Borg on the Newtonian Worldview

Marcus Borg gives a brief but exquisite treatment of the modern worldview in The Meaning of Jesus. He writes that worldviews can best be understood as what he calls "macro-lenses" that affect the way we see, understand, and interpret things. "A worldview is one's most basic image of 'what is'--of what is real and what is possible." (9) Worldviews fall into two main categories: religious and secular:

According to the secular worldview, "[there] is only 'this'--and by 'this' I mean the visible world of our ordinary experience." The religious worldview affirms both "'this' and 'more than this.'" Borg clarifies, "A religious worldview sees reality as grounded in the sacred. For a secular worldview, there is no sacred ground." 

And now on to his critique of the Modern Worldview.

"Modernity is dominated by a secular worldview. This image of reality began to emerge in the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the birth of modern science. Sometimes called the Newtonian worldview or simply the modern worldview, it sees what is real as the world of matter and energy, space and time, and it sees the universe as a closed system of cause and effect, operating in accord with natural laws. This vision of reality took the Western world by storm, to a large extent because of the impressive accomplishments of the science and technology that it generated. By [the twentieth century], it had become the worldview of mass culture in the West, and most of us were socialized into it." (9-10)

"[The Modern Worldview] is especially corrosive to religion. It reduces reality to the space-time world of matter and energy, thereby making the notion of God problematic and doubtful. It reduces truth to factuality, either scientifically verifiable or historically reliable facts. It raises serious doubts about anything that cannot be accommodated within its framework, including common religious phenomena such as prayer, visions, mystical experiences, extraordinary events, and unusual healings." 

Borg writes about how he used to hold to the Modern Worldview but found himself shaken out of it. "In my thirties, I became aware of how uncritically, unconsciously, and completely I had accepted the modern worldview. I saw that most cultures throughout human history have seen things differently. I realized that there are well-authenticated experiences that radically transcend what the modern worldview can accommodate. I became aware that the modern worldview is itself a relative cultural construction, the product of a particular era in human history. Though it is still dominant in Western culture, I am confident that the time is soon coming when it will seem as archaic and quaint as the Ptolemaic worldview." (10-11)