I have been reading through N.T. Wright’s latest book "After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters" very s-l-o-w-l-y these days (stay tuned for review) and wanted to post this excerpt I find challenging. What do you think?
Before the excerpt let me set it up a bit. Wright is discussing his concern that Western culture has compartmentalized the way we approach life and has separated intellect and reason into their own world and told people that these things are only really valuable to those in the academic or "intellectual" world but the rest of us (the vast majority) can generally ignore reason and live primarily according to our feelings. Here is the excerpt:
"On the day I was drafting this chapter someone wrote to the newspaper I read to express a view about ‘assisted suicide’ – that is euthanasia. "That’s how I feel about it," he said after stating his opinion, "and I know a lot of other people feel strongly the same way." I don’t doubt it was true. But his feelings were irrelevent to the question of whether the proposal was right or wrong. Lots of people feel very strongly that we should bomb our enemies, that we should execute serious criminals and castrate rapists, that we should abolish income taxes and let the fittest survive. Lots of other people feel very strongly that we should do none of those things. An exchange of feelings may tell us where the pressure points are to come, but it won’t tell us what is the right thing to do.Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. Without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail."
What do you think?
Harnessing Chaos 