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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Author's Notes,
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This review is from: The Integration of Faith and Learning (Paperback)
Here is the back cover information for the book:The Integration of Faith and Learning: A Worldview Approach provides students with the philosophical context and practical tools necessary for making the connections between Christian knowledge and the knowledge they will acquire during their undergraduate and graduate years in higher education. This book focuses on helping students understand how worldviews influence the interpretation of data and even what is judged to be knowledge itself. The worldviews of philosophical naturalism, postmodernism, and Christianity are compared and analyzed. Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on helping students develop the practical skills needed to evaluate knowledge claims and to integrate all knowledge into a unified whole through the touchstone of Christian truth. Harris' book on the integration of faith and learning provides an insightful and systematic way for the university student to filter ideas through the grid of a robust Christian worldview and life. In a time when conceptual illiteracy and moral confusion abound, Harris provides a straightforward account of how to integrate one's academic learning with faith. By applying the principles laid down in this book, a new Christian intelligentsia will emerge that is unabashedly Christian in their faith and learning. This is a much needed exhortation to all Christians who want to make an impact on today's society-or need the tools to keep the faith in spite of today's society. This is a well thought out journey into many fields and philosophies-its breadth is as encompassing as its depth. . . . This is a must read for students, teachers, and all lovers of wisdom! Worldview survey books abound, but what sets this one apart and makes it essential is its treatment of how knowledge functions and is propagated "in the real world." It is insufficient to merely categorize thinkers or their views. Students need to reckon with how certain claims are advanced and accepted regardless of their merits. Harris' book teaches a savvy form of skepticism that still exudes a love of truth and values the life of the mind. Highly recommended for home schoolers, youth workers, campus ministers, college students, professors, and anyone concerned with training Christian students in how to engage the world of ideas. Robert A. Harris has taught courses in writing, literature, and critical thinking at the college and university level for more than 25 years. He holds the Ph.D. from the University of California at Riverside. Here is the table of contents for the book: Introduction v Chapter 1. Backgrounds to Integration 1 1.3 Knowledge Versus Belief Chapter 2. Why Integrate Faith and Learning? 23 Chapter 3. Where Does Knowledge Come From? 39 Chapter 4. Political and Social Influences on Knowledge 57 Chapter 5. Worldview Foundations 77 Chapter 6. Science and Scientific Naturalism 97 Chapter 7. The Worldview of Postmodernism 135 Chapter 8. The Worldview of Christianity 169 Chapter 9. Evaluating Worldviews 187 Chapter 10. Joining Faith and Learning 221 Chapter 11. A Taxonomy for Worldview Integration 249 Chapter 12. The Christian Touchstone 271 Appendix: Useful Web Sites 287 Bibliography 291
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A MUST READ for the Scholar and Beginning Student Alike,
This review is from: The Integration of Faith and Learning (Paperback)
This book was absolutely critical for me. I am a new seminary student and have been warned that many seminary students get out of balance by getting too much education for their own good and end up either falling away from the faith or becoming discouraged with their relationship with God. Is it knowledge or is it all about faith ? We are told to KNOW the truth BUT also are told that it is by Grace THRU FAITH ... what are we supposed to do ? This book put it all into perspective for me and clearly showed me that it is not just a balancing act ... it is all about properly handling the integration of the constant bombarment of facts and the ever increasing deepening faith in our Lord. Even though Dr. Harris has credentials that most students would dream to achieve one day, he clearly explains, in every day language, the process of integrating and layering facts and faith.
