Wednesday, October 18, 2006
 | Rick Warren, deconstructed. Wow, gonna burn for this one, I know. I've begun reading The Reason Driven Life by Dr. Robert M. Price, which is a chapter-by-chapter answer to and refutation of the overly simplistic theology of Pastor Warren in his mega-bestseller The Purpose Driven Life. Dr. Price is a Professor of Theology and Scriptural Studies. His assertion is that "...a life based on rationality and questioning of life's mysteries is far more fulfilling and rewarding than a life lived in constant fear of eternal torment from a God imagined as a peevish theology professor who will damn you to hell for filling in the wrong answers in your final exam book. 'Sorry, Mr. Jehovah's Witness! Tough luck, Miss Mormon! Bad break, Mahatma Gandhi! You get a big red 'F" for fry!' Those who pit commitment against reason and advise us to blind and destroy our reason before making the most crucial choice of our life are apologists for one specific set of doctrines which, to use Paul's word, are "foolishness" to those who have not taken leave of reason. They say their doctrine is infallible and true, but ignore the fact that there is no dearth whatsoever of pretenders to infallibility and truth. They may think they chose their doctrine because it is offered to us as infallible and true; but this is plainly no sufficient reason: scores of other doctrines, scriptures and apostles, sects and parties, cranks and sages make the same claim. Those who claim to know which of the lot is justified in making such a bold claim, those who tell us that this faith or that is really infallible and true, are presupposing, in effect, whether they realize this or not, that they themselves happen to be infallible. Those who have no such exalted notion of themselves have no way of deciding between dozens of pretenders if reason is proscribed. Those who are asking us to spurn reason are in effect counseling us to trust luck. But luck in such cases is unusual. If truth were so easily arrived at, there would be only one book, one voice on the nature of deity. Instead, there are hundreds of Christian denominations alone, not even considering the various incarnations of Islam, Hinduism, etc. Interestingly, however, the production of moral standards seems to have little to do with the type, if any, of religious influence on a culture. It doesn't take revelation to understand that murder, rape and theft are bad for the species as a whole. We as humanists are constantly barraged with the argument that without a god to dictate an absolute morality, we might as well be depraved killers, for all the consequences there are. If, as it has been said, God alone is responsible for moral absolutes, then the National Academy of Sciences should be a haven for perverts and rapists. It is not, by all available reports, such a place. One would think that if you line up the members of the Academy next to a similar number of priests, the ratio of sexual offenders would be substantially tipped against the scientists. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Lastly, a 1999 Barna Research Group study of 3854 adults in the 48 contiguous United States revealed that divorce rates were significantly higher among conservative Christians than any other group, including atheists and agnostics. The highest numbers are among nondenominational Christians (34% having been divorced) followed by Baptists at 29%. Atheists and agnostics? 21%. There are many potential flaws in the study, but the basic results are statistically validated. The implication is simply this: if morality is exclusively the domain of the divine, then those who claim to be closest to its dispersal are the poorest at compliance.More to come, including the promised talk about the future of Rheumatology.
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