Why Does Worldview Matter? The Impact of Worldview III – Pool of Live Options
Worldview is the conceptual lens through which we see,
understand, and interpret the world and our place within it. Worldview develops
in and flows through the heart, the center of the human person, and necessarily
involves answers (propositional or narrative) to four questions: What is our
nature? What is our world? What is our problem? What is our end? Every person
possesses a worldview that provides an answer or set of answers to these core
worldview questions, but these individual worldviews can be compiled under
broad categories.
But why does worldview matter? How does worldview
affect us? Why bother learning about it as a concept, and one’s own worldview
specifically? What does it have to do with life? Simply put, worldview matters
because one’s worldview affects everything that one thinks and does, through confirmation
bias, experiential accommodation, the pool of live options,
and life motivation. Previously, I’ve talked about confirmation bias and
experiential accommodation. Today, I’d like to examine my favorite aspect of
worldview impact – how worldview affects our PoLO, or Pool of Live Options.
Worldview and the Pool of Live Options.
Worldview
determines the pool of live options, the set of possible explanations for a
given phenomenon. Worldview determines the antecedent possibility or
plausibility of various explanations or theories.
One
might consider, for example, someone’s need to explain the mysterious appearance
of mail in his mailbox on a day that mail is not delivered. John returns
home from attending weekly worship at his church and discovers a letter from
Aunt Martha in the mailbox outside the front door of his townhouse. He is,
needless to say, surprised. Mail is not normally delivered on the Sabbath day.
How then shall he explain this apparent
mystery?
His
ten-year-old son offers a potential explanation: “The postal service must have
started delivering on the sabbath.” His wife offers another explanation: “Yesterday’s
mail was probably delivered to Mr. and Mrs. Jones across the street (in 2843
Fallow Court as opposed to his 2834 Fallow Court) by mistake, and they brought
it over for us today.” His wide-eyed seven-year-old daughter offers a third
possible explanation: “Aliens stole our mail yesterday and brought it back today.”
His new friend Art offers a fourth explanation: “Did you not know, have you not
heard, that here in the United States, mail is delivered every Saturday? It is
only lazy Canadian postal workers who get the whole weekend off.” (Did I forget
to mention that the worship service was at a Seventh-Day Adventist Church? My
apologies for the oversight.)
Each
of the four explanations is, theoretically speaking, possible. Nonetheless, the
four alternatives are not accorded the same weight of plausibility. Within John’s
own worldview, option three (aliens) will be immediately discarded from the
realm of possibility. His skepticism concerning the existence of
extraterrestrial life forms (and his accompanying conviction that, even if they
should happen to exist, the possibility of them traveling to earth is extremely
remote) rules out his daughter’s suggestion. Simply put, his underlying
worldview does not allow for the alien explanation in his pool of live options.
Kelly James Clark argues, “Explanatory power is not the only factor involved in
the assessment of hypotheses; hypotheses must also be judged to have some
initial likelihood of being true. And judgments of initial likelihood are conditioned
by our deepest commitments.” When faced with unusual phenomena or
extraordinary claims, our worldview presuppositions govern their antecedent
plausibility.
Imagine
that Aunt Rose has been diagnosed with terminal, untreatable cancer. Her family
prays for God’s miraculous healing. Weeks later, the doctors find her to be
entirely free from the cancer that had ravaged her body. How do you explain
what happened? For the Christian theist, the answer could be quite simple. God
healed Aunt Rose out of his infinite, compassionate mercy and love, in response
to the humble prayers of his children. For the atheist, such an explanation is
not possible. It lies outside the pool of live options. Either the initial
diagnosis of cancer was mistaken, or there had been some kind of treatment that
rid her body of cancer—or there is some other unknown natural explanation for
her sudden healing. Whatever the case, Aunt Rose was not the recipient
of a divine miracle. God does not exist to perform such miracles, and therefore
it cannot be the explanation.
Consider
the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Worldview
presuppositions determine whether the historically orthodox understanding of
Jesus’ resurrection is within the pool of live options. For example, prominent
biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan is committed to a naturalistic worldview
that denies supernatural interaction with the closed physical universe. Furthermore,
he insists that human life ceases absolutely and irrevocably at death. Those
worldview presuppositions render the orthodox resurrection in-credible (that
is, not believable). A supernatural bodily resurrection is not within the pool
of live options given Crossan’s worldview. Whatever explanation is given for
Christian resurrection belief, Crossan’s explanation (and the explanation of
others holding to a naturalistic worldview) simply cannot be that
Jesus was truly raised from the dead.
Crossan
once engaged in a public debate with William Lane Craig regarding the
resurrection of Jesus. During their dialogue, there is a fascinating and very
revealing exchange. First, Craig asks Crossan, “What evidence would it take to
convince you [that the resurrection really happened]? Or are your preconceived
ideas about the impossibility of the miraculous and so forth so strong that, in
fact, they skew your historical judgment so that such an event could never even
be admitted into court?” Craig is asking Crossan what type and amount of
evidence would convince him that Jesus really was raised from the dead. Crossan’s
reply is revealing: “It’s a theological presupposition of mine that God does
not operate that way. . . . What would it take to prove to me what you ask? I don’t
know, unless God changes the universe.” In other words, there is no type or
amount of evidence that could convince Crossan of the literal truth of the
resurrection of Jesus. He has a theological presupposition that God would not
do such things. It is a part of his worldview. Crossan is absolutely closed to
the possibility of Jesus’ bodily resurrection because it does not fit within
his worldview. Worldview determines our pool of live options and thus governs
the way that we interpret data that we encounter.
One
of my favorite detective shows is Psych, starring James Roday as Shawn
Spencer, a highly observant independent investigator who pretends that his
empirically driven insights are psychic visions. In one episode, “This Episode
Sucks,” a murder victim is found with puncture wounds on his neck and both
wrists, and most of the blood drained from his body. Spencer and his “assistant”
Burton Guster immediately conclude that the murder was perpetrated by a
vampire; their hypothesis is just as quickly rejected by police detectives
Juliet O’Hara and Carlton Lassiter. Spencer and Guster embrace a worldview
wherein paranormal creatures (Bigfoot, vampires, etc.) are legitimate
possibilities; for O’Hara and Lassiter, such creatures fall outside the pool of
live options. There must be a different, “normal” explanation for the murder (as
indeed there is in this case).
Being
aware of one’s own (and others’) worldview, then, can help identify when and
where one’s pool of live options is broadened or narrowed by one’s worldview.
Worldview awareness also enables us to ask whether such broadening and
narrowing is appropriate. Why do I reject the possibility that God healed Aunt
Martha? Are there good reasons for such exclusion, or is it based merely on
unexamined worldview presuppositions? Why do I reject the possibility that a
vampire sucked the blood out of a victim? Do I have good reasons for
disbelieving in vampires and thus concluding that vampires (as nonexisting
creatures) do not commit murder, or is the exclusion based merely on unexamined
worldview presuppositions? In other words, is there a rational justification for
the contours of my pool of live options?
For more on the pool of live options, and all things
worldview, check out:
Tawa
J. Anderson, W. Michael Clark, and David K. Naugle, An Introduction to
Christian Worldview: Pursuing God's Perspective in a Pluralistic World. IVP
Academic, October 2017. 384 pp. Amazon link
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