As I began thinking about the assumptions that move us all, I tried to think of the most basic, fundamental, and important questions that form the way we all think. These questions help me figure out what assumptions are lurking in the background of a person’s life. Once I know the assumptions at work, then I can better know if what that person is telling me is true or not. I’ll know better how to respond. If I fail to discern the assumptions operating in the background, I may miss the big iceberg that could sink my ship.
There are but a handful of foundational questions, yet each is very important for the hidden assumption it reveals. Once I began distilling these critical questions, then I began trying to prioritize them. These are all important questions. What I discovered, though, is that some of them have to be answered before you can ask some of the others. There is an order to these questions that we all at least subconsciously ask about the world around us. This led me to create a hierarchy of questions to reflect the order in which we tend to ask them. The first question is probably the most important. How you answer it determines how you answer all the others. It is the most primal, raw assumption that we make. The easy thing about this question is that there is typically only 3 ways people answer the question.
The first way of answering is quite common, particularly in the West. I will call these people Type 1 assumers. Some people assume that there are two fundamental things that are really real. They believe that the natural, material world exists. Besides the natural world these people also believe that there is a God beyond the universe who also exists. God is real and nature is real. They are not imaginary, and they are also not the same thing. God is not nature, and nature is not God. Yet both really exist. This kind of person usually thinks of God as a person, not as a principle or force that is a part of the universe. God is a person separate from the universe, though Type 1 people vary in how involved God is in the universe.
The other two approaches to this question essentially deny the existence of one of the two entities that a Type 1 assumer accepts. The second way of answering the question is also common in the West. The Type 2 person believes that the only thing that is real is the natural, material world. God is an illusion like leprechauns, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. God does not exist.
The Type 3 assumer is exactly the opposite of the Type 2 person. Type 3 people assume that the only thing that is real is God. Nature is the thing that is an illusion. What you think is a mountain or a house or a person is really a part of God. God is the rock. God is the tree. God is you and me. However, unlike a Type 1 person, Type 3’s think of God as a force or principle instead of as a person. Yep, all you Star Wars fans, this is the raw assumption behind these immensely popular movies (which I love I might add!).
It is important to remember that all three types of people are making a basic raw assumption about what is really there. None of them have absolute proof that what they assume exists is actually true, but they claim to have good reasons to make the assumption that they do. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga calls this kind of assumption “properly basic.” I don’t have to prove this kind of belief to you as it is axiomatic or self-evidently true. This is like in the Declaration of Independence when Thomas Jefferson wrote “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson did not attempt to prove his statement of basic human rights because it goes without saying that this is true. In our question of what is really there, each of these three answers is a raw, basic assumption without proof.
I’ll have more soon on the implications of adopting each of these sets of assumptions. Maybe you can figure some of them out.