Thursday, June 15, 2006

Categorizing Worldviews

Different scholars develop various systems for keeping track of beliefs; here's one:

You can picture this as a 6 x 10 grid, with six worldviews on one axis, and ten topics on the other. Each cell in the spreadsheet would then contain a statement about what one of those worldviews has to say about the topic.

The six worldviews are: Christianity, Islam, Secular Humanism, Cosmic Humanism, Marxism-Leninism, and Post-Modernism.

The ten topics would be: theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, and history.

Try to sketch this chart for yourself, and fill in the cells. Then ask yourself: Could there be more worldviews? Who are the authors and texts that define each worldview? Are there better ways to keep track of worldviews?