Christian Worldview Concepts

Basic Beliefs of the Christian Worldview - God Is and God Spoke

The Nature and Function of Basic Beliefs

All worldviews are dependent upon basic beliefs or presuppositions — assumptions which are the starting points for knowing anything. These beliefs are the foundation for all other beliefs within a particular worldview. In order to even communicate with another person we make a number of assumptions; assumptions about the meaning of words, that the words we speak convey something real, etc. Without these background beliefs, there would be no way to have meaningful communication.

This is how basic beliefs function within a person's worldview. They might be called control beliefs because they control what one believes or does not believe in all other areas. The following dialogue illustrates what is meant by basic beliefs:

Jim Leffel, a college philosophy teacher from Ohio, pulls this exercise on his students in Philosophy 101:

"Tell me, why are you here in my class?"
The typical answer: "To satisfy a humanities requirement."

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"All right then," I ask, "why do you want to satisfy a humanities requirement?"
Obvious response: "To complete my college degree."

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"Fair enough, but why do you want to get a degree?"
"Well, to get a job of course," they say, as if it were somehow self- evident.

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The inquiry continues, "Why do you want to get a job?"
The somewhat exasperated response is, "To make money!"

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"Ah, yes," I continue, "But why do you want to make money?"
"It takes money to buy things," they retort, as if I were nuts.

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"Okay, but why do you want to buy things?"
"Well, to be happy," they somewhat hesitatingly urge.

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Then I press the issue further by saying, "Yes, that's nice, but why do you want to be happy?"
To this, there is no response.

Leffel goes on to tell his students: "We finally arrive at a basic belief: The goal of life is to be happy, and the acquisition of things is the way to be happy. Of course this is not the only reason why people take classes, work and so on. But by peeling the layers of belief back in this way, we are able to arrive at some irreducible or basic beliefs. When we come to the point in asking "why" where there is no more "because," we have identified a basic belief.

Basic beliefs are self-evident to the person who holds them. These basic beliefs are those upon which all of the other beliefs in one's worldview depend¹. In this sense, a basic belief is a "regress stopper," a belief beyond which no further explanation is needed or is available; a belief whose truth is self-evident to us. When we have reached this point, we can say such a belief is properly basic. If one's basic beliefs can be called into doubt, the rest of that person's worldview is affected. Basic beliefs are foundational to all other beliefs within a worldview.

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¹ Jim Leffel Basic Beliefs, xenox.com, 2001