Worldview Lite: Making Robust Thinking Thinner

In our time people seem to prefer philosophy lite. Rather than think systematically, ranging over the landscape of ideas to be sure everything relevant is accounted for in a worldview, we often tend to take a few thoughts that we think are enough to dismiss alternative worldviews—just enough to think we have proved our point. Religion lite is what it comes down to for most people. Lets take a look at four influential worldviews—Christianity lite, Hinduism lite, Islam lite and secularism lite. In Christianity lite people pick a few ideas in the Christian worldview that they like and stop there—sort of like a buffet line. Such people often have no idea what a full-orbed Christian worldview looks like. Their view pretty much comes down to this. “Be good and go to church. Give some money and say prayers when you need something.” They have no clue that Jesus Christ speaks harshly against this attitude. He says that no one can follow him unless they radically deny themselves, make God their top priority, confess sin constantly, and sacrifice everything to God 24/7—yes, everything. Hinduism does much the same. The demonic horrors of the caste system that glosses over crimes and abuses now brutalizing millions of people are dismissed as aspects of a salvation credo that explains this away. There are exceptions. Many Hindus would not commit such injustices. They hold to Hinduism lite. But the caste system demands inequality—a level of inequality that results in the oppression of millions of low caste people who supposedly deserve their lot as the result of karma. They made their bed, now they must lie in it. Islam lite glosses over the dark side of the faith Muhammad brought to the world. Think of the crass cruelty of Allah against those who deserve hell, where flames burn off one’s skin only to have it grow back to be burned away again and again forever. Or ponder the injustice of Islamic theocracy that necessitates peace by force, not persuasion. Muslims have full rights—Christians and other unbelievers do not. Many Muslims gloss over such things in Islam because Islam does not encourage the faithful to be critical of the Qur’an and Hadith. “Believe, obey, and fight” seems to be a motto that puts Muslim basics into a slogan. For this reason Islam could not long sustain its golden age of philosophy that peaked nearly a thousand years ago. Islam as an intellectual force has been in decline ever since. Secularism lite is also prevalent in our time. “Take the best of non-religious thought and compare it to the worst of religion—this seems to be the modus operandi. Dismiss powerful arguments for creation with a wave of the hand, so to speak, rather than grappling with the weaknesses of humanism and the strengths of Christian philosophy. Marxism lite is a version of secularism that similarly rails against the shortcomings of capitalism and bad religion while blind to the assumptions of its own worldview and to the death and destruction coming from its own dark side. Integrity demands that we take an open-minded look at the strengths and weaknesses of every worldview, including our own. Anything less would be logic lite that cuts corners to achieve a comforting closure. The light of knowledge will never come through lite thinking. We must do an analysis of all worldviews that honestly appraises the strengths and the weaknesses of all belief systems, including our own.