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CHAPTER 1

QUESTIONS

The Freedom Question

DO YOU HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE FREE CHOICES?

Chips or salad? Diet Coke or Dr Pepper? Dine-in or take-out?

It's a basic fact of human life that we make choices. We make them all the time — sometimes so effortlessly and so subtly that we don't even notice it. For example, you chose to start reading this book. By continuing to read it, you're implicitly choosing not to do something else right now. Before this day is over, you'll make hundreds more choices.

But are those choices free? That's one of the most enduring questions in the history of human thought. Some philosophers have said that we do make free choices, while others have denied it. Still others have said that our choices are free in some senses but not free in others.

There's a sense in which even a computer makes choices. For instance, it chooses the best time to run maintenance services (usually when the computer is idle). Nevertheless, we don't usually think of a computer as making free choices, the kind of choices that are made by a thoughtful, self-conscious, morally responsible agent. It's just a machine following its programming.

But what about you? Are your choices just the stimulus-response outputs of a neurological computer (also known as your brain)? Or are they the free choices of a morally responsible agent?

Do you have the power to make free choices?

If you answered yes to the Freedom Question, go here.

If you answered no to the Freedom Question, go here.

A Joke with a Serious Point

Forgive me! I couldn't resist beginning with a little philosophical humor. As you probably realized, you were directed to this page no matter how you answered the Freedom Question.

But there's a serious point here, too. One of our most basic human intuitions is that we, unlike computers and robots, have the ability to make free choices in life: to deliberate about our options and to select between different courses of action. What's more, we're often held morally responsible for our choices (and rightly so). You may be reading this book simply for entertainment, but how you decide to answer the questions, and how you respond to what you subsequently read, is, in a very important sense, up to you. And how you choose to respond may well have important implications for your life and the lives of others.

So press on! Consider carefully how you would answer the questions and take responsibility for the choices you make and their implications for your worldview.

Of course, some readers of this book may still want to insist that in reality none of us make any free choices and none of us are morally responsible for our choices, despite our strong intuitions to the contrary. If that's what you really think, it's going to be difficult to change your mind at this point.

But on one level, that doesn't matter for the purposes of this book. After all, you've already made the choices to pick up the book and to read this far, even if those weren't free choices. In the same way, you can choose to continue to read: to answer the questions and to reflect further on your worldview.

For the time being, I'm happy to settle for that.

Now continue here.

The Truth Question

IS THERE ANY OBJECTIVE TRUTH?

"It's all relative, isn't it?"

Some people believe — or at least claim to believe — that all truth is relative. They say that what's true for one person need not be true for another person, or that what's true for people in one culture (e.g., a Jewish community in New York) needn't be true for people in another culture (e.g., a Buddhist community in Tibet). Such folk often insist that truth isn't something "out there" to be discovered; rather, truth is something we choose or create for ourselves. Truth is always "inside" us rather than "outside" us.

So, for example, while the statement "There is a God" may be true for some people, it doesn't have to be true for everyone. What's true is always relative to a person's particular viewpoint, context, or culture. So we shouldn't speak about the truth, as though truth is the same for everyone. Rather, we should speak about my truth, your truth, their truth, and so on.

In contrast, other people insist that many truths — including the most important truths — are objectively true. There are some things that are just true period, regardless of what anyone happens to think, hope, or feel about those matters. (As they sometimes say, "The truth hurts!") These objective truths are true for everyone, everywhere, because they're based on objective facts about reality that are independent of human ideas, desires, and feelings. According to this view, it makes no sense to say that the statement "There is a God" could be true for me but not true foryou. Either it's true or it isn't: end of story.

But which position do you take? Is there any objective truth?

If you answered yes to the Truth Question, go here.

If you answered no to the Truth Question, go here.

The Knowledge Question

IS IT POSSIBLE TO KNOW THE TRUTH?

It's little use having millions of dollars in the bank if you can't access that money. In the same way, objective truth is little use to us if we can't access it — if we can't know, with some degree of confidence, just what that truth is. If the truth is unknowable, if it's always beyond our grasp, there might as well be no truth at all. We'd be wasting our time by trying to pursue it.

