Free Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept by James W. Sire Page B

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    Christian scholarship undergirded by such specifically Christian assumptions may be an “outrageous idea,” as George Marsden has put it, but that is because naturalism is such a powerful paradigm in academic circles. The suggestions Marsden makes in The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship are eminently reasonable, 25 and it is a delight to see some of this scholarship on traditionally nonreligious topics emerge and contend in the marketplace of ideas.
    At the moment naturalism reigns even in the field of religious studies. It is not God who is the object of investigation. It is belief in God. As one theologian at the University of Aarhus in Denmark once told me, “The systematic theologian at my university is an atheist.” This is tantamount, of course, to being an astronomer who does not believe in stars but believes that people believe in stars, so that’s what she studies. Theology then becomes the study of what theologians say or what and why people believe in God. In other words, theology becomes history, or anthropology, or sociology. People do not believe in God because God exists but because they are caught in a web of former belief, or they feel the need for a Father who is better than their own father, or they have not yet outgrown the need for a magical figure whom they hope will reward them, if not now, in a later life—or for some other totally natural cause. One must not say that these natural factors are not present, only that these are not all the factors there are, and that in fact the most important factor has been summarily dismissed. It is God in whom we live and move and have our being. Not to recognize that is to become futile in our imagination and have our senseless minds darkened.
    Elephant All the Way Down
    The world today is marked by two seemingly equal and opposite characteristics. On the one hand, we are surrounded by people who view the world very differently from us. On the other hand, all of us hold so tightly to our worldview that it operates for each individual as if it were the only worldview.
    In broad terms, for example, there are New Agers and atheists, deists and pantheists, Christians and Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists. The worldviews of each group lead them to live lives very different from each other. At the same time, within each group each person holds a worldview with unique features, often contrary to those of others in the group. Pluralism reigns both between and within groups.
    One might think therefore, that no one would hold his or her worldview tightly. But that is not the case. Pluralism certainly puts pressure on everyone to adopt relativism, but mostly it does not succeed. In fact, each person in every group holds his or her worldview so firmly that, if we look closely, we can discern much of its character by what we see that person do and say. The fact is, however, that we usually do not look closely. As a result we often fail to understand why other people—even in our own group—vary so widely in their beliefs. Why do they not agree with us more fully than they do? we wonder. And in the United States almost all of us are still utterly baffled by the mindset of the terrorists of 9/11. Their actions are radically contrary to good sense as we understand it.
    But what if we understand worldviews as I have defined them?
    A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.
    This notion of a worldview goes a long way toward making sense out of the seemingly senseless. It may not solve all the problems that pluralism presents. It may not teach us how to get along with our deepest differences, but it does make sense of