A Couple More Quotes To Argue About...
...or, in my case, giggle about.
Here's Richard Dawkins, "an outspoken antireligionist, atheist, secular humanist & sceptic" (according to Wikipedia) from his 1998 book, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder:
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Here's Steve Taylor, "an American singer, songwriter, record producer & film director" (again, according to Wikipedia) who is a decidedly evangelical Christian, from his 1983 song "Whatcha Gonna Do (When Your Number's Up?)":
You're so open-minded that your brains leaked out
Things that make you go hmmmm...
There's something Dawkins and I can agree on. Maybe the title should be "Quotes to Agree about." :)
ReplyDeleteIt was recently announced that Steve Taylor is working on a screenplay for Donald Miller's book, "Blue Like Jazz." With that revelation, I hope that Taylor hasn't succombed to his own lyric by having such an open mind that his brain has fallen out.
ReplyDeletePaul:
ReplyDeleteHuh?!
I'm not saying Donald Miller is the 2nd coming of Billy Graham or C.S. Lewis (I definitely disagree with him at times) but I think he offers important challenges to those of us who've become suburban in our faith.
On top of that, he functions in an important way in our evangelical subculture - as someone who is conservative theologically who isn't necessarily a Republican.
I think he has some important things to say also. However, I just had a very "uneasy" feeling while reading his book. I thought that it was very hypocritical at times. For example, he often criticizes the religious right for their apparent lack of love for those on the left while at the same time he was doing the same thing towards them. Then he would justify his own dislike of the Religious right and Republicans and then offer a quaint subtext of "well, I guess I still need to love them since Jesus does too." How generous of him.
ReplyDeletePlus, I'm not so sure that his theology is very conservative at all. For example, His understanding and explanation of sin itself was very perplexing to me. At times, it seemed like he was making excuses for it instead dealing with the issue at hand: that we are all sinners and our sin can only be forgiven by the grace of Christ's death and resurrection.
I found it also strange that he considered it "cool" to hang out with Christians that use foul language and other vices that are generally considered immaturity at best.
His lack of scriptural references for his observations on Christianity was also somewhat disturbing to me. However, I guess that is what he meant by a "non-religious look at Christianity."
I could be wrong in all of these things that I took away from his book. It has been a long time since I read it. Maybe I should read it again. These were just my observations. So, when I heard that Steve Taylor had jumped onto the Miller "bandwagon," I was quite perplexed. I just didn't find it a very intelligent book at all. Quite the contrary, I thought it to be dangerous - open mindedness is only good when it doesn't interfere with actual truth, then you're brain just falls out.
Perhaps I'm just blabbering and don't really know what I'm talking about, though.