The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

“Here you have a real live Christian’s guide to the Christian worldview and its alternatives.”

Citing C. S. Lewis on literary interpretation, Sire defends the validity of writing a survey of worldviews from a Christian perspective. Writing an account of intellectual movements that is completely free from bias is impossible, Sire contends. Sire says that it is useful, however, to have an account of the Christian and other worldviews from the point of view of a living believer and practitioner of the Christian worldview.

“The struggle to discover our own faith, our own worldview, our beliefs about reality, is what this book is all about.”

Sire states his broader purpose for the book, which is intended not just to provide a survey of historical worldviews but to encourage reflection about one’s own worldviews as well as engagement with others who may hold different worldviews. The book is meant to encourage Sire’s ideal style of life, “the examined life.”

“How those who no longer believe in God wish something could fill this void!”

Contrasting the worldviews expressed by Stephen Crane and the Psalmist, Sire comments that human beings inherently want to have a “center to life” embodied by God, similar to the love of one’s father. If unable to believe in God, humanity will find some God-substitute, as seen in worldviews that posit the nature or self as the ultimate reality.

“It is important to note that our own worldview may not be what we think it is. It is rather what we show it to be by our words and actions.”

Sire stresses that our worldview is often unconscious and is revealed in how we behave rather than what we profess to believe. This quote echoes Sire’s shifted definition of worldview, reflecting the pre-intellectual aspect of worldview. Because not all of us “reflect long and hard” about our beliefs (8), we may not be aware of the underlying assumptions that form our worldview.

“We should realize that we live in a pluralistic world. What is obvious to us may be a ‘lie from hell’ to our neighbor next door.”

Sire’s book is meant as a response to the diverse nature of today’s world in which many beliefs and worldviews coexist. Sire hopes through the book to help people understand beliefs that may be different from theirs. Even though people with a settled worldview may consider the answers to the Eight Basic Questions obvious, other people may see matters differently. Realizing this is the beginning of understanding and dialogue.

“So long as we live, we will live either the examined or the unexamined life. It is the assumption of this book that the examined life is better.”

Sire states one of the book’s main purposes: to help people examine their own worldview and thus attain to the ideal of the examined life. The examined life is superior, Sire argues, because the only alternative is heedlessly to ignore the Eight Basic Questions, which speak to the core of what it means to be human.

“The universe is orderly, and God does not present us with confusion but with clarity.”

Sire contends that this statement is one of the basic convictions of Christian theism, rooted in Christianity’s belief that God created the universe to operate according to consistent laws of cause and effect. This is what makes the universe orderly and makes knowledge about it possible, he says.

“Personality is the chief thing about human nature, as, I think it is fair to say, it is the chief thing about God.”

According to Sire, this is another core conviction of Christian theism. The fact of human personality demands an account of where it came from; Sire argues later that naturalism and other worldviews do not adequately explain this.

“How does ought derive from is?”

Sire describes a recurring problem related to ethics that essentially asks where our sense of right and wrong comes from. According to Sire, without a transcendent standard of right and wrong—which is to say, with only material facts at our disposal—there is no basis for deciding what behavior is morally good or bad.

“So we are all strangers in a foreign land.”

According to atheistic existentialism, human beings are essentially subjective beings and are not at home in the objective world of facts and scientific laws. We are “thrown into” instead a meaningless and hostile universe in which we must make values and meaning for ourselves.

“So theistic existentialists emphasize the personal as of primary value.”

According to theistic existentialism, personality is the most important factor in the universe. The personhood of human beings is rooted in a personal God. Using a distinction made by philosopher Martin Buber, Sire states that our relationships with God and with other people should therefore be “I-Thou” relationships instead “I-It” relationships in which the other is objectified.

“It has taken existentialism to restore many theists to a full recognition of the richness of their own system.”

Sire asserts the positive value of theistic existentialism for theism at large. Theistic existentialism reasserted the primary value of personhood and the personal dimension of religion, something that risks being lost in a strictly rule-based approach to religion. Christian theism, including its existentialist counterpart, is Sire’s preferred worldview.