Thank you Dr. Harris for saving me from potentially a lot of unnecessary and painful issues that may have occured if I did not understand the paramount importance of temporing knowledge with the appropriate amount of faith, to assimulate the incoming new data such that this new knowledge claim glorifies and magnifies God, as well as builds my faith, belief and relationship with God. Awesome read but if you get a chance to take this as a course with Dr. Harris, you will be truely blessed.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ignore This Book at Your Own Risk,
By
This review is from: The Integration of Faith and Learning (Paperback)
INTRODUCTION
In 2004 Cascade Books (Eugene, OR) published The Integration of Faith and Learning A Worldview Approach (hereafter, Integration) by Robert A. Harris, Ph.D., a writer and educator who had taught courses in writing, literature, and critical thinking for more than 25 years at several colleges and universities in California. With Integration, Professor Harris demonstrates how "[t]he process of integrating [Christian] faith and learning allows faith to support and clarify learning, and at the same time allows learning to support and clarify faith" (29). Integration is intended to furnish Christian undergraduates attending secular institutions with "the background of ideas and the practical tools needed ... for integrating Christian knowledge with the knowledge you will gain during your years of [secular] higher education" (v). Harris believes it is imperative that Christian students be fully aware that much of the information being imparted to them at secular institutions has been filtered through ontologies and epistemologies in irremediable conflict with the traditional Christian worldview, information that is further distorted through a grab bag of various social and political pressures. Harris examines the origins and epistemologies of the two worldviews that dominate today's academy--naturalism and postmodernism--and compares and contrasts them with Bible-based Christianity. His goal is to present the Christian worldview as "the most complete, rational, and accurate representation of all reality" (v). SUMMARY OF INTEGRATION Integration's 285 pages are divided into twelve chapters, and appended with a short list of the major web sites most useful for Christian apologetics. Integration's opening three chapters discuss the nature of knowledge, defined by Professor Harris as "properly justified true belief" (9). These chapters examine how different theories about what constitutes knowledge, i.e., different epistemologies, must result in different and competing worldviews. Professor Harris explains how all new knowledge must be interpreted and integrated with existing knowledge, and how this process can create, change, strengthen, or weaken an individual's worldview. Harris urges students to develop their critical faculties, to examine knowledge claims skeptically, particularly those not based on Biblical truth. Harris insists "[e]ducation is not about memorization; it is about learning how to think" (12). On the following page he reminds of the Apostle Paul's parting admonition to the church at Thessalonica: "Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good" (1 Thess. 5:21 [amplified]). Chapter four inspects the enormous impact social and political considerations have on a wide variety of knowledge claims commonly made at the academy, calling into serious question just how justified and true so many widely-held beliefs are. Harris reminds that "[s]cholars are human, and their beliefs and interests are often closely tied to personal political commitments, ideology, basic beliefs and other considerations" (73). He adds that in the real world, social pressures (e.g., research grants, promotion, tenure) are far more likely to steer the direction of research and account for the content of textbooks than any idealist's desire to acquire and publish unvarnished truth. Chapter five discusses the ontological foundations of worldviews, and pays close attention to how one's theology affects so many other beliefs about reality. Harris observes "the choice of theism or atheism as a starting point is a metaphysical preference, an ontological choice not subject to proof" (83). Harris quotes philosophers like Alduous Huxley to demonstrate that selections of metaphysical preferences are not always based on strictly rational criteria: "We objected to the morality [of theism] because it interfered with our sexual freedom" (92). Chapters 6-9 (pp. 97-220) discuss at some length the origins and main postulates of the two worldviews that dominate today's academy--scientific naturalism and postmodernism--and then compares and contrasts these philosophies with Biblically-based, Christian truth. Professor Harris succeeds in demonstrating that the Christian worldview's main competitors are ill-conceived, oversold and inconsistent, based upon un-testable metaphysical presuppositions, self-referentially absurd, unlivable, and offer truncated and/or incomprehensible views of reality. The remaining three chapters discuss how to integrate disciplinary knowledge with Christian knowledge (as opposed to compartmentalizing each), and how to successfully evaluate truth claims emanating from dubious sources and proliferating in a decidedly anti-Christian environment. In summary, "[b]uilding a Christian worldview that reflects Biblical authority and a proper understanding of academic subject matter (especially in light of the challenges presented by