*** SHOW NOTES (not a transcript) ***

Lead:

What is reality? Today we compare how the various worldviews we’ve been looking at answer that question.

Intro:

Truth is that which accords with reality. Obviously here we’re all about the Christian worldview, but as we grow in our ability to understand and connect with people, it’s useful to be able to sense where they’re coming from — and that’s what we get to in today’s Thinking and Reflection segment…seeing how they might respond to the question, “What is reality?”

Yesterday in our Bible segment we started into the part of Luke where Jesus commissions his disciples to go out in His’ name, and then He warns them that opposition will grow. Little did they know that about three decades later Nero would try to make Christians a scapegoat and start burning them alive! But, just so you’re not disappointed, we aren’t going to have to wait for 30 years in the story to go by for the fun to begin — today’s chapters see the promised opposition beginning already.

Sponsor:

Today’s sponsor and provider of background music is Pip Craighead’s The Dandelion Project, and the new track is Night School.

Bible segment (read along with The Bible Project):

Passage: Matthew 11-12
Translation: NLT (New Living Translation)
Verses: 80
Words: ~1691

Thinking/reflection segment:

Our journey so far.

Question 1: Zero, one, or more than one god?

Question 2: If one god, what is the relationship god has to the cosmos — the created order?

Question 3: If no god, how do you explain meaning and morality?

Today we actually look across all the worldviews we’ve been talking about, generally categorized with the three broad categories from Tom Price at RZIM: theism, naturalism (or atheism), and monism. I’ll remind you what those mean as we go and, as I’ve said every day, this is far from comprehensive, but it’ll give you clues for spotting where someone’s coming from.

Today’s question: How do different worldviews think about reality?

Atheism (no god): Remember that every worldview — even those who posit that there is no god — have explanations or origin, meaning, morality and destiny.
- Naturalists/physicalists think that material processes and forces are the reason for everything. You and me? Just meat machines whose drives and sense of right/wrong are evolutionary byproducts.
- Nihilists admit a different issue — that philosophically without an objective, external standard you actually have nothing in which to ground morality. The outcome? No one action is right or wrong.
- Existentialists fall into a similar camp, but we’ll see how they explain what’s wrong with the world differently than the nihilists tomorrow.
Monism (one god, all is divine or we are all one): If all is god and god is all — and not separate from the cosmos — one distinction made in this camp is whether there are any distinctions at all. If we’re all one, distinctions are an illusion. Even for those that think the distinctions are real, there’s still a perspective that everything is god and god is everything.
Theism (one god, separate from the created order): There is a strand of theism called deism where people think that god set the world in motion but then doesn’t intervene, and they tend to therefore reject the idea that god reveals himself (they tend to then focus on reason and observation, but “organized religion” is also rejected). Conversely, the idea that God is loving and relational and created humanity in His image as physical and spiritual beings is the domain of a Christian worldview that sees God as good, that all humans are to be valued as persons, and that grace is an important part of relationship.

Obviously what I’ve not done is to tell you about how to ask questions this time around. But it should start being apparent that what someone thinks of God is going to shape what they think, feel, and do. And tomorrow we’ll look at how each of these deals with a really big question: What’s wrong with the world?

Wisdom segment:

Passage:
Translation:
Verses:
Words:

Love you!

-R

Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.

Sources and resources:

(1) Norman L. Geisler, “Atheism” Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 56.

(2) Tom Price and David Montoya, "Belief Mapping: Discover Your Unique Way of Seeing the World" (handout presented in a contemporary spirituality class at Oxford Centre for christian Apologetics -- Business Programme, July 4, 2019). Learn more at BeliefMapping.com.

Other:

Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1990), 2. This, by the way, is a brilliantly organized work on apologetics, approachable if you don’t have a doctorate in philosophy or theology, and is a book I’d heartily recommend.

Cameron Blair, “Worldviews” blairs.id.au (blog), 2005, http://blairs.id.au/worldviews/. Accessed August 24, 2019. This is a brilliant flowchart if you want to go more deeply.

#866: Matthew 11-12 | Spotting worldviews, part 4 -- what is reality?