How to Know Truth and Evaluate Competing Worldviews...Continued from page 2

Likewise, if you are a college student, you could say "Professor, I didn't study because I wasn't absolutely certain the test was going to be today. You could have gotten sick and postponed it." Your professor would rightly say, "I told you the test was going to be today. You knew well enough. You are responsible to take it."

The Certainty Principle tells us that there comes a point where you're sure enough about something that you can rest in the knowledge that it is true and thus become responsible to act upon it. So we can't wait until absolute proof is presented before we will believe something to be true, but must be willing to consider the facts and go where they reasonably lead.


How to Test a Worldview
Now that we see a bit about how knowledge works and how we come to know things, let's take a look at how to actually go about evaluating the competing worldviews in our culture. What is a worldview? A worldview is simply a comprehensive view of reality. And there are many worldviews out there such as Humanism, Buddhism, Deism, Naturalism, Postmodernism, Christian Theism, Islamic Theism, and Nihilism—to name a few.

How are we to think about this competition of worldviews? There is a drive in our culture today to affirm everybody in whatever he or she believes. That raises an important question. Why can't we all just be right? Why do we have to say "This is true and that is false; this is right and that is wrong"?

There are two reasons. First, very often different worldviews contradict each other at the core. So it is not possible that they could both be true. For example, take Atheism and Theism. Theism says, "God exists," and without this, Theism falls apart. Atheism says, "God does not exist," and without this, Atheism falls apart. So if it's really true that God exists, Atheism cannot be true. On the other hand, if it's really true that God does not exist, Theism cannot be true. Of course, God either exists or he doesn't. So one of these worldviews has to fail.
The second reason we can't all be right is because there is, of course, only one reality and we all live in it. And our worldviews either fit or fail to fit the nature of the world we live in. Different worldviews paint fundamentally different pictures of reality. But since there is only one reality, only one worldview can match reality as it actually is and thus be true. All other worldviews would be painting pictures different from reality and thus would be essentially false.
For the sake of illustration, let's assume that DaVinci's Mona Lisa represents reality. Now consider Grant Wood's American Gothic. There is much that it has in common with the Mona Lisa (faces, backgrounds, etc.), but it is essentially a different picture. Take Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Again, there is much that it has in common with the Mona Lisa (eyes, hair, etc.), but it is not the Mona Lisa. Now let's consider a replica of the Mona Lisa. Of course, it represents the Mona Lisa (i.e., reality) as it actually is. In the same way, since there is only one reality, only one worldview could paint a picture of reality as it actually is.