Worldviews in Conflict

Rating:
Summary: A Reasonable Introduction But Do Not Stop Here
Review: For a person just becoming acquainted with the concept of a worldview this book is probably a reasonable place to start. For example, the definition that Nash gives at the beginning of Chapter 1 is quite a good brief definition. His discussion of the major elements of a worldview and his descriptions of the three worldviews that he considers in any detail, Christian theism, naturalism, and the new age movement, are all reasonable introductions.

I have concerns with Nash's attempts to logically 'prove' points in favor of Christian theism or against the other two worldviews, however. I am a believing Christian but reading a number of the 'proofs' left me shaking my head in wonderment. And, as other reviewers have pointed out, Nash tends to turn to quotes from C. S. Lewis and others in his proofs a bit too much for me.

Try this book as an introduction, but don't stop here. James Sire's book, "The Universe Next Door" has a very similar approach, but it covers more worldviews, presents an excellent exposition of how the worldviews covered evolved in response to previous worldviews, and it covers these topics in a bit more depth. Even so, some of Sire's arguments left me shaking my head also.

It is also informative to search deeper and read presentations of worldviews, such as naturalism, written by proponents of these worldviews. For example I recommend Sigmund Freud's 'The Question of a Weltanschauung' in his "New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis."

Rating:
Summary: Great intro to World View apologetics
Review: In this book Ronald Nash continues (although takes it a somewhat different direction) in the Tradition of Cornelius Van Til, when he gives a defense of the Christian World View as contrasted with other worldviews. In particular, Naturalism and New Age Pantheism. He does a good job defending the Christian World View, and showing examples of how it was attacked throughout history, and the response to such attacks.

He identifies presuppositions that every system holds to, analysis those presuppositions, and puts them through tests to see which hold up. He gives the tests of, Reason (non contradiction), Experience, and Practice. In this he clearly shows the superiority of Christianity as opposed to naturalism and New Ageism.

Overall, I see this book as a great intro to world view apologetics, but I find that the world view defense is much more powerful than Ronand Nash makes it out to be. He doesn't use the full force of World View apologetics that he could have. Like the inductive principle, Moral ethics(as far as Id like him to go), and how can one know anything for sure? However, as a bonus, I did find good defenses of the Christian faith against the problem of evil, and against Jesus as just a good man.

So in conclusion, I don't think this book was intended to be an exhaustive account of World View apologetics. I constantly see Ronald Nash referring readers to his more exhaustive book, "faith and reason". However, what little was summarized, was articulated very well as the author seems to have a gift in conveying his information. So this would definitely be a great place to start. For a detailed analysis, and a more powerful presentation of World View apologetics, I refer readers to Greg Bahnsons awesome book, "Van Til's Apologetic : Readings and Analysis",or if you like the author, his more detailed book, "Faith and Reason".

Rating:
Summary: A great apologetic book!
Review: Nash is awesome! He clearly integrates the apologetic methodology of Clark, Van Til, Schaeffer, Plantinga, Carnell, Henry, Frame, Geisler and other christian apologists in a kind of threefold test for truth. The content of this book is greater than it contains.

Rating:
Summary: Decent Introduction to Apologetics
Review: Ronald H. Nash comes across as someone who is a lot smarter than he's letting himself seem. I haven't read his other books, but I imagine they must be more philosophical and aimed at a more educated audience than is "Worldviews in Conflict."

This is a problem. There's nothing necessarily wrong with popular-level apologetics books--I enjoyed Lee Strobel's "Case for Christ" and "Case for Faith," for example--as long as the author is comfortable writing in this style. Nash can't seem to decide who he's writing for.

Still, if this is your first experience with naturalism, the New Age movement, and terms like "epistemology" and "world view," I imagine that "Worldviews in Conflict" is as good a place to start as any. It's not Nash's fault I've heard this all before. I don't think I'm his target audience anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Decent Introduction to Apologetics
Review: Ronald H. Nash comes across as someone who is a lot smarter than he's letting himself seem. I haven't read his other books, but I imagine they must be more philosophical and aimed at a more educated audience than is "Worldviews in Conflict."

This is a problem. There's nothing necessarily wrong with popular-level apologetics books--I enjoyed Lee Strobel's "Case for Christ" and "Case for Faith," for example--as long as the author is comfortable writing in this style. Nash can't seem to decide who he's writing for.

Still, if this is your first experience with naturalism, the New Age movement, and terms like "epistemology" and "world view," I imagine that "Worldviews in Conflict" is as good a place to start as any. It's not Nash's fault I've heard this all before. I don't think I'm his target audience anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Good for starters
Review: Ronald Nash’s "World-Views in Conflict" is a very useful introduction to Christian worldview thought. That said, I have had a rather difficult time deciding how many stars it really deserves.

The author does a very nice job presenting what exactly worldviews are. He comes at his material from a very logic-based western mind-frame. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In its way it is very useful. Chapter nine, in which Nash presents some good arguments for a solid belief in Jesus' physical Incarnation and Resurrection, is so well done that I heartily recommend it to anyone.

My quibble with this book is that it is very, very derivative. I don’t mind people quoting from lots of sources in their work—heck, Brennan Manning does it all the time and he is my favorite author. The specific problem here is Nash’s constant reference to a few authors (the most prominent being C.S. Lewis).

Bearing all this in mind, I am giving "World-Views in Conflict" a solid recommendation, but only three stars. The content deserves a four, but the constant over-referencing to certain authors knocks off a point. Nevertheless, if apologetics or worldview thinking is your thing, you could do a lot worse than this useful book from Professor Nash.

Rating:
Summary: Good for starters
Review: This book is good for those starting out in understanding worldviews. Nash does his best at trying to help the novice understand the basics of worldview thinking explaining as much as he can in layman's terms. Resources for further study are endorsed in the footnotes.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Treatment of a Difficult Topic
Review: This is an excellent book. Ron Nash does a very good job of building up a philosophical apologetic for how to evaluate worldviews/religions/belief systems, and then make comparisons in a meaningful way. There are several things worth noting about this book that are in its favor.

Nash starts out by building up a series of 'tests' upon which all worldviews can be evaluated. This is the most important part of the book. Without a standard set of tests that can be applied to any worldview, comparisons between worldviews are probably pointless. There has to be a universal basis upon which to conduct such comparisons, and it's this basis that Nash attempts to erect in the early part of the book. Just as importantly, the tests themselves have to be reasonable, intelligent, and complete. Folks who read the later part of the book in which worldview comparisons are made and don't like what they see when worldviews are compared with each other are likely to try to discredit the standards or tests themselves that are the basis for these comparisons. If the tests don't make sense, or are biased, or are not exhaustive, the worldview comparisons conducted by applying such tests will not carry a great deal of weight with those who don't like the grade their particular worldview gets by applying these tests. So needless to say, the issue of building a comprehensive and objective set of standards by which viable worldview comparisons can be made is the most critical part of the book. And I found that Nash's tests make a great deal of sense and are a legitimate basis upon which to evaluate competing worldviews and draw meaningful conclusions that are relevant to real people.

I found that Nash then did a good job of applying these tests. For the purposes of this book, Nash applies his tests to Christianity, naturalism, and the New Age movement. Nash's conclusion is that Christianity passes each test, while both naturalism and the New Age movement have serious problems on almost all fronts. His analyses are not terribly lengthy (more on this later), but they are concise and attempt to highlight a few specific areas of each worldview that tend to be the most controversial or difficult to accept.

Nash's analysis accomplishes a couple of things. First, in my view, he demonstrates pretty clearly that the Christian worldview, far from being anti-intellectual and anti-reason, is actually the worldview that best stands up to the processes of logic and reason in comparison with other worldviews. But even if someone doesn't accept this, this book is still a success. In my view, it is virtually impossible to read this book and conclude that these various worldviews are pretty much the same. If nothing else, Nash clearly shows that not only are these worldviews very different from each other, they actually conflict with each other on many fundamental questions. This, in and of itself, is an important thing to demonstrate. An increasing number of people today believe that all worldviews or belief systems are equally true. Nash clearly demonstrates that this idea cannot be true. As thinking human beings who have been granted the gifts of logic, reason, and independent thinking, if nothing else, these intellectual gifts compel us to make choices when we encounter competing worldviews.

Lastly, this book is not very long, only 170 pages or so. As a result, I entered into reading this book a bit skeptical that the book would be able to thoroughly cover this topic, particularly since the whole issue of worldview comparisons and erecting tests for such comparisons can lead folks into a myriad of technical discussions that can lead in all kinds of different directions. To his credit, Nash repeatedly acknowledges this throughout his book. I felt that Nash was being very honest with the reader in footnoting and highlighting areas throughout the book where there was plenty of room for additional discussion or analysis but would have gotten the book off message, so he chose not to explore them. To his credit, in practically each instance where Nash volunteers that additional research is a good idea, he refers the reader to resources that address the kinds of questions or issues that the reader might reasonably have, but that Nash does not explore in this book. This impressed me, and made me feel that Nash was not purposefully glossing over difficult topics, but was in fact purposefully deferring those topics to other resources and then referring the reader to those resources.

So in summary, Nash achieves what he set out to achieve in this book. He presents a very reasonable and defendable set of tests upon which any worldview can be analyzed, and that by applying these tests, Christianity emerges as the worldview with the greatest intellectual integrity in comparison to other worldviews. A scholarly examination, and very well done.