Ravi Zacharias made the following statement about "worldview":

http://www.rzim.org/usa/usfv/tabid/4...5/default.aspx

And to ground this conversation, I will take the following wiki definition or worldview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view

I'm not interested in debating whether Ravi is right or wrong. I don't believe that this conversation is particularly constructive if viewed in that manner.

Instead, I would like to ask the following question: What do you think are the "fulcrum points" of your existence? In other words, what are the primary questions whose answers you use to "leverage" your understanding of (or "orient" yourself within) the universe around you?

Ravi has four questions:

1) Where did I come from?
2) What is life's meaning?
3) How do I define right from wrong?
4) What happens to me when I die?

What questions would you feel like you need answers to in order to have a complete and coherent worldview?

Edit: I considered posting this in SMP, but even though it's not really about "religion," I think there are enough blatantly religious overtones that it might get booted over here anyway.

I'm not as interested in the 'big' questions as most people, or just a different kind of 'big' question perhaps. The first one I can think of is... 1) Given that we are here, how should we live together? I think this is the biggest question. It's similar to #3 from your post, though not quite the same.

I guess I'm saying that it doesn't matter where we came from, we are here and we must act. Religion is far more interesting than theology, sociology is more interesting than meta-physics.

And, from this, I'll say 2) Why do we do what we do?

1. What am I? (ontology)

2. What can I know? (epistemology)

3. What ought I do? (ethics)

I think the biggest question for me is a little more primitive than these:

Where does meaning come from?

I dont think the questions numbered 1 and 4 are very important, however I daresay if I knew the answer to the above and then knew how to answer 2 I'd know the answers to all of them.

Im curious why he feels we have to answer these questions...

You only "have to" answer those questions if you claim to have a comprehensive worldview. If you don't have a comprehensive worldview, then you're off the hook.

Does answering "i don't know" allow me to have a comprehensive worldview?

1) Life started a long time ago on earth, and evolved over an extremely long period of time, until we got humans. Then I was dropped off to my mummy by a stork (or at least this is what she told me).
2) Life doesn't have an inherent meaning. But since you're alive, you might as well live the best you can. It doesn't make much sense not to.
3) Depends what you mean by right and wrong. Right and wrong in what sense? Perhaps you mean "the right thing to do if you want to benefit sentient beings who are living together"?
4) Not entirely sure, but it appears that consciousness is directly linked to your brain, so I presume when that dies, my consciousness will go with it. Then my body will just rot away.

Why is there anything I absolutely ought to do? Please don't reply "because God said you should" since I don't believe in gods.

What is interesting about Ravi Zacharias is that his worldview is grounded in reality. A lot of philosophy wastes time playing semantics and then just attempts to compare concepts. But a worldview grounded on social realities is another thing entirely.

Some other philosophers attempt to project a fantasy to induce people to conform their worldview to meet or bring about a fantasy i.e. communism, Nietzsche's Superman, etc. You have to prove these are reality though otherwise they are just claims or goals and if they are a goal you have the problem of implementing and achieving the goal. What will achieving your goal actually cost and what will it affect?

What are you willing to risk to achieve your worldview?

When you spend a lot of time arguing over semantics and comparing concepts so you can dismiss assumptions you often times don't get down to the way things actually are. But these are the most important questions: how is the world currently set up? Why is the world set up that way? And if we change it can we implement it successfully? Most philosophy doesn't even address this it seems to me....Though some philosophers have tried to analyze what makes consciousness work, etc.

I liked his point about people daring to compare Islam with Christianity. It is deceptive because in an Islamic society you have no freedom to convert or not. But somehow people overlook this philosophizing....But that is real world reality. How is philosophy going to deal with it? Because the interface between reality and philosophy is the most important yet usually discounted because people idealize all the time but idealizations frequently fail to include all real scenarios and variables in favor of a preferred view.

Zarathustra: "man is something to be overcome"

Compare that with Christianity: the world and the self is something to be overcome

The only people who feel they MUST have answers to questions like that are the ones who think that any answer (whether it's right, wrong, or completely made up) is better than no answer at all. It's similar to the following...

T: Do you believe there is life elsewhere in the universe?
A: I have no idea.
T: Well, I do because this book on UFOs shows there is and it goes into great detail about exactly what those aliens are like. Clearly you suck at astronomy and your universal worldview is incomplete!

That's an inaccurate (incomplete may be a better word) analogy if you're comparing it to the Christian experience because Christians look both inwardly and outwardly then compare the two. They don't look just at a book and outwardly. If they did no inner change would be possible.

I'm going to start keeping a book full of Splendour's responses and memorize it. Then I can go around terrorizing atheists the world over!

1) assuming this means "where did humans come from" since my arrival is pretty well documented - the need-to-know aspect of that is just to help understand our behavioral tendencies, but really just normal curiosity.
2) an abstract concept ( life ) doesn't "have" anything. Least of all another abstract vague property.
3) wrong actions cause harm. Right actions cause less harm.
4) A person needs to make up their mind if they use the turn "die" to mean "ceasing to exist" or not. I do.

A complete and coherent worldview is not humanly achievable.

It amuses me that you seem to think this thread is about answering the questions.

I'm still scratching my head a little about what makes a worldview "complete" and "coherent."

Like everything, I skim read the OP.

I am skeptical of Zacharias's claim that everyone has to answer those questions. I am also skeptical that there is some other list of questions that everyone would have to answer in order to have a complete and coherent worldview. I'm not sure if this is an answer to your question, or if you are asking for what I personally would need answered in order to have a complete and coherent worldview.

I'll add "what has value?" to these. Call it aesthetics.

Edit - While these are a good match for my "fulcrum points," I don't think I "have to answer them."

His usage probably refers to an ability to make sense of enough of the basic human experience to come to an understanding of the self within the context of that experience.

But I agree that the notion of a "complete" or "coherent" worldview is vague.

Have you read any books by Zacharias? You're being incredibly generous to imply he might have tried to unpack these terms. (It would never occur to him. He's...beyond clueless.)

In what sense are they "fulcrum points" for you if you don't think having answers to them is important?

I know you were asking madnak, but I agree with him. To me the importance is in trying to understand and answer them, not in actually solving them. I tend to think I never will know the real answer to anything I consider a truly deep and/or important question (and so declaring that I 'must' answer them seems doomed from the start).

So if I were to rephrase it from "everyone... has to answer these questions:" to "everyone... has to pursue these questions:", would you feel better about the wording?