Most people would agree that we have intellectual faculties, such as reason and perception, that allow us to investigate matters of interest to us and to discover the truth about those matters. Even if we don't have absolute certainty about most things, we can still know a great deal about ourselves and the world around us by using our intellectual faculties in responsible ways. For example, most educated folk would say they know that Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world, even though, strictly speaking, it's possible to be mistaken about something like that.

Other people, however, take a much lower view of the human mind. They insist that even if there is objective truth about important matters, no one can really know what it is. Everyone has his own opinions, and some of those opinions may happen to be true, but no one's opinions are more or less reasonable than anyone else's. Certainly no one has any right to say she knows the truth. We're all mired in ignorance, and the sooner we accept that the better.

Which side do you take on this issue? Is it possible to know the truth — at least some truth?

If you answered yes to the Knowledge Question, go here.

If you answered no to the Knowledge Question, go here.

The Goodness Question

IS ANYTHING OBJECTIVELY GOOD OR BAD?

"That was a good meal!" "Bush was a bad president." "I'm sure you did the right thing." "Abortion is always wrong." "Osama bin Laden was an evil man." "The invasion of Iraq wasn't justified."

All of these statements involve value judgments of some kind or another. They don't simply state facts in a disinterested way; rather, they make evaluations of the facts. They make judgments that certain things are "good" or "bad," "right" or "wrong," "justified" or "unjustified."

All of us make value judgments all the time. Some are very significant, others not so much. Either way, value judgments are an essential feature of human life.

But is anything objectively valuable? Is anything objectively good in the sense that it is a good thing period, regardless of what anyone happens to think, hope, or feel about it?

Some people believe that all value judgments are ultimately relative or subjective, that they're no more than expressions of human preferences, either personal preferences or cultural preferences. On this view, nothing is intrinsically good or bad. Instead, we make things valuable by projecting our desires, tastes, and goals onto the world.

Other people insist that some things — such as marital love and musical skill — are objectively good, while other things — such as rape and child abuse — are objectively bad. Their goodness or badness isn't ultimately a matter of personal or cultural preferences.

Which view do you take? Is anything objectively good or bad?

If you answered yes to the Goodness Question, go here.

If you answered no to the Goodness Question, go here.

The Religion Question

IS THERE MORE THAN ONE VALID RELIGION?

There's a bewildering diversity of religion in our world, and we're more aware of it than ever. Encyclopedias are devoted to documenting the ever-increasing number of religious faiths and ideologies, some of which are quite obscure. By most estimates, there are around twenty religions (or families of religions) that have more than one million adherents. Whatever else you might think about religion, it's clear that humans have a natural religious impulse.

But what do we make of this diversity? Some simply insist that all religions are misguided. (Atheists usually take this view.) Others want to say that at most one religion can be valid. For example, Christians often claim that Christianity is the only true religion, while Muslims say the same for Islam, and so forth.

An increasingly popular view, however, is that more than one religion can be valid. According to this view, Hinduism is right for some people; Buddhism works for other people; Judaism for still others; and so on. By the same logic, some people might not be suited to any religion at all.

On this way of thinking, the different religions represent diverse but equally valid perspectives on the ultimate reality. Sometimes the analogy is used of a group of blind men encountering an elephant. One feels the trunk and says, "It's like a snake!" Finding a tusk, another says, "It's like a spear!" A third grasps the tail and says, "It's like a rope!" The conclusions are vastly different, but none of them is more or less right than the others. Each man interprets the whole according to his own individual (and limited) perspective. So the major world religions, some argue, are like those men feeling the elephant.

Do you agree? Is there more than one valid religion?

If you answered yes to the Religion Question, go here.

If you answered no to the Religion Question, go here.

The God Question

IS THERE A GOD?

This is the big one. You knew it was coming. The God Question is undoubtedly one of the most important questions to ask, because it marks a major fork in the road when it comes to worldviews. How you answer the God Question has enormous implications for how you understand yourself, your relation to others, and your place in the universe. Remarkably, however, many people in the West today don't give this question nearly the attention it deserves; they live as though it doesn't really matter to everyday life. As the rest of this book will show, that kind of indifference is a big mistake.

But what exactly is this question asking? What precisely do we mean by "God"? Definitions are crucial here, because often people who claim to believe in God have very different conceptions of God.

For the purposes of this question, and to keep things relatively simple for now, let's define "God" in fairly broad terms. We can nail down the details later on, such as whether God is a personal being, whether God has communicated with human beings, and whether there is only one God.

So here's our question spelled out more precisely: Is there a Supreme Being that deserves our worship and gives meaning, purpose, and direction to the universe and to human life? (If you think more than one being meets this description, you should answer yes to the God Question for now.)

If you answered yes to the God Question, go here.

If you answered no to the God Question, go here.

The Unity Question

IS EVERYTHING ULTIMATELY ONE?

What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? "Make me one with everything."

It's an old joke — and a pretty lame one, too — but lurking behind it is one of the most enduring philosophical issues of all time. It's essentially a question of counting. Ultimately, how many distinct things are there? Is there really only one thing or are there many things? Is the universe an indivisible unity? Or is it divisible into more fundamental parts or constituents, such as atomic particles?

The ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides (ca. 500 BC) insisted that everything is indeed ultimately one. At the most fundamental level, there is only one being, one existent thing — which Parmenides imaginatively referred to as "the One." (If you've seen the movie The Matrix, try not to picture Keanu Reeves at this point.) According to Parmenides, everything that has real existence is ultimately identical with the One. It is a pure, infinite, indivisible unity, and there is nothing else but the One.

Parmenides doesn't stand alone in his answer to the Unity Question. (Well, unless he was right, of course!) A few other philosophers have sided with him, but most have taken the opposite view, that there is more than one thing in reality. The apparent diversity in the world is real. It's not a mere illusion.

Whose side do you take? Is everything ultimately one?

If you answered yes to the Unity Question, go here.

If you answered no to the Unity Question, go here.

The Matter Question

IS EVERYTHING ULTIMATELY MATERIAL IN NATURE?

Your answers to the God Question and the Unity Question indicate that you hold an Atheist worldview but not a Monist worldview (see here). You think there are ultimately many distinct things in the universe, but none of those things is God (in any traditional sense of the term God).

But what kind of things are there? What is their essential nature?

Philosophers have often acknowledged two basic categories of things: material things and mental things. Material things consist of physical matter or energy. They exist in space, they have size and shape, they can be perceived with our senses, and they causally interact with one another in regular, predictable, law-like ways. Some examples would be your brain, your cell phone, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the moons of Jupiter.

Mental things, on the other hand, don't have a size and shape in space, they can't be perceived with our senses, and they aren't governed by the laws of physics. Some examples would be your mind, your feelings about a beloved pet, your memories of your childhood, your plans for tomorrow, and your thoughts as you read this book.

The question before you now is this: Is everything that exists ultimately a material thing? Are there only material things in the final analysis? Is everything reducible to matter and energy?

Of course, your answer might be that some things are material in nature but other things are not, and those other things can't be explained in terms of material things alone. In that case, your answer to the Matter Question should be no.

If you answered yes to the Matter Question, go here.

If you answered no to the Matter Question, go here.

The Mind Question

IS EVERYTHING ULTIMATELY MENTAL IN NATURE?

We've established that you're not a Materialist (see here). Many would say that's a good thing, because Materialism is a very impoverished, problematic, and depressing worldview. You likely answered no to the Matter Question because you realize that there are some things, such as our minds and the contents of our minds, that cannot be denied or explained away in purely material terms. It's hard to deny that our minds and our mental lives are real. After all, one needs a mind to even think about the question!

So not everything is material in nature. But is anything material in nature? Surprising as it may seem, some philosophers have denied that matter really exists, even though we appear to perceive material things. They have argued either that the very idea of matter is incoherent or that we don't need it to explain any of our experiences. All we need to explain our experiences is the idea that there are individual minds — your mind, my mind, and so on — that have experiences and thoughts of a material world that appears to exist in space and time.

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Excerpted from "What's Your Worldview?"
by .
Copyright © 2014 James N. Anderson.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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