TOK Worldview Project
Due Thursday, November 14th
The purpose of this project is to help you explore differences in peoples’ worldviews and the implications these differences have for how we live.
The core of this project will be interviews you conduct with people you know about their ‘faith commitments.’ You will write a report based on these interviews in which you analyze the participants worldviews and compare them to Moral Therapeutic Deism.
Who to Interview
You must conduct 4 interviews:
-2 with peers who identify themselves with a different religion than your own. By different religion I don’t mean different Protestant denomination. But if you are Catholic, a Protestant friend counts, and vice versa. This could also include someone who considers themselves irreligious/agnostic.
-1 with a family member outside your immediate family (i.e. not parents or siblings)
-1 with a teacher at DCHS.
What to Ask
When you start the interview say, “This interview is for a project I am doing on worldviews and faith in my theory of knowledge class, a critical thinking course that is a central part of the IB program. It should take 15 minutes or so, depending on the length of your responses. A worldview is a philosophical system that forms the foundation for how we interpret reality. A worldview can also be thought of as an intellectual lens through which we view the world. Hence, our worldview will make the essential difference in how we live our lives. I will be asking you a few questions about your basic beliefs and how these impact your life. I will also be recording your answers to use them in my report.”
“Every worldview answers fundamental questions about our origins, our purpose, what is wrong with the world, how to fix it, how we should live and our future destiny. The questions I’m going to ask you relate to these issues”
Questions:
- What do you think is the primary purpose of life – in other words why are we here?
- How did we get here in the first place – how did life begin?
- What do you believe about life after death? What determines the quality of one’s existence after death (i.e. rewards vs punishments; happiness vs suffering in afterlife)?
- Everyone believes that the world and life is not how it should be and also has ideas about how to make it right. What do you think is the root cause of social problems and human misery? What do you put hope in to make the world right?
- How involved do you believe God is in the world – in other words what does God do in the world?
- How do you think your life would be different if you didn’t believe the religion you do now but instead followed a very different one (if the person is irreligious they can answer for if they did follow a religion)?
You must ask these 8 questions, but feel free to ask more or to ask follow-up questions to clarify responses.
What to do during the interviews
You need to record their responses in some way. If you don’t want to write while they are talking, take an audio recording (many cell phones can do this), but only with permission. If you do write, you don’t have to capture every word, but you do need to get the main ideas and be able to pull quotes from it for your report.
You will write a formal, typed report based on the interview results. There are three main objectives for the report: 1) Classifying, as best as you can, the worldviews of your participants; 2) Comparing their beliefs to MTD; 3) Reflecting on the implications of peoples’ faith commitments. Organize your report according to these objectives.
For objective 1, have four sections for each of the four major questions worldviews answers: Where do we come from? What is basically wrong with the world? How can we fix it? What is our final destiny? Briefly, discuss the participants’ responses, including key quotes from the interview that exemplify their beliefs. Finally, classify each participants’ worldviews as theistic, pantheistic, or atheistic, and briefly justify your classification.
For objective 2, identify the person whose believes are most similar to MTD and explain why; and do the same for the person whose believes are most different.
For objective 3, conclude with a personal reflection on how you think the differences in beliefs you discover in your interviews could affectthe way people see the world and their lifestyles. .