Worldview Foundations

What is a worldview?
A worldview is a collection of beliefs and practices that shape a person’s approach to the most important issues of life. It is the filter through which one sees life and the world at large. The most common illustration is that it is analogous to a pair of glasses. How a person makes sense of and understands the world is based upon their vision or perception of that world. So, a persons clarity or distortion of reality is only as good or poor as their worldview in much the same way that a persons vision clarity or distortion is tied to their prescription glasses.

Who has a worldview?
Everyone possess a worldview. The question is are they cognizant of it? The more you understand your own personal worldview, the better shape you are in when you critically evaluate your own worldview and the worldview of others.

Answering life’s Big Questions
A well thought-out worldview will touch on the following questions which philosophers consider to be some of the major questions of life:

1. Ulimate Reality: What kind of God, if any, actually exists?
2. External Reality: Is there anything beyond the cosmos?
3. Knowledge: What can be known and how can anyone know it?
4. Origin: Where did I come from?
5. Identity: Who am I?
6. Location: Where am I?
7. Morals: How should I live?
8. Values: What should I consider of great worth?
9. Predicament: What is humanity’s fundamental problem?
10. Resolution: How can humanity’s problem be solved?
11. Past/Present: What is the meaning and direction of history?
12. Destiny: Will I survive the death of my body and, if so, in what state?

These questions can be grouped together in one of the following five major categories (or components) that comprise every worldview:

1. Theology (concept of God)
2. Metaphysics (View of external reality, particularly the cosmos)
3. Epistemology (Theory of knowledge)
4. Axiology (Study of values: moral values; value theory; aesthetics)
5. Anthropology (Study of humanity and human nature)