The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog by James W. Sire provides an overview of major worldviews that have shaped human thought and culture throughout history, such as theism, deism, naturalism, existentialism, Eastern pantheism, the New Age, and postmodernism. Written from an avowedly Christian perspective, the book examines how these various worldviews answer basic questions about existence, purpose, and reality, aiming to provide an accessible overview of the complex ideological landscape of the contemporary world.

Originally published in 1976, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog has been republished several times. In the process it has become a widely used text, especially in Christian education and apologetics. Sire, an influential evangelical author, lecturer, and editor, uses his background in English, teaching, and theology to explore and critique various worldviews, making his own beliefs and convictions a central aspect of the analysis. Sire’s analysis aims to present the Christian worldview as the most coherent and viable framework. Yet in a more general sense, Sire emphasizes the need to be aware of and closely define our own worldview, whatever it may be; doing so, he says, will allow each of us to live an “examined life” and relate in a more meaningful way to the world around us.

The Universe Next Door has been both praised for its clarity in explaining complex philosophical concepts and criticized for its overt Christian bias in analyzing non-Christian worldviews. This guide refers to the sixth and most recent edition of the text, published in 2020. The book consists of a Preface, 12 chapters, and an Appendix, with each chapter divided into several sections with different headings. Each chapter also includes a set of Questions for Reflection and a Discussion section at the end.

Summary

In the Preface, Sire explains the differences between the original and the most recent edition of the book. In Chapter 1 he defines his understanding of worldview and explains the methodology of the book, which consists of examinations of worldviews in terms of “eight basic questions” about the nature of reality, human existence, morality, knowledge, history, and death.

Chapter 2 explores Christian theism, a worldview that sees the universe as “charged with the grandeur of God” (12). “Family squabbles” among Christians during the first several centuries of Christianity, argues Sire, gradually gave way to a direct challenging of the theistic worldview itself in the early modern period.

Chapter 3 looks at the initial challenge to theism, namely, deism. Deism denotes a belief in God as an abstract force in the universe who set up the laws of nature but otherwise does not intervene, resulting in a “clockwork universe.” Developing from the philosophical and scientific theories of Descartes, Locke, and others, deism became the belief system of choice for many thinkers of the 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment.

Sire contends, however, that deism proved too unstable, vague, and contradictory to last. These problems led many thinkers in the direction of naturalism, the worldview studied in Chapter 4. Abandoning any belief in a God, naturalists assumed that nature or matter is all that exists and is self-sustaining. The naturalist belief that blind chance causes change in the universe had serious consequences for human nature and our place in the cosmos. According to Sire, Marxism is an important and extremely consequential sociopolitical application of naturalist philosophy.

Sire argues that nihilism ultimately follows logically from naturalism. In Chapter 5, Sire writes that, as a denial of any meaning, value, or possibility of knowledge, nihilism is essentially philosophical despair and represents the “zero point” of Western intellectual history. More a mood than a philosophy, nihilism is prominently displayed in the modern art of the absurd.

Starting in the late 19th century, philosophers tried to find a way beyond nihilism; this effort resulted in the philosophy of existentialism, the subject of Chapter 6. Despite a meaningless universe, existentialists escape despair through asserting the individual’s power to create his or her own identity and sense of meaning. Developing in both atheistic and theistic forms, existentialism was influential in 20th-century thought and society, with such thinkers as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre being notable proponents of this worldview.

Sire then claims that more and more Westerners turned toward thought systems of East Asia as an antidote to the “impasse” of Western thought. Eastern pantheistic monism, as articulated in the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, became the worldview of choice for many Western spiritual seekers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. These complex thought systems form the subject of Chapter 7.

But for many Westerns, these Eastern beliefs required too great an adjustment from familiar patterns of thinking; a form of pantheistic spirituality tailored to the modern West was therefore needed. This resulted in the proliferation of New Age thinking, or “spirituality without religion,” as Sire calls it, from the 1970s onward. Highly publicized in the media, New Age was eclectic, drawing from every major worldview previously examined. Chapter 8 details New Age’s increasingly solipsistic and fantastical trajectory.

Postmodernism, the topic of Chapter 9, has become perhaps the dominant worldview in academia in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Rejecting all metanarratives, postmodernism embodies a general relativism and indifference about values and objective truth, which it views as culturally conditioned instruments of power. Anticipated by Nietzsche, postmodernism came to maturity with thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault and is heavily represented in modern academic curricula.

Traditionally ignored by many Westerners, the worldview of Islam has become highly prominent since September 11, 2001. Authored by Winfried Corduan, Chapter 10 provides a summary of this theistic tradition, which, Corduan writes, resembles Christian theism in some respects and diverges from it sharply in others.

In Chapter 11, Sire sums up the book’s trajectory, emphasizing the necessity of living “the examined life” by consciously choosing a worldview and adhering to it. He states his case that Christian theism, the worldview with which the book began, is the only perfectly consistent and satisfactory worldview available.

In Chapter 12, Sire specifically addresses Christian audiences, particularly students. Sire outlines a plan for defending Christian theism while dealing with the moral and intellectual challenges of an increasingly pluralistic world. He concludes that the most important thing is to cultivate one’s own soul and understanding of one’s worldview through the practice of Christian spirituality.

The book also includes an Appendix, comprising Worldview Diagrams and Thumbnail Sketches—pictorial charts that map out each worldview’s particular stance on various issues.