Lifeviews

Rating:
Summary: What is your worldview?
Review: As always, Sproul here is concise, lively, opinionated and learned. He convincing shows that the reigning *Ism* of modern Western culture is secularism. This is not the same as atheism. Less than ten percent of American claim to have strong doubts about the existence of God. But most all of us live our lives as if God did not exist, or was irrelevent. Sproul examines many of the thoughts and movements that contribute to this secular worldview that so dominates American culture. This is worth a careful read for most anyone who cares about the state of the American heart.

Rating:
Summary: Good intro to different worldviews
Review: This book is a good introduction to the different worldviews that influence American society. Sproul is a great writer. His books are often easy to read, comprehend and retain. This one is no exception.

The first part of the book is a basic explanation of the different philosophical worldviews infuencing America today. This is really the best part of the book. Sproul briefly, but clearly, explains the history behind worldviews like pragmatism, existentialism and so on. He explains how these philosophies gained support and how they manifest themselves today. He follows this with part two, which is his view of the Christian response to these worldviews.

Overall the book is good, but don't expect an education on the finer points of existentialism.

Rating:
Summary: a dumbing down of a simplification
Review: _Lifeviews: Make a Christian Impact on Culture and Society_
R.C. Spoul

My mother told me repeatedly 'if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all'.
so i will start this review with the one paragraph in the book that i found useful.

One of my all-time favorite anecdotes concerns the meeting of a theologian and an astronomer. the astronomer was frustrated with the theologian for making religion too complicated. He said, "why are you fellow so obscure? You talk about supralapsarian this and traducsianism that. You quibble over fine points of predestination and God's omniscience. For me religion is simple; it's the Golden rule do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

"I understand your frustration," replied the theologian. "You astronomers often confuse me with your talk of expanding universes this and exploding novae that. You're always talking about astronomical perturbations and galactic anomalies. For me astronomy is simple. It's twinkle, twinkle little star." pg 170

R.C. Sproul is a gifted and well thought of theologian, and this book does not do him justice, copyrighted 1986, my copy was purchased new, recently reprint date 2001. It really should have been fixed back in 1986 and not to have gone through 8 printings in the shape it is in.

What is so wrong? Over simplification, dumbing down, no references, no further reading lists, no endnotes, no book titles, but a certainty of writing that suggests that this is a sufficient look at a very complex set of issues. Simplifying things, popularizing ideas is important, i think of D. Dennett or R. Dawkins or SJ Gould or C. Sagan, but essentially what this book is, is a popularization of F. Schaeffer who himself simplified C. Van Til, so what happens is several layers of dumbing down. To the point that the information is not just simple, but simply wrong, misleading and conductive of a mindset that has enough information to be immune from the greater truth. This would not be a fatal error if Sproul had 1-put a single name of a book associated with the authors he talks about in the body of the writing 2-put a single foot or endnote referring the interested reader to anything else to read to find out how the author arrived at this point, or leads to research 3-wrote with just a little more humility or uncertainty in the choice of words or style/tone 4-put a list of readings for further research or even a short bibliography in the back.

As is the book is misleading. It does introduce the idea of secularism as an umbrella for the various pieces of a worldview. But the rest of the book causes more uncertainty and desire to rebuttal than it is worth as a read. Sorry, the author deserves better and really ought to correct these things before the next edition, for the book does have a place in adult religious education, if fixed.

It is an adult education text at the church, and that is the only reason i finished it.