The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

Sire opens the chapter with a quote from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire…”.

Although there may appear to be an infinite number of worldviews, Sire writes that this is deceptive because the basic questions have only “a limited number of answers” (269). Most worldviews apart from the ones treated in the book (e.g., aestheticism or hedonism) turn out to be variations on the main worldviews. The consequence is that “our own personal choice lies somewhere on this field” (270).

Sire stakes the claim that the book’s argument implies two consequences for our choice of worldview:

1. Our choice can be well informed, not blind.
2. Whatever choice we make, consistency and honesty demand that we live by it.

In choosing a worldview, we should first adopt as our “working frame of reference” an attitude of humility (271) —a recognition of our “finitude” and intellectual limitations as human beings. Yet we should not let humility lapse into total skepticism. As human beings we do have the ability to know, and that implies that the laws of thought and reason are valid and must be followed.

According to Sire, this means that the worldview we choose should have three characteristics:

1. Intellectual coherence
2. Adequate handling of “the data of reality” (272)
3. The ability to explain what is claimed to be explained
4. “Subjective satisfaction,” meaning that it meets “our sense of personal need” and provides a picture of reality in which everything seems to “fit” (273).

A worldview should avoid logical inconsistencies, contradictions, and question-begging. It should incorporate all sides of reality and avoid ignoring key facts. More specifically, a worldview should provide an account of human nature in its many dimensions: desires, aspirations, limitations, and mixture of good and evil.

Sire stakes his claim that all the worldviews in the book have “serious flaws”—flaws that ultimately lead to nihilism and contradiction—except one: theism, and more specifically Christian theism. In Sire’s analysis, Christian theism was “culturally abandoned” at the beginning of the modern period because it was “inadequately understood” and because of a failure to apply it to key questions. For Sire, our way forward must consist of returning to the “fork in the intellectual road” at which Christian theism was abandoned (274).

Sires states that this is not to say that Christian theism does not have “questions and rough edges” (275); it does, as do all worldviews. But Christian theism also explains why we have those problems in the first place, and in doing so it provides a framework—grounded in the existence of a transcendent, infinite-personal God—that allows us to find “meaning and significance” (275).

To close the chapter, Sire emphasizes that embracing Christian theism is not a merely intellectual matter. Living this worldview involves a “deeply personal dimension,” including acknowledging our dependence on God and need for Christ’s redemption. It is, ultimately, a personal commitment as well as an intellectual one, and it leads to an “examined life that is well worth living” (276). To emphasize this last point, Sire quotes more extensively from the poem “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.