existence of God provides a reasonable and rational explanation of observations, and there are well-proven practical benefits to belief.<\/p>\r\n The difference is not one of facts, knowledge, or rationality.\u00a0 It is one of divergent world views.\u00a0 Certainly there are advocates of many world views in which people ignore or deny “hard” facts that contradict the world view, and some people just make stuff up, but they do not make up the vast majority of either Atheists or Christians.\u00a0 And, of course, this is not an issue just of Christianity versus Atheism.\u00a0 The same applies to all faiths, and most philosophies.<\/p>\r\n Consider the following diagrams.\u00a0 Let the small ellipses and dots in illustration 1 represent the bits of knowledge that we objectively know:<\/p>\r\n Now, we, as Christians, build our model of the universe by extending from these data and fitting received information from indirect sources to build our world view. There are too many pieces of information out there for us to integrate it all.\u00a0 So, we select information to believe, information to reject, and information to hold in abeyance.\u00a0 Then we build connections between all of this to create a map of our reality.<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n Now, an Atheist will do the same thing, and build his or her world from these data, integrating it into the structure of their faith. There will be overlap of things both world views experience directly, and overlap of things that are not observed, but are received more indirectly.\u00a0 The further one goes away from direct observation and experience, the less overlap it will have with a very different world view.<\/p>\r\n Since our experiences are affected by our world view we will experience things in ways alien to a different world view.\u00a0 For instance, a Christian mystic will integrate perceptions derived from meditation\/contemplation within the context of spiritual revelation that will enhance and increase the coherency of that religious model.\u00a0 In contrast, an atheist will either not experience the same perceptions, or will experience and interpret them in an entirely different way that is consistent with the Atheist world view (as does, for instance, the Atheist mystic George Battaille<\/a>).\u00a0 One of the more startling conversations I’ve ever had regarding the mystical experience was with a cousin of mine, Alice Notley<\/a>, who is a well-known poet living in Paris.\u00a0 A few years ago, I sat down with her to discuss mysticism.\u00a0 I thought, because of her poetic imagination, she would be sympathetic.\u00a0 What struck me was that her concept of the mystical experience seemed to be determined largely, if not entirely, by her critical reading of mystical literature, particularly medieval literature such as the Cloud of Unknowing<\/a>.\u00a0 She viewed mysticism entirely by how it was expressed verbally.\u00a0 When I pointed out that the verbal\/written literature on the mystic experience was necessarily incorrect because the experience is a pre-verbal\/nonverbal one, she had a difficult time connecting to it.\u00a0 Her world view was so oriented towards verbal expression that she largely ignored a world view that rejects its importance.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n My cousin and I shared many experiences, knew many of the same people, etc. but we, in a very real sense, lived in different worlds.<\/p>\r\n This worldview construction affects our basic perceptions.\u00a0 I read a wonderful book many years ago on the first interactions between eastern and western cultures when early Europeans went to Japan.\u00a0 In one episode, representatives of one of the western countries (Portugal, I believe) presented a ruler in Japan with a painting of the royal family.\u00a0 The ruler of Japan asked why the ruling family didn’t wash their faces.\u00a0 Western painters include shadows as clues for three-dimensional perception in a painting; the Japanese conveyed three dimensions differently.\u00a0 To them, the shadows painted by western artists were just dark smudges.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n I was very interested in Asian studies as an undergraduate.\u00a0 One of the more intense experiences I had was the first time I “really” perceived the 3D effect of a Japanese landscape.\u00a0 In many of these paintings, distance is encoded by position in the composition, with different distances separated by lines of clouds or other obstruction.\u00a0 This is in contrast to western landscapes, which rely more on perspective distortion and shading. When I first looked at Japanese and Chinese landscapes, they seemed like 2D stacked scenes.\u00a0 Then, one day, I glanced at one and perceived the 3D effect.\u00a0 It was startling.<\/p>\r\n A different kind of Christian will have a different world view than mine.\u00a0 For instance, many traditional Protestants in America are very suspicious of mysticism.\u00a0 While the overlap of these Christians’ world view with that of the Christian mystic will be large, there will still be areas where they do not overlap.<\/p>\r\n The key is that most of what we “know” are things we don’t know directly, but instead accept without real proof.\u00a0 One important criterion is how well it fits into what we already know.\u00a0 A political example of this is discerning the “hidden” meaning in the statements of Donald Trump.\u00a0 \u00a0Those who dislike Donald Trump say that he praised white nationalists after the Charlottesville protest in which a protester was killed.\u00a0 Those who support Donald Trump say he did not.\u00a0 \u00a0Both look at the very same words.\u00a0 \u00a0One side dismisses his explicit condemnation of white supremacists on the grounds that he didn’t mean it. They insist that when he said there were “good people” on both sides, he “meant” that as praise of white supremacists.\u00a0 The other side insists he meant it when he condemned white supremacists, and that he was praising people who are appalled at the rewriting and censoring of history — just as they were alarmed when the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamyan.\u00a0 Both sides look at the same data, but integrate it into their worldview differently.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Sometimes it takes some intellectual gymnastics.\u00a0 I remember reading a book on feminist cosmology a number of years ago, where the author argued for a non-masculine view of physics that integrated the idea of a loving and caring universe.\u00a0 She claimed that it was possible to believe that the sun was a dead nuclear machine that radiated heat because of the mechanics of nuclear reactions at its core, but it was also possible to believe that the sun was a caring and loving being that radiated warmth because she loves us and wants us to flourish — and does so via that mechanics of nuclear reactions.\u00a0 The author’s point was that what we know about the sun did not contradict either view, in her view.\u00a0 Whether the warming of the earth is a *byproduct* or the *purpose* of the sun transcends the boundaries of traditional scientific thought. The “masculinized” or “colonized” thinking that embraces traditional science and the “feminist” thinking that embraces a living and nurturing universe both accept the very same data, but make connections within the existing data in their worldview to make the data fit.<\/p>\r\n Sometimes you just reject the information that doesn’t fit.\u00a0 Atheists who dismiss tales of miracles simply dismiss witness accounts, for instance.\u00a0 In political discussions people commonly just refuse to believe what people tell them.<\/p>\r\n Sometimes you create information based on your worldview — essentially coming to conclusions and then accepting them as fact.\u00a0 One of the classic examples of this in my experience was going to church as a child and listening to the story of the creation of Eve.\u00a0 My Sunday School teacher finished the story with the statement “And that’s why women have one more rib than men.”\u00a0 I believed that well into my later school years when I was taught anatomy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Sometimes you bend information to fit your worldview.\u00a0 I used to attend a very conservative church that believed that drinking alcohol was a horrible sin.\u00a0 When I asked about all of the instances of Jesus drinking or facilitating the drinking of alcohol, such as creating wine at a wedding, I was told that it was all unfermented grape juice — that Jesus firmly condemned any drinking of wine.<\/p>\r\n But this is not a post about apologetics.\u00a0 This is a post about faith for Christians.\u00a0 I believe that most Christians have an appreciation of faith that does not recognize the profound importance of consciously forming and modifying our worldview.\u00a0 A deeper appreciation of faith not only forms a better foundation for engineering a Christian worldview, but also provides an explanation of why some of the other features of Christian life, particularly the church, are so important.<\/p>\r\n 1.3 This is not postmodernism<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\r\n It may seem that what I am saying is very similar to the postmodern position.\u00a0 It is both similar and very different.\u00a0 The stringent postmodern position is that fundamental truth itself is a matter of perspective.\u00a0 In another post of mine on the BLM\/Antifa movement, I link to a video of a man talking to a young postmodern woman talking about whether or not the number of candies in a box is odd or even.\u00a0 The young lady says that there is no inherent truth to whether or not there is an odd or even number of objects — you can’t just count them and see.\u00a0 Instead, there has to be a person in authority who defines the truth, and the result is based on that dominant narrative.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n For me, there are “basic” truths and facts that we accept or deny.\u00a0 The thing that makes our worldviews different is primarily determined by how we connect these facts.\u00a0 The choice we make about which basic truths we accept or deny is also important, don’t get me wrong, but it is actually a smaller part of the issue than how we connect them.\u00a0 This acceptance of a baseline reality of fact is what separates my position from the stronger constructive postmodernist vision.<\/p>\r\n From my conversations with other Christians, the general opinion seems to be that “faith” really just means “I believe in the divinity of Jesus, His death and resurrection, and His atonement for sins.”\u00a0 But that’s just the start.\u00a0 Christians who stop there often have problems defending their beliefs to others and are at risk of falling into doubt when challenged.<\/p>\r\n In addition to belief, faith is *choice* to build a Christian worldview and experience the world through that lens.\u00a0 Belief in Jesus is the *beginning,* not the total substance of faith.\u00a0 But here’s the catch.\u00a0 A complex and coherent worldview is not something that is built overnight.\u00a0 It requires work.\u00a0 It requires commitment.\u00a0 A well built worldview is resistant to attack. A poorly constructed one is fragile.\u00a0 A coherent world model requires integration of the objective knowledge we have with the Christian constructs that we use to expand into areas we don’t know directly.\u00a0 A mature Christian “sees” God in everything — in the wonder of nature, the beauty of a sunrise, the laugh of a child.\u00a0 There is no such thing as coincidence, since everything is God’s plan.<\/p>\r\n This leads to some important considerations.\u00a0 The first is an understanding of how integral our worldview is to our being.\u00a0 There is a fair amount of research into worldviews. It suggests that most people react to a threat to their worldview with the same emotional response that they react to threat of death.\u00a0 In the jargon of the academic trade, this perceived threat of death or recognition of mortality is called “mortality saliency.”\u00a0 One of the primary tasks of a worldview is to provide a mechanism for mitigating fear of death, and conversely, attacks on our world view result in emotional responses similar to our response to death threats.\u00a0 Thus, we tend to be very supportive of people who have world views similar to ours, and we tend to be very antagonistic to those who have very different world views.<\/p>\r\n As one researcher notes (MS is “mortality salience”):<\/p>\r\n Although treated by the individual as absolute reality, the <\/em>cultural worldview is a fragile social construction in need of <\/em>constant validation from others. Consequently, the existence of <\/em>others who share one’s worldview bolsters faith in that <\/em>worldview, thus increasing its effectiveness as an anxiety buffer, <\/em>and the existence of others who do not share one’s worldview <\/em>threatens one’s faith in it, thus reducing its effectiveness as an <\/em>anxiety buffer. As a result, people generally respond favorably <\/em>to those who share their worldviews and negatively to those <\/em>who do not. Accordingly, a series of studies have shown that <\/em>MS leads to especially positive evaluations of those who validate <\/em>one’s worldview and especially negative evaluations of those <\/em>who challenge it. <\/em><\/p>\r\n1) We don’t live in the “real” world.\u00a0 We live in a model of the world we create in our minds.<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\r\n
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<\/a><\/p>\r\n2) The creation of a coherent world view requires work and time<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\r\n
3) An incomplete world view is vulnerable to challenge<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\r\n