Research Areas

Ongoing research is mainly carried out within the framework of an overarching research program:
Choosing a worldview – a philosophical exploration of the relationship between religious and secular worldviews. The starting point for the program is that all people either have or express in their lives particular attitudes, beliefs, and values about who they are, what the world is like, what their place in it is, and what they must do to live a good life.

All people have a worldview of one kind or another; it can be more or less conscious, comprehensive, and systematic. Many religious people are aware that they have a worldview, but such a self-understanding is less common among non-religious or secular people. Still, we find in our society people who actively try to develop secular worldviews that go beyond mere atheism or religious skepticism, such as secular humanism, naturalism, scientism, and transhumanism. In this program, we study intellectually cultivated forms of secular worldviews such as the above, placing them in critical dialogue with religious worldviews such as Christianity, Islam, and the New Spirituality, as well as ‘mid-way’ stances such as agnosticism and skepticism.

Central issues in the program are: (1) What is a worldview? (2) Can we choose which worldview to embrace? (2) In what ways do secular worldviews differ from religious ones, and where do agnostics and skeptics belong? (3) What secular worldviews are emerging, and what distinguishes them from each other? (4) How can people be entitled to or justify the particular worldview they practice in their lives? (5) How could we critically and constructively engage in a civil dialogue with people with radically different worldviews from the one we embrace ourselves?

Philosophers of religion also collaborate with other researchers at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (CRS Uppsala) on these issues.

Contact: Mikael Stenmark