The Difficulties of Developing an Engineering Community with a Common Christian Worldview

About The Difficulties of Developing an Engineering Community with a Common Christian Worldview

Abstract

The worldview that is formed during the early and educationally intensive years of one life provides a basis through which we view, interpret and interact with our world. If religiously oriented institutions do not fulfill their responsibility to educate students with religiously informed worldviews, then their educational processes cannot be very different from those that exist at secular institutions. It is imperative that such institutions take seriously the charge to be distinctive in their traditions and to educate students who think from a faith-based worldview. This paper seeks to discuss the development of worldviews in the context of community, to identify characteristics of worldviews, including Christian worldviews, and to discuss worldviews in an engineering context. A conceptual understanding of origins (creation) is a central aspect of any worldview. For Christians the various views of creation can be extremely divisive when attempting to build an engineering community centered on a common Christian perspective. Finding topics of agreement within a Christian meta-narrative (Creation, Fall, and Redemption), is the first step toward developing a consensus worldview. One’s view of creation ultimately leads one to form an image of God which impacts our understanding of the observable world.