|
|
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Treatment of a Difficult Topic, July 5, 2001
This is an excellent book. Ron Nash does a very good job of building up a philosophical apologetic for how to evaluate worldviews/religions/belief systems, and then make comparisons in a meaningful way. There are several things worth noting about this book that are in its favor.Nash starts out by building up a series of 'tests' upon which all worldviews can be evaluated. This is the most important part of the book. Without a standard set of tests that can be applied to any worldview, comparisons between worldviews are probably pointless. There has to be a universal basis upon which to conduct such comparisons, and it's this basis that Nash attempts to erect in the early part of the book. Just as importantly, the tests themselves have to be reasonable, intelligent, and complete. Folks who read the later part of the book in which worldview comparisons are made and don't like what they see when worldviews are compared with each other are likely to try to discredit the standards or tests themselves that are the basis for these comparisons. If the tests don't make sense, or are biased, or are not exhaustive, the worldview comparisons conducted by applying such tests will not carry a great deal of weight with those who don't like the grade their particular worldview gets by applying these tests. So needless to say, the issue of building a comprehensive and objective set of standards by which viable worldview comparisons can be made is the most critical part of the book. And I found that Nash's tests make a great deal of sense and are a legitimate basis upon which to evaluate competing worldviews and draw meaningful conclusions that are relevant to real people. I found that Nash then did a good job of applying these tests. For the purposes of this book, Nash applies his tests to Christianity, naturalism, and the New Age movement. Nash's conclusion is that Christianity passes each test, while both naturalism and the New Age movement have serious problems on almost all fronts. His analyses are not terribly lengthy (more on this later), but they are concise and attempt to highlight a few specific areas of each worldview that tend to be the most controversial or difficult to accept. Nash's analysis accomplishes a couple of things. First, in my view, he demonstrates pretty clearly that the Christian worldview, far from being anti-intellectual and anti-reason, is actually the worldview that best stands up to the processes of logic and reason in comparison with other worldviews. But even if someone doesn't accept this, this book is still a success. In my view, it is virtually impossible to read this book and conclude that these various worldviews are pretty much the same. If nothing else, Nash clearly shows that not only are these worldviews very different from each other, they actually conflict with each other on many fundamental questions. This, in and of itself, is an important thing to demonstrate. An increasing number of people today believe that all worldviews or belief systems are equally true. Nash clearly demonstrates that this idea cannot be true. As thinking human beings who have been granted the gifts of logic, reason, and independent thinking, if nothing else, these intellectual gifts compel us to make choices when we encounter competing worldviews. Lastly, this book is not very long, only 170 pages or so. As a result, I entered into reading this book a bit skeptical that the book would be able to thoroughly cover this topic, particularly since the whole issue of worldview comparisons and erecting tests for such comparisons can lead folks into a myriad of technical discussions that can lead in all kinds of different directions. To his credit, Nash repeatedly acknowledges this throughout his book. I felt that Nash was being very honest with the reader in footnoting and highlighting areas throughout the book where there was plenty of room for additional discussion or analysis but would have gotten the book off message, so he chose not to explore them. To his credit, in practically each instance where Nash volunteers that additional research is a good idea, he refers the reader to resources that address the kinds of questions or issues that the reader might reasonably have, but that Nash does not explore in this book. This impressed me, and made me feel that Nash was not purposefully glossing over difficult topics, but was in fact purposefully deferring those topics to other resources and then referring the reader to those resources. So in summary, Nash achieves what he set out to achieve in this book. He presents a very reasonable and defendable set of tests upon which any worldview can be analyzed, and that by applying these tests, Christianity emerges as the worldview with the greatest intellectual integrity in comparison to other worldviews. A scholarly examination, and very well done.
|
by James W. Sire
by Robert Holden
by Shirley Peddy
by Ronald H. Nash
by William Lane Craig
See all Editorial Reviews