“The full truth is in the paradox, not in an assertion of only one side of the issue.”

Another of the major contributions of Christian existentialism, starting with Kierkegaard, has been to emphasize the importance of paradox—complementary truths that appear contradictory. The seeming contradiction is to be overcome, not by reasoning it away, but by embracing the paradox and living it out in our lives.

“The swing to Eastern thought since the 1960s is, therefore, primarily a retreat from Western thought.”

Sire sees the embrace of Eastern thought by Westerners as primarily a symptom of disillusionment with the direction of Western thought. Many in the West came to feel that the East offered a fresh perspective and an antidote to the dead ends of naturalism and nihilism.

“I believe, therefore it is.”

In Sire’s interpretation, this is an implied principle of the New Age worldview. Because “the self is in charge of everything that is” (180), this means that there is no difference between appearance and reality; anything that the self conceives to be true is true. This radically subjective view contradicts the belief in objective truth held by those who subscribe to such worldviews as naturalism and theism.

“Modern folk have fled from Grandfather’s clockwork universe to Great-great-grandfather’s chamber of gothic horrors.”

Sire is referring to New Age’s revival of belief in the occult, which he interprets as a hearkening back to premodern beliefs and religious practices. Sire points to the astonishing switch from the early scientific worldview of deism back to aspects of prescientific thinking.

“The acknowledgement of the death of God is the beginning of postmodern wisdom. It is also the end of postmodern wisdom.”

According to Sire, Nietzsche was the first thinker openly to acknowledge the fact that advanced Western thought no longer had any room for a belief in God. This led to the development of postmodernism, which questions all values and narratives. However, this turns out to be a dead end for thought and action as a whole. Ultimately, for Sire, postmodernism is an end—the logical consummation of modernity—rather than a new beginning.

“A near future of cultural anarchy seems inevitable.”

Sire offers a dire prediction for society if it continues along the postmodern path. People in the postmodern age find themselves awash in “a plethora of philosophical possibilities” but no guide to which, if any, of them are true (204). This creates a general confusion and a crisis of belief and value.

“Matter exists eternally; God does not exist.”

In Sire’s analysis, this is one of the underlying beliefs of postmodernism, shared also by naturalism, nihilism, and atheistic existentialism, all its intellectual forebears of postmodernism. It is essentially a statement that matter is all that exists and humanity’s fate is determined by physical processes in nature.

“Our obligation is not to out-think Allah but to do his will.”

In Winfried Corduan’s analysis, Islamic theism places great stress on God’s sovereign will, which is sometimes inscrutable to human beings. It is up to humans to accept God’s will in obedience. This is in contrast to Christian theism, which holds that human beings can enter into a personal relationship with God and that they can partly come to understand him through the use of reason.

“[A] negative mindset is the most common result among human beings who believe that their eternal destiny is based on keeping rules.”

Corduan’s analyzes the Islamic attitude toward religious duties, noting its categorization of actions as “directly commanded,” “permitted,” and “prohibited.” For Corduan, such an attitude frames morality in a negative manner, where everything rides on one’s actions and there is no assurance of grace and mercy from God. This is, again, meant to point up the contrast with Christian theism’s emphasis on God’s mercy and grace.

“Worldviews […] are not infinite in number.”

Sire points up a deceptive aspect of worldviews; because of their profusion in a pluralistic society, there seem to be an infinite supply of them. In fact, many worldviews that seem distinct can be reduced to a common denominator, something Sire sets out to do in the book by pointing to the common roots of several worldviews. This emphasizes the relatively small number of possibilities among which those seeking to live the examined life actually have to choose from.

“[A] worldview satisfies by being true.”

Sire names “subjective satisfaction” as one of the requirements for a worldview. Ultimately, however, we are fully satisfied by truth—by an understanding of the way things really are. If we suspect that anything in our worldview is not true, this doubt will widen with time and cause discord in our mind and in society.