natural curiosity towards understanding life realities and incidents in a meaningful way.

    Human beings are born with natural curiosity towards understanding life, its origin, its purpose and ends, so that they can relate themselves to the surrounding realities and incidents in a meaningful way.

   In denial of enduring emptiness and dissolution, right from the age of infancy and childhood, human exhibits the desire to understand the nature, degrees and connections of existing physical and metaphysical realities, then generates an explanation about what the existence is all about.          Besides the nature and degrees of existing realities, human also seeks to understand the origins of life and where it all comes from, as well as the ends of life and what happens in the future. 

   On top of that, in an attempt to act with consistency and in a rational way, human seeks to understand the values of life, the meaning of the absolute truth and the ultimate happiness in life.          The answers we give to these concerns form the basis of our basic thoughts, the fundamental commitments, through which we view and judge given realities and circumstances in life. 

    Though human beings share the concerns and the tendency to seek answers for such concerns, yet the answers given in this regard vary, and as a result our conceptions about the reality of life also vary time and again. 

   This is evident from the fact that, in the process of answering these concerns, there are those who prefer logical speculations and argumentations over other means of understanding basic realities of life, and thus formulate their answers to basic questions of life on philosophical grounds.   

   Unlike those who take a philosophical approach, there are those whose conception of reality is constructed by scientism, which is the contention that limits obtaining true knowledge to the methods of natural science. 

   In contrast to philosophical and scientific worldviews, approaches which are marked by materialism and trust in human rationality, or humanism, there are approaches persuaded others whose beliefs about the fundamental realities of life are founded on divine revelations; a tendency that is observable, though at different levels, in major world religious traditions.   

  Hence, as priorities and approaches to answering the fundamental questions of life are varied, worldviews and conceptions about the reality of life too are varied. 

   For instance, there are some people whose belief systems are marked by monism; the doctrine that reality is one, one supreme existence, whereby everything that exists is a manifestation of that reality. 

  Some monists such as materialists have said that reality is one and it is material, while others contend for one real existence, which according to them is immaterial.  

  Some have argued for monism on religious grounds, while others have accepted monism on rational and philosophical grounds.  

   Likewise, there are those whose conception of life is marked by atheism; denial of the existence of God, while others have interpreted life through and within belief in the existence of God. 

    Those who denied the existence of God, did so for different reasons, while theistic belief systems also vary in their conceptions of God. 

  Among theists are polytheists, who based their worldview not on a belief in one God, but incorporate a multiplicity of lordships, in a way that entails belief in the existence of more than one God or more than one deity. 

   Closely related to this conception is pantheism, the doctrine that identifies God with nature, as if the universe and the divinity are the same and thus form only one entity; in this belief, God is nature and nature is God. 

  In short, both polytheism and pantheism hold a belief in the existence of God, however the former tends to a belief in a number of divinities, while the later fails to distinguish God from the natural world. 

  Polytheistic and pantheistic conceptions of life are contrasted to that of monotheism, the belief in the existence of one God, who is the Creator of everything and everyone; a position held, though in different ways, by major world religions. 

  In addition, although monotheism is generally held by major world religious traditions, there is diversity in their belief in the existence of one God, particularly in the area of the universality of God and divisibility of the essence of God. 

  Hence world religious faiths offer Ethno-centric, Trinitarian and Tawhidic conceptions of God, which primarily share belief in the existence of God, but differ in ways of conceiving God.' 

Ethno-centrism or monoletry, in which God is one, without denying other communities' right to worship other gods, is

( Definitions of the terminologies like "scientism", "materialism", "philosophical worldview","scientific worldview", "monism" are addressed in below 👇🏽 . )