competing worldviews) has been the focus of this book" (279). CRITIQUE OF INTEGRATION In the same year Integration was published, biology professor Michael Zimmerman, the Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin (Oshkosh), initiated the "Clergy Letter Project." The 317 word "Clergy Letter" declares "[r]eligious truth is of a different order from scientific truth," and requests that "science [be allowed to] remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth." In February 2006 Dean Zimmerman boasted that over 10,000 Christian clergy had appended their signatures to this document. Knowingly or not, those clergy have also signed onto the proposition "[t]hat [philosophical] naturalism is science, whereas theism belongs to religion; naturalism is based on reason, whereas theism is based on faith; and naturalism provides knowledge, whereas theism provides only belief. Science, reason and knowledge easily trump religion, faith and belief." The self-referentially absurd proposition that there are different "orders" of truth is exactly the sort of not-so-subtle ideological attack Integration seeks to expose and repel: Claiming that Christian faith is merely private, subjective, weakly grounded or even false belief renders it of little importance to the non-Christian world. By insisting that faith is a private, subjective matter, the attackers hope to marginalize Christianity into irrelevance, to push it to the outer regions of significance until it falls off the edge into an effective nonexistence. Rather than a body of coherent, propositional truths about the nature of mankind and the world, it is now just religious emotion, fine for those who like that sort of thing. (16-17) That 10,000 Christian clergy would willingly affirm the proposition that scientific truth is of a different "order" than Christian truth (not even in the same family of truth, much less the same genus or species!) underscores Professor Harris' observation that the world is in desperate need of a Christian intelligentsia. We need deeply learned and fully integrated Christian philosophers, intellectuals, scientists, historians, novelists, journalists, good thinkers of every kind. Ideas are fought with ideas. ... We need Christians who can outthink the secularists (the philosophical naturalists and the postmodernists). There are many gaping holes in their worldviews and in their methodologies, and we need Christians to drive a truck through those holes, honking the horn. (17-18) Professor Harris believes that to compartmentalize Christian knowledge is to marginalize it (27). He insists "[t]he Christian faith and the Christian worldview not only stand their ground quite well in the intellectual arena, but they provide a better, more comprehensive, and more rational picture of reality than their competitors" (26). In short, Integration does for scientific naturalism and postmodernism what the Epistle to the Hebrews did for Judaism: it systematically dismembers revered truth propositions and exposes erroneous, ideological inferiors. Integration demonstrates that the conflict between scientific truth and religious truth is illusory; in reality the conflict is a rhetorical struggle between atheism's and theism's preferred definitions of "science." Just as homosexual activists have recently succeeded in redefining marriage in many places, atheists long ago succeeded in redefining "science" as a research program that insists all phenomena can, at least in principle, be explained through natural processes. Any attempt to explain phenomena by invoking the possibility of a cause that transcends nature is by definition "unscientific"--and irrational to boot. Scientific materialists have long insisted that to invoke such "irrational" explanatory causes is to give up on "science" (as opposed to recognizing the inherent weakness of a scientifically un-testable philosophy). Harris observes "[i]f one can irrationalize the opposition, then one need not take the [theistic] opponent seriously" (114). But he insists "[t]he argument over who is or is not rational is really an ontological one, based on one's deepest metaphysical assumptions" (115). In other words, one's definition of rationality is entirely dependent upon one's beliefs about how rational the proposition "God exists in reality" is. Upon this ontological foundation rests one's epistemology and ultimately, one's entire worldview. And so Harris' critique of naturalism, which he exposes as a philosophy making an heroic attempt to conceal its ideological weaknesses under much more respectable, scientific garb, is largely successful. Indeed, Harris turns the tables on the materialists, suggesting it is they "who... Read more ›
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ontological set, agenda scholarship, factual adequacy, tian worldview, integrating faith, integrative issues, connecting knowledge, retrieved online, biblical framework, methodological naturalism, philosophical naturalism, postmodernist ideas, philosophical materialism Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Downers Grove, William Hasker, Alvin Plantinga, National Geographic, Notre Dame, Phillip Johnson, George Marsden, Ronald Nash, Enhancing Faith-Learning Integration, United States, Blaise Pascal, Forbidden Archeology, Gale Group, Jonathan Wells, Judith Hooper, Margaret Mead, Michael Peterson, Michael Rea, Roger Kimball, Arnold Lunn, Christina Hoff Sommers, Colorado Springs, Faith Has Its Reasons, Gene Edward Veith New!
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