Purpose Driven Life and the Atlanta Fugitive

Ipecac

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Ipecac
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On Nov. 22, Larry King interviewed Rick Warren, author of the crapfest, A Purpose Driven Life, about the book. This is up on CNN's pages because of the discussion of the book between Ashley Smith and Brian Nichols (the Atlanta judge-killer).

To my surprise, King once again asked a few tough questions. Not to my surprise, Rick Warren is a doofus.

(Lest you doubt my qualifications to pass judgement, I read the Purpose Driven Life at the request of my mother and made extensive highlights and kept notes in the margins. I don't think anyone in my family has had the stomach to read the criticisms I raised.)

Here's the article: CNN article

Here are some gems:

KING: Does that mean that a Jew, a Muslim, an agnostic, an atheist could benefit from this book?

WARREN: If that's the question, sure. Anybody can benefit from it.
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An agnostic or atheist would get nothing from this book. Nothing. If you don't believe in god, specifically the Christian God, this book has nothing to say to you.

WARREN: It is lessons. It's helpful. The bottom line, if I were to hold up an invention and I were to say, what's the purpose of this? You'd never seen it before. You wouldn't know what its purpose is. The only way you'd know the purpose is to either ask the inventor, who made it, the creator, or you read an owner's manual. And I think the same thing's true with us.
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This is one of Warren's central concepts - that it is impossible to determine something's purpose without having an owner's