World Views
When we discuss religious ideas, we frequently create misunderstandings, because we start with different assumptions about the nature of the world and how it works. These assumptions make up our world view.
For example, our God is by definition, a supernatural being. If a person, because of their world view, denies that anything supernatural can exist, then we can make no further progress until we can show, through reason, that a world view that includes the supernatural is the correct one.
When defending our beliefs we must be aware of both our own world view and the world views of those we are communicating with. The need to establish a mutual understanding by defining terms and clarifying the standpoint from which our arguments are offered is critical to developing an effective apologetic.
For more discussion on world views, see the article World Views by Jerry Solomon of Probe Ministries.
"If we were to base our arguments upon theories or logical constructs that were tentative to poorly supported it would be one thing. To fail to use a tool or method that God has given us to help our fellow man understand what proof there is that God is real and that the Bible is His Word would be the ultimate disaster."
John N. Clayton, The Source - Eternal design or Infinite Accident, 1983, p. 12.
Goals
- Goal 1: To acquire a (very) basic background that will help us understand how philosophy works, and how it can be used to discover truth.
- Goal 2: To demonstrate the use philosophy as we consider arguments for and against the existence of God.
- Goal 3: To understand the importance of a world view
3 comments:
A political science professor once told me a great example about perspective. He asked, "if you were going to climb a mountain, would you stand at the base and choose your path?" The point was that we need to try to first stand back from a distance and look from a far all the way around the mountain to choose the best path. If we are "to close" we may miss the most obvious/easy way up.
For the sake of this discussion, we have to understand where the person we are talking to is coming from and do it with out imposing our own beliefs so we might better understand.
cas
I totally agree with first understanding the other person's point of view and trying to establish a mutual "starting point" before defending God. Looking back at several instances, I probably tried to defend my view point right away.
LT
I think this is true for any form of communication, but the more important the conversation, the deeper one's conviction, or the faster we could potentially "put someone off", the more vital it is to make sure you've established common ground or at least an understanding with the person you're chatting with.
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