What does the religious believer say when a skeptic asks something perhaps the following:

“Why, if your faith is so strong, do you feel the need to defend your religion? It should need no justification to someone who you perceive as factually incorrect and fallacious.”

It’s a fact of our culture that people are faced with a fairly expansive range of ideologies and worldviews to choose from. But for those within a worldview itself (perhaps that worldview is naturalism or Christianity) it therefore becomes essential to in some way, shape, or form have to defend the worldview he or she holds.

But why? The crux of the issue stems out of the fact that worldviews are mutually exclusive. By worldview, I mean a collective constellation of beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality that an individual holds to. They are essentially a lens (or imagine a pare of spectacles) through which we view and understand the world. Worldviews are mutually exclusive because each and everyone of them makes claims about the way reality is that cannot be harmonized with one another. Thus, by implication, for a set of beliefs to constitute a worldview they must make claims about the nature of reality. It must consist therefore of beliefs thought to be true about reality.

As such, worldviews are important. How does one know this? Because people hold on to them passionately, and many are willing to die for them. Other, such as apologists, seek to defend their worldviews. They attempt to persuasively argue that it is their worldview which best corresponds to reality and the nature of the universe. Worldview, at least the vast majority of them, are therefore exclusivist in the way that if one worldview is true then all others most by necessity be false.

But for many, worldviews can be a force to propel good. Should one absolutely be convinced of his or her worldview (and should that worldview consist of true beliefs about the nature of reality) then it should be shared with others, especially those who hold to inferior worldview. Human life (for many) thrives on awe and wonder about the nature of reality, and we have diligently pursued reality’s truth. Should we happen to know this truth then we are in some way obligated to share it with others. Truth, understood in this way, has a moral obligation and dimension built into it.