Posted on 03/01/2011 12:38:28 PM PST by Kaslin
My friend Jill is one of the lucky few who seem to eat all day, yet never gain a pound.
Last weekend, she stopped at Panera Bread for lunch, simply ravenous. But it was one of those days when the lunchtime lines were long, circling back to the door. The cashiers worked as fast as they could, greeting customers cheerfully, taking their orders, and moving them on.
A young woman who had just stepped away from the counter, after placing her order, returned and caught the cashier’s attention.
“Yes, is something wrong?” the cashier asked.
“You overpaid me,” said the woman, “You gave me two tens instead of one.”
“Oh, honey, I am so glad you came back.” The cashier looked relieved, took a minute to look over the receipt and the change and then thanked her. “You’re very honest.”
The young man in front of Jill muttered. “She should have kept the money. She’s making all of us wait.”
As hungry as she was, Jill told me, she had to defend the young woman. “I’m hungry too. But she did the right thing, don’t you think?” The young man turned away, impatient and annoyed.
What made the young woman do the right thing? And why did the young man’s hunger overcome his sense of honesty?
In a word, “worldview.”
A person’s worldview shows itself in “unguarded moments,” according to Del Tackett of Focus on the Family. It’s “a combination of all you believe to be true and [this] becomes the driving force behind every emotion, decision and action.”
Chuck Colson’s Center for Christian Worldview puts it this way: “worldview [is] a vision of the world and our place in it where every facet of our life—family, occupation, recreation, relationships, finances, everything—finds its meaning and end in God’s purposes for us and for the world.”
Jill’s encounter points out that a faulty worldview—like the young man’s self-absorbed mindset—affects the small, daily decisions of life.
But it affects our crucial life-changing decisions as well.
Another friend, Terry, is four months pregnant and recently learned that her baby has Down Syndrome. At Terry’s sonogram appointment to confirm the diagnosis, someone helpfully told her that an abortion clinic operated on the first floor of the same building.
She was horrified.
Because her worldview centers on God and His truth, she sees the goodness of this child’s life and trusts in His Providence to help her raise this baby.
But how tempting must it be for women who feel devastated by the prospect of a Down Syndrome child to go right downstairs and schedule an abortion? The cultural messages bombarding her are based on faulty worldviews. Some emphasize “usefulness,” and question the value of a less than perfect child. Others center on individual choice and limitless “freedom,” and reject the burdens of caring for a special needs child.
The worldview we choose carries real-life consequences.
How to Save Your Family: Cultivate A Biblical Worldview
Only one worldview is worthy of human beings. And only one worldview will bring us happiness: God’s worldview, rooted in the truths revealed in Scripture and in the logical principles that flow consistently from those truths.
Teach your children that the decisions each of us makes every day will reflect the truths we hold dear. The secular culture proposes deceptive “truths” that become our underlying assumptions if we fail to think critically. As believers, we must intentionally choose and cultivate a worldview based on truth—God’s truth. It’s the only place we are sure to find the right answers.
Chuck Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship, has developed an incredible resource, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, for believers who want to see, understand, and engage the world from a biblical perspective. The videos, articles, and updates will both teach and challenge you, leading towards a happier, more consistent life.
No, what he described was genes.
Which made him, and to an extent all his followers (especially the stupid, stupid sociobiologists), ignorant of human nature.
Actually, he wrote about exactly that, how the strong would protect the weak in human society, quite the opposite of pure genetic natural selection where the weak would be killed off or allowed to die. He realized that what makes our societies strong is our cohesion, even our willingness to die for others even if it takes us out of the gene pool. That makes a stronger society than one made of selfish individuals.
It's quite possible. Of course I believe they've found a predisposition to religion too. I wonder if they're related.
Have you read Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents ?
You sound like a Straussian. They say, let people believe what they believe: happy people make a better world; and moreover, Judaeo-Christian morality is conducive to public felicity because of the personal values and choices it promotes, which tend to virtuous ends and happy outcomes.
Our current situation reminds us of John Adams admonition. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
BTW, I don't think you have to have a "predisposition to religion" in order to be a religious person. Though it doesn't hurt. I think temperament, predispositions and orientations function as suggestions --- even persistent suaggestions--- but not as commands.
“No, what he described was genes.”
Maybe, in a vague way, but that’s still giving him way too much credit. What’s next, saying he invented the concepts of dominance and recession, chromosomes, and DNA? Just because they fit (more or less) perfectly with what he said does not mean
“he wrote about exactly that, how the strong would protect the weak in human society, quite the opposite of pure genetic natural selection where the weak would be killed off or allowed to die.”
Could you tell me where he says this? Because it doesn’t sound familiar. Maybe there’s some dicta on it; I wouldn’t say out of hand that he never expounded such opinions. However, it did not join the main line of his theory, which treated men as no different than any other organism. Our lives were thought to be a constant war of each against all, and our population limited mainly by the supply of food, and partly by violence, disease, contraception, etc.
If he noticed the strong protected the weak (and who could miss it?), his answer didn’t merge into the main line of his teachings. I know this because the problem posed by altruism to evolutionary theory persists to this day, and no evolutionist has yet satisfactorily answered it. No odubt they would have moved on had Darwin settled it as you indicate.
“He realized that what makes our societies strong is our cohesion, even our willingness to die for others even if it takes us out of the gene pool. That makes a stronger society than one made of selfish individuals.”
Did Darwin address himself to the strength or weakness of human society? If he did, it wasn’t what he was famous for, which was namely explaining the differentiation of lifeforms by evolution via natural and sexual selection. That sort of thing happened on the individual, not the societal level, and what happened to entire collectives was merely a result of the struggle for individuals to live and reproduce. Darwin was not, so far as I know, a Social Darwinist (as we know the term), and he was not concerned with group hygene.
Again, if he addressed himself to such subjects, it formed no part of what he was famous for, and would have no more weight than, say, Einstein’s opinion on “Gone With the Wind.” Let’s say he talked about how great it is that humans are kind and magnanimous, and how much stronger, ultimately, that makes their societies. This would immediately hazard the question, “WHY, given what you’ve already said?” There would be no answer, because there is none.
It's like early atomic theory. They knew something was there to produce the behavior they saw, they just didn't know what it was.
Could you tell me where he says this? Because it doesn’t sound familiar.
Descent of Man, chapter 5,
"...if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil."He considered "sympathy" to be an evolved instinct.
... could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. ... we must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind."It's not in some orbiter dictum, it's in the main line of his theory describing how natural selection applies in humans. Due to our social nature, our "sympathy" making societies more cohesive and stronger (the whole greater than the sum of its parts), strict animal natural selection is secondary.
Again, if he addressed himself to such subjects, it formed no part of what he was famous for
The ignorance of the masses concerning the theory doesn't dictate the content of the theory.
Nope, never been much of a Freud fan. What's it about?
"... the irremediable antagonism between the demands of instinct and the restrictions of civilization ..." in the words of the editor of the Norton edition.
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