I don't really object to the wording (although you've just introduced everyone, I think which I do object to*) - as I said I find the question "Where does meaning come from?" to be my 'fulcrum' but I think the effort to answer is what's important. Like Concerto I don't think it's possible for us to achieve a coherent, complete worldview and my goals are curtailed by what I think is possible.

EDIT: * I see that he used the word everyone, I skipped over that and am only addressing your question, not his.

For me:

1. Where did I come from? This doesn't just mean a source, but it's a question of purpose--how did I get here and why, if there is a reason? When I was heavily considering atheism, I discovered an intense sense of purposelessness, one I don't think most atheists perceive. They seem to think, as one poster above said, if we have no purpose but we just happen to be here, might as well "make the best of it"--well, if atheism is true, there is no "best"; it's all arbitrary. My best could be crack cocaine, murder, incest, rape, pedophilia, bestiality, pornography, torturing others and myself, etc. Or not. It's all random. It is only because the world we live in is actually Christian Theistic that "sense" even exists, and that "make the best of it" has meaning at all. I was prepared to accept senselessness at the time, though it was dreadful to consider. I had made up my mind to drink a lot, sex a lot, and sleep a lot...but even those decisions were based on the effects of the actual world (Christian Theistic-that rationality and the laws of logic exist, that there is a "better", "best", "desirable", etc.) as opposed to being 100% consistent with my claimed WV.

I agree with Ravi's 4. I would want to know an explanation for the rest of creation, too, though, and the rest of existence.

in so far as i can make up an answer to a question that i dont have an answer to as well as a theist can, i believe my world view is as complete as theirs.

this is as fascinating as if a Muslim said he was convinced the faith of Islam is the most coherent.

does Islam not provide answers to the aforementioned (dull) questions?

Or if an evolutionist says evolution is true, or if an atheist says atheism is true. Your argument fails because every person who argues any view is necessarily biased in the sense that they believe that view. The reason it's compelling is because Ravi's reputation as a scholar is universally acknowledged - a scholar in philosophy, not just religion, and highly erudite. I don't know anyone who seriously contends otherwise or who dismisses his arguments easily.

Of course I agree that to you it should appear more compelling when someone like Antony Flew, perhaps the most famous atheist of recent time and ardent defender of atheism akin to Richard Dawkins right now, converted to believing that God must exist toward the end of his life.

1. My mothers womb.
2. You are presupposing life has a meaning. Prove this and your question goes from meaningless garbage to a question worth asking.
3. With a dictionary.
4. You are presupposing something happens to you when you die (other than becoming worm-food). Prove this and your question goes from meaningless garbage to a question worth asking.

you are confusing matters of opinion, and matters of fact. religious choice is preference, evolution is either true or false.

and there aren't highly erudite muslims?

its irrelevant anyways (see: appeal to authority fallacy.) it doesnt matter who stated what i quoted, nor how learned an individual he is. arguments are good or bad on their own merits.

again, see appeal to authority. it would be irrelevant if every person on the planet but myself was an atheist, or every person on the planet was an atheist but you. things are true or false on their own merits. christianity is true or false on its own merits. not in who subscribes to it.

(and as for evolution, it was true before anyone even knew what it was, or believed it. its a simple fact about the natural world that your religion prevents you from accepting.)

I agree with this.

My problem is that claiming "x amount of knowledge or x amount of answers to questions is complete" is completely not justified and I think impossible. It is just a guideline of something reasonably encompassing.

Interesting but in the end, as you know of course, not anywhere close to a justification of his claim.

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It is possible to construct many systems that don't internally contradict themselves but have false premises. In fact, 4 axioms/rules is really tiny. Without testable axioms it's a mess.

So to go back to OP's goal, what are my fulcrum points? Well I don't know really. But in general I think these have to be constructed by something common to all humanity otherwise it is totally an internal argument and has no application to someone else.

Well, getting the answers would be very important if I even thought that was possible. But that doesn't mean I need to have them in order for my worldview to function. Sometimes I may have to assume something as a basis for my action or opinion, but even then it's more about narrowing the possible range of answers than actually getting "the" answer.

Furthermore, understanding possible answers that I wasn't able to appreciate before is a critical part of how I update and develop my worldview. Maybe the critical part. Whether the answers are true doesn't matter, what matters is finding them and being able to see them.

I find it interesting that there's so much struggle with the concept of "complete and coherent" and madnak's particular appeal to "functional" seems to be an undercurrent that might be shared by others.

Almost by definition, a worldview is functional. That is, whatever understanding of the universe you have *IS* your understanding of the universe. I don't really see how a worldview can be "non-functional."

The second interesting aspect of this is that there's an odd self-defeating position of knowledge that is taken in this area. It's sort of a milder version of the idea that "the only thing I know for certain is that I can't know for certain."

I grant that absolute and perfect knowledge of anything is an unreasonable request. But I want to reiterate my sense of his usage of the terms:

That is, there are worldviews which are "functional" because they simply are, but are not "coherent" because they contain conflicting understandings. Or perhaps they are "incomplete" because they fail to address a major area of the basic human experience.

I wanted to avoid the "answers" to the questions precisely because I don't think that the epistemological problem is relevant to the questions I'm asking.

It amuses me that you answered the questions after I explicitly posted a response about answering the questions.

I see. Well, I think developing an understanding of the source of meaning and its consequences is complete in this sense (although I grant that's a big call). One trouble with the approach you're asking us to take is that, for people like madnak and me, coherent is not such a big deal - it just means we havent yet fully worked out the worldview which we consider to be forever unachievable anyhow. Any incoherence points to where we should focus our efforts on improvement/development but can never be fully eradicated.

As you said - no worldview is ever going to be fully absolutely, perfectly known - I think this implies that no actual worldview is ever going to be fully coherent, although I havent thought about it much.

I doubt you were amused at all. Quite the reverse actually.

Answering "I don't know" means that you do not have a comprehensive worldview. In order to qualify as a worldview, the most fundamental questions about ontology, epistemology and ethics must be answered. In other words, claiming ignorance is not a worldview (although it can certainly be an honest response to a question).

I dont think you have to have knowledge - you need to have a rudimentary answer perhaps, but you dont have to be confident it's correct, imo.

So, the statement "Christianity is true" is neither a true statement nor a false statement?

Similiarly, if somebody said that "Atheism is the most viable worldview", you would say that that person was making neither a true nor a false claim?

It sounds like you're looking for a "provably consistent worldview", as opposed to "consistent worldview." I think that pursuit is entirely different (and completely impossible). It's very reminiscent of Godel's incompleteness theorem, which states that for some very basic types of logical systems, you can prove consistency if and only if the system is inconsistent.

But that idea is not limited to worldview. No single piece of knowledge can be fully absolute, perfectly known, if you're including some sort of provability requirement (because you will always have some sort of unjustified assertion within your system if you have a nonempty system).

On the other hand, it is possible to be completely, absolutely, and perfectly correct about something even if you can't prove it.

It seems to me that adjustments to your worldview are intended to bring you "closer" (in some vague sense) to a "correct" (or "coherent" or "proper" or "perfectly consistent" or "true") worldview. That is, you wouldn't change it if you didn't think that it took a positive step towards *something*. What is that something?

No I'm looking for it to correlate with reality (and am assuming that if it does it will be coherent). A consistent worldview is easy to generate - the value comes if it's correct. (Also just a technical point for anyone following along, you meant completeness instead of consistency in the Godel sentence above).
True but again, I dont understand your point. My point is that coherent and consistent are not actually that big a deal. I thought you were saying they were essential to having a worldview.
I don't see how coherent or perfectly consistent are the same as correct.
An accurate portrayal of some subset of reality which is sufficient to provide an understanding of my place in it.

I think this is a good example of a question that is not a fulcrum point for me.

the statement wasnt that christianity was true. it was that the "Christian faith is the most coherent worldview around." and no, its neither a true nor false statement. its a matter of opinion.

correct. that statement would neither be true nor false.

This seems to be the most universal(amoung the entire population of the world past and present)

Actually, I had in mind the second incompleteness theorem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6...teness_theorem

Consistency is (essentially) not a provable quality.

What makes a worldview "correct" in your view?

I believe that these are things that worldviews should be striving for. That is, if you had a worldview that was not consistent or coherent, then it's deficient in some manner. And that this deficiency is significant enough to merit altering the worldview.

I used many terms there simply to highlight the vagueness of the characterization of a worldview and what it might seek to accomplish. It was a "pick whatever makes the most sense to you in your understanding."

My apologies (to you and to anyone led astray by my 'correction'). I was reading and typing rather fast last night - obviously I didnt really think about what you wrote very carefully.
How closely it represents reality.
This is essentially all I meant too - I think requiring that a worldview must be coherent and complete is too onerous a condition (not for Godel-type reasons, but simply because most of us with a worldview are miles from that ideal).

As you seem to suggest here - striving for it is enough to constitute a worldview (at least in my opinion). I don't think one must have an answer to your 'fulcrum questions' and nor do I think it matters if your rudimentary, half an answer is obviously incoherent or incomplete - sure you're probably wrong, but you still have a worldview. In my opinion it's making the intellectual effort to understand which is important.

What is "best" is obviously arbitrary, but you could make a rational argument for certain things to be considered "better" based on specific criteria. E.g. humans like happiness. What leads to long term happiness and how can I live that way?

Just want to point out the ironic fact that making up the concept of religion fits nicely into humans liking happiness.