"Total Truth"- my summary Part 1.

Well, so much for a running commentary. I've been on sick leave so managed to read the whole book (Total Truth, by Nancy Pearcey) over a couple of days. Not that it's possible to assimilate everything I read, but for the sake of trying to organize what I think it said, or at least try and articulate what I think now and some of my remaining questions, here goes:
Worldviews
We all have a frame of reference by which we understand and interpret the world, make decisions etc. Most of us don't know what our worldview is, however, and Christians often assume that because we are Christian our worldview is Christian, that is, biblical. Pearcey would say a biblical worldview is one that is holistic, "total" (hence Total Truth), and she seeks to show that historically Christians have not consistently held that kind of worldview but have rather held a dualistic worldview.
Dualism and other isms
Even right up to the present time, the western world (and the church) has approached the world through various forms of dualism, rooted in Greek philosophy; in the "lower" half we have had fact, the material world, science and reason; in the "upper" half we have values, ethics, spirituality and the arts. By seeing them as two separate realms (dualism), rather than parts of the whole of reality, the repeated tendency has been to assume just one of them is the real, the true, the objective, and therefore the other is just subjective, make-believe, and relative. For example; "truth, beauty and love" are what really matter, therefore it doesn't matter what I do with my body or with the world; Or, if I can touch it and test it, it's real, anything else, like 'morals' is just made up; Or, spiritual things like prayer and bible study are the important things, so work, politics and play are distractions; Or the physical world is a wheel of illusion so the only real thing is in the spiritual world (gained by yogic meditation for example); Or, what matters is good works, doctrine is not that important.
Any worldview, if it's really a view of the world, must by definition account for ALL of reality and ALL of human experience without chucking the real things that don't fit into the "lovely/useful-but-stupid/sinful-to-believe" category. But as just shown, dualistic thinking ends up relegating part of reality (take your pick) into that category.
[My thought, not in the book, that I can remember: Since people do intuitively feel the need to encompass all reality into their worldview the other tendency is to think that everything is the same and that it's an illusion to think there are different aspects to reality. Simplistically put, they perceive everything to be the "God"; monism, pantheism and panentheism are various forms of this, all of which fail, at the crucial point, to make clear distinction between the Creator and Creature, a distinction we intuitively sense and hope for (since the alternative is that we are obliterated as individuals).]
Scientific Materialism The dominant worldview in the west is that only the measurable (science) and physical (material) is real. In love? It's chemicals. Depressed? It's just your dopamine. Praying to God? You're deluded. Feel morally conflicted? Do what works, not what's "right". Needing grace and forgiveness? Well, that's fine, but don't go thinking they actually exist.There is an a priori commitment to the material and the scientific, through which everything can apparently be explained. But it is only an apparition. The reality is that those who hold this perspective don't and can't live by it. The things they actually live by are in the "useful-but-stupid-to-believe" category and the contradiction reveals scientific materialism as a fundamentally flawed worldview precisely because it doesn't account for the world as it actually exists. Pearcey quotes Steven Pinker in How the Mind Works; "The mechanistic stance allows us to understand what makes us tick and how we fit into the physical universe". Then he says, "When those discussions wind down for the day, we go back to talking about each other as free and dignified human beings". And so, "A human being is simultaneously a machine and a sentient free agent, depending on the purposes of the discussion". This isn't paradox, this is, based on his own 'stance', a plain illogical contradiction. (A biblical view would also hold that we are physical and 'free agents' but allows for a less deterministic view of the physical and therefore a more fluid relationship between the two).
Biblical worldview
Pearcey establishes a biblical framework (Creation, Fall, Redemption) for interpreting any worldview. By doing that it's set up a little too conveniently to make the biblical worldview the only one that works. But in fact she shows that all worldviews do indeed have this framework but ultimately fail to reasonably account for reality within it. I would state the framework like this; the three questions any worldview must answer are: Where did we come from? Why does the world suck so much? Where are we aheaded and what will make it better? Answers to questions of origin, suffering and purpose/direction are surely prerequisites for any adequate worldview if we're going to have one.
This framework is offered by Pearcey, I think, to enable a holistic worldview and to prevent dualism. It's only because we think dualistically that we end up squeezing ourselves into one half or the other. This framework literally reframes how we approach our the world. The framework also forces us to deal with existential realities of life in a way that dualistic framework doesn't. There is no lovely-but-stoopid category for us to throw inconvenient realities into. There is no place for sophistry. And most importantly (as the surprising last chapter shows so perfectly and rightly) a reasonable worldview MUST be remain consistent face to face with someone in the midst of suffering and evil.

Later postings (I'm tired and need to go to bed)...

• A few examples of worldviews and where they breakdown in this framework.
• How the Creation-Fall-Redemption makes the most sense of everything (notwithstanding the Ecclesiastes cry of "meaningless, meaningless!")
• Questions of origin (Intelligent Design and Darwinian macro-evolution)
• Christianity and its cultural captivity (the liberation of which I don't think Pearcey ultimately demonstrates the possibility of: so every age has been 'captured' but we're the ones who will be able to "stand outside" and know we're liberated?).