THE UNIVERSE NEXT DOOR

This book was written in 1976 and this is the fourth edition published in 2004.  It includes updates and some refinements in the authors understanding of what really constitutes a worldview, their nature and definition.  There is a companion volume more recently published entitled “Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept.”
Over the years “The Universe Next Door” has become the premier textbook on worldviews and is written from a Christian perspective.  The writers style is clear and concise and presents in a way accessible to all readers the basics of Christian Theism, deism, naturalism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern pantheistic monism, New Age philosophy and postmodernism.  We live at a time of increasing globalism and this means exposure to many worldviews.  From these issue ideas that affect university courses, religious practice, indeed every department of human life.  Many Christians may not realize that they participate in a ‘worldview,’ they may not be aware how differently other people think nor have grasped the fact that these different outlooks and ways of thought are part of another ‘worldview’ which might also be partly unconscious in the person who holds them.  The author focuses on seven basic questions and applies them to the worldviews he analyzes.  I will mention several of them, what is the nature of reality, the really real?  How do we know what is right and wrong?  What happens after death?  What is the meaning of human history?  You can well appreciate that this is a book to make you think; although it is something of a textbook it is not overly academic.  People live their lives founded upon some system of belief and we Christian people should be aware of that and in a measure, at least be able to understand where they are coming from.  As far as I am aware this would be standard reading on this topic in Bible Colleges around the world and at this point it has been translated into fifteen languages, which is a testimony to its enduring usefulness and applicability in various parts of the world.