What is the nature of reality?At the root of our society's deepest political and cultural divisions are the conflicting principles of four global worldviews. While each of us holds to some version of one of these worldviews, we are often unconscious of their differences as well as their underlying assumptions. Mary Poplin argues that the ultimate test of a worldview, philosophy or ideology is whether it corresponds with reality. Since different perspectives conflict with each other, how do wemake sense of the differences? And if a worldview system accurately reflects reality, what implications does that have for our thinking and living?In this wide-ranging and perceptive study, Poplin examines four major worldviews: naturalism, humanism, pantheism and Judeo-Christian theism. She explores the fundamental assumptions of each, pressing for limitations. Ultimately she puts each perspective to the test, asking, what if this worldview is true? If reality is secular, that means somethingfor how we orient our lives. But if reality is not best explained by secular perspectives, that would mean something quite different. Consider for yourself what is the fundamental substance of reality.



Dallas Willard (1935–2013) was a renowned teacher, an acclaimed writer and one of our most brilliant Christian thinkers. He was as celebrated for his enduring writings on spiritual formation as he was for his scholarship, with a profound influencein the way he humbly mentored so many of today's leaders in the Christian faith. His books include The Divine Conspiracy (a Christianity Today Book of the Year), The Spirit of the Disciplines, Hearing God, Renovation of the Heart, and others.







Mary Poplin (PhD, University of Texas) is professor of education at Claremont Graduate University in California, where she has served as director of the teacher education program and dean of the School of Educational Studies. She is a frequent speaker at Veritas Forums and the author of Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service.



Foreword by Dallas Willard



Part 1: Is Reality Secular?

1 Truth and Consequences

2 Confessions of a Professor

3 Worldviews as Operating Systems of the Mind

4 Tracing History up to Now



Part 2: Material Naturalism

5 Everything Is a Thing

6 Science as the Only Truth

7 The Purposeless Universe Emerged from Nothing

8 No Miracles Allowed

9 The Ethics of Things upon Things

10 Countering God as Creator



Part 3: Secular Humanism

11 Man Makes Himself and His World

12 Radical Individual Freedom

13 Varieties of Secular Humanism

14 Principles of Secular and Christian Psychology

15 Finding Moral Truth in Human Dialogue

16 Exorcising Sin

17 Contesting Jesus as Divine



Part 4: Pantheism

18 Immanence - The Spirit Within Us

19 To Eliminate Suffering, Jettison Desire

20 Pantheism?s Many Faces

21 Western Pantheism - Spiritual, Not Religious

22 SpiritualTransactions in People, Nature and Nations

23 Contesting the Holy Spirit



Part 5: What If Judeo-Christianity Is True?

24 A Wider Rationality

25 The Triune God

26 Jesus, Perfect God/Man: Redeemer of Man and the World

27 Signposts of Reality



Acknowledgments

Notes

Name Index

Subject Index