Most people you will talk to about Christ are not Muslims, Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. They are secular: the co-worker who is 'spiritual but not religious', the student who assumes science has made God unnecessary, the neighbour who thinks religion is fine for those who need it. In the 2021 Australian census, close to four in ten people ticked 'no religion'. This is the mission field next door.
This module maps the secular worldview from the inside (naturalism, scientism, relativism and expressive individualism), then tests it at the foundations. You will learn to ask how a godless universe accounts for reason, morality and meaning, and you will build evidential answers on the relationship between science and God, the moral argument, and the historical Jesus. Two related topics sit elsewhere in the course: the problem of evil and suffering (Doctrines Under Fire, Lesson 4), and exclusivity, hell, Old Testament violence, slavery and the hiddenness of God (Hard Questions, the next module).
The aim is not to win a debate with a caricature. Most secular people have never thought hard about their own assumptions, and many are quietly hungry for meaning. We want to be gentle, clear and confident, showing that the Christian worldview is not a leap in the dark but the only foundation on which the things secular people already value can stand.