These Faith and Reason posts will be a mini "apologetics 101"series. I hope to explain some misconceptions and give a little bit of apologetics training through my rants and thoughts.
Apologetics 101 training
World views - A world view is a set of presuppositions (or assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world."
A world view is a way of seeing the world. It is based on what we know about the world. Everyone has a world view, whether they want to admit it or not. World views are In the context of religion there are 5 main over arching world views. Each of these break down into several of thousand of specific world views, but speaking broadly here are the general and main 5.
Pantheist - believe that God is in all things. God is everywhere in nature, in humans, and everywhere else.
Atheist - does not believe that there is a "god." Know there is no "god."
Agnostic - unsure if God exists.
Theist - believe in a personal God. (Mono or Poly) 'Personal God' means that God has a personality, may or may not be able to be know.
Deist- believe in an impersonal God. (Mono or Poly)
The Christian Faith
Faith is based on facts, probability, reason, and knowledge. Faith should not be a leap in the dark, but it should be synonymous with confidence, trust, and assurance. Our faith is based on reason! It is not a guess or an emotion, but it is based on facts. Even, Wikipedia has the right idea: "Faith is a profound belief or trust in a particular truth, or in a doctrine that expresses such a truth." Trust in truth.
I personally chose faith in God over there not being a God because probability. It is more probable that God does exist than he does not.
Truth is naturally exclusive. Some one might argue that there is a neutral world view or an inclusive world view (all roads lead to God)....Even inclusivist excludes exclusivist, people who doe not agree with them. There is not a true inclusive world view, because truth is exclusive by nature.
Think about it this way. 1+1 is always 2. There is always one exclusive truth answer. There are an infinite number of wrong answers.
I need to make reference to Apologetics.com radio show: Apologetics 101, and I don't have enough faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler