In the Advanced Apologetics class I’m teaching at Kilns College this semester, we’ll be dealing this week with worldviews.  Just as Socrates said that “An unexamined life is not worth living,” so an unexamined–or inadequate–worldview is not worth keeping.  We’ll be looking at the various components of an adequate worldview, and then discussing some tests to apply to any given worldview (taken primarily from Kenneth Samples’ A World of Difference).

One such test is the Cumulative Test, which asks whether the worldview is supported by multiple lines of evidence that together augment the strength and breadth of the worldview’s explanatory power.  According to Samples,

Cambridge professor C.S. Lewis seems to have had this concept in mind when he described his reason for believing in the truth of Christianity.  He said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  For Lewis, the Christian worldview illumined the world and all of life, particularly the enigmatic human condition.  The multiple strands of evidence in support of the Christian worldview had resulted in a cumulative case argument for the faith.