WEBVTT 00:00:02.050 --> 00:00:04.710 Hi, this week I've been thinking about worldview. 00:00:05.209 --> 00:00:08.710 To me, a worldview is a lens that I see reality. 00:00:09.070 --> 00:00:10.910 And I've shared some of the things that have 00:00:10.910 --> 00:00:13.869 shaped my worldview. So today I want to put all 00:00:13.869 --> 00:00:17.629 this together. When I look at my life, I see 00:00:17.629 --> 00:00:20.750 a lot that humans have created. We've created 00:00:20.750 --> 00:00:23.969 cities and governments. We've created businesses, 00:00:24.269 --> 00:00:29.469 schools, books, and technology. We compose music. 00:00:30.120 --> 00:00:33.619 and we prepare wonderful food. And of course, 00:00:33.619 --> 00:00:37.020 we've created plenty of problems. But sometimes 00:00:37.020 --> 00:00:40.119 I find it helpful to look beneath all of that. 00:00:40.799 --> 00:00:45.460 What was already here? I did not create the earth, 00:00:45.560 --> 00:00:49.479 and I did not create the sun. I did not decide 00:00:49.479 --> 00:00:52.119 that gravity would exist or that planets would 00:00:52.119 --> 00:00:57.329 move in predictable ways. Humans... did not decide 00:00:57.329 --> 00:01:00.990 that space and time would be connected. We did 00:01:00.990 --> 00:01:03.729 not create the mathematical relationships between 00:01:03.729 --> 00:01:06.329 the circumference of a circle and its diameter. 00:01:07.329 --> 00:01:11.790 Pi has always been there, and so has the square 00:01:11.790 --> 00:01:16.510 root of 2, and so has infinity. We've discovered 00:01:16.510 --> 00:01:20.750 them, and somehow we've been given minds capable 00:01:20.750 --> 00:01:24.090 of making at least some sense of all of this. 00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:28.219 We can look into the night sky and calculate 00:01:28.219 --> 00:01:31.560 the motions of objects millions of miles away. 00:01:32.079 --> 00:01:35.879 And we can look inside an atom and discover an 00:01:35.879 --> 00:01:40.180 entirely different world. We can recognize patterns 00:01:40.180 --> 00:01:45.239 and we can experience beauty. We can love and 00:01:45.239 --> 00:01:48.680 we can wonder. And then there's the other side 00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:51.939 of reality. You know, the suffering side, disease, 00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:56.129 the natural disaster side. The cruelty and the 00:01:56.129 --> 00:01:59.870 death. Those things are here too. And if our 00:01:59.870 --> 00:02:02.549 worldview ignores these things, we're not living 00:02:02.549 --> 00:02:07.090 reality. But our goal is to see the world as 00:02:07.090 --> 00:02:10.629 it is. Which means I do not want to construct 00:02:10.629 --> 00:02:15.050 one that ignores everything else. So I keep looking. 00:02:15.150 --> 00:02:18.849 And the more I look, the more remarkable this 00:02:18.849 --> 00:02:23.520 place seems to me. An enormous universe. that's 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:27.419 governed by mathematical relationships. Somehow 00:02:27.419 --> 00:02:32.599 a universe that produces beings capable of understanding 00:02:32.599 --> 00:02:36.060 some of those relationships. A universe containing 00:02:36.060 --> 00:02:42.360 beauty, consciousness, love, mystery, and life. 00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:46.180 None of that tells me exactly what conclusions 00:02:46.180 --> 00:02:50.240 that you and I have to reach, but it does leave 00:02:50.240 --> 00:02:54.060 me with a question. And maybe the biggest question 00:02:54.060 --> 00:02:58.280 that we've had all week. Does the universe ultimately 00:02:58.280 --> 00:03:02.879 explain itself? Did everything we have been noticing 00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:06.479 this week simply happen? Or could the explanation 00:03:06.479 --> 00:03:12.759 for what we see lie beyond what we can see? Is 00:03:12.759 --> 00:03:15.960 there something outside our universe, some external 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.879 source, some intelligence that is responsible 00:03:19.879 --> 00:03:25.620 for the universe? being here at all? I think 00:03:25.620 --> 00:03:29.039 that's a question worth pondering. And perhaps 00:03:29.039 --> 00:03:32.240 our answer to that question shapes our worldview 00:03:32.240 --> 00:03:34.680 more than almost anything else.