back to the quest...

It’s been a few months since I’ve written anything substantial regarding The Quest, but don’t let this make you think it’s been forgotten or pushed to the backburner. The absence of posts speaks merely to the absence of posts, not to what’s been going on (or not been going on) inside this crazed little mind of mine. This Quest of mine is all about figuring out whether or not the Judeo-Christian worldview is a justifiable worldview, and I’ve sought to do this by examining the key assumptions within that worldview. The key word here is “justifiable”: I don’t believe, for reasons given below, that anyone can truly come to know whether or not the Judeo-Christian worldview is the right one. We’re foolish and muddled creatures, and any idea that we can know something with one hundred percent certainty simply illuminates our foolishness. Thus the Quest is aimed not at determining if Christianity is correct but if it’s justifiable: “Is this an intelligent worldview that makes sense of the data and which can be held onto and even embraced without sacrificing logic, reason, and common sense?” 

 There are many worldviews out there, more than one could name, and the Judeo-Christian worldview is but one. This has been quite clear as of late, what with all the hoopla surrounding Chic-Fil-A and their CEO supporting “family values” and donating to global organizations seeking to preserve the sanctity of marriage. The whole fiasco comes down to one worldview coming into conflict with another, and the result is friction, turbulence, earthquakes. But back to the main thrust: before getting into why I believe, after months of studying, praying, and thinking, that Christianity is indeed justifiable, I want to make it known why the Quest’s aim has been to determine the worldview’s validity over against its inherent truthfulness. 

 Epistemology is the science of knowing, the philosophical branch focused on how we know things. While one might think that we can know things matter-of-factly, the reality is that we don’t look at the world as is but through the lens of our worldview. We think the way we think because of how we perceive the world. We know things from one point-of-view on the spectrum, and that’s our point-of-view, and thus there’s no such thing as a bird’s-eye (or God’s-eye) point-of-view. Everything that happens around us is both perceived and interpreted through our expectations, our over-arching stories, our psychological states, through our biases and opinions and memories. The way we see the world is laced with assumptions that encourage us to look at reality, and interpret reality, in a certain way. Worldviews color the way we see the world, direct us in the way we understand ourselves and our universe. We’re not neutral or objective in the way we see and understand the world, and there’s no such thing as an observer who is detached from reality, able to look at it “as is.”

Given all this, one could easily become a phenomalist, declaring that nothing at all can be known with any degree of certainty or plausibility, and that in the end, the only thing we can know is what our sensory data tells us. The phenomalist might say, “I could very well be plugged into some machine generating this whole world that seems real to me but is really only virtual; the only thing I can know is what my senses are telling me. They’re telling me this is real, but I can’t be certain that they’re actually telling me the truth.” Placing emphasis on one’s biases and opinions, phenomenalists will point out that what we believe about the world isn’t a reflection of the world but a reflection of ourselves: whereas one might say that we see reality through the telescope of our worldviews, phenomenalists will say that we’re not looking into a telescope but, rather, a mirror. Phenomenalists are a dying breed, as are their opponents on the far opposite side of the spectrum, the positivists who can be found in every worldview. These positivists believe in facts that are objectively true, things about which we can have absolute and certain knowledge, things able to be tested within the physical world. All we can truly know is what the physical world tells us, through empirical testing. The “Dark Side of Positivism” is that anything that can’t be tested in such a manner is downgraded to being subjective and relative, a sort of concession to the phenomenalists, and in this vein it’s no leap for any beliefs taking place outside the physically testable realm to be rendered null & void. This is precisely what’s happened, especially within the physical sciences, and though it’s been discarded by most philosophers for the last few decades, it remains prominent within several different movements, not least the New Atheism with which I’ll be writing about in a few weeks. 

How, then, do we move forward? How do we seek to determine if the Judeo-Christian worldview is justifiable, and therefore valid, when we can’t know anything for certain? Are we to concede to the phenomenalists, declaring that we can really know nothing, or are we to backtrack to the positivists, accepting that there are some things outside the physical realm that we just can’t observe, test, and thus can’t validate? In the end is it all up to our whims and fancies, are we simply left alone to believe what we will? I don’t think so. We must acknowledge that we’re not passive observers, that we’re not casual bystanders who have a God’s-eye view on things. This should foster a bit of humility, but it’s no excuse for blindly accepting interpretations of the world, even our own. When it comes to The Quest, there is both the acknowledgement that my mental faculties operate within a grid not of my choosing; and there is also the acknowledgement that my mental faculties do exist, and I am a thinking, rational, critical being. The phenomenalist advocates the mirror but I advocate the telescope. Our perception of the world, our worldview, must be challenged, and in the challenge the worldview ought to be reinforced, changed, or discarded based upon what makes the most sense of the data. 

The route I’ve chosen with The Quest is as follows: examine the core assumptions of the worldview and see if these assumptions stand up to scrutiny. Assumptions such as the existence of God, the caring nature of God, the historicity of the resurrection, etc. are all integral assumptions that keep the Judeo-Christian worldview afloat. The more assumptions, the loftier the assumptions, the greater the risk of the worldview crumbling: too many assumptions may break the camel’s back, and a plethora of implausible assumptions does likewise. My thinking, praying, and studying over these last couple months has focused on some of the key assumptions within the Judeo-Christian worldview (some stated above), and over the next couple weeks and months I plan on going through them one-by-one, sharing my thoughts on them, for whatever they’re worth (probably not much!). But before doing this, a word on worldviews is in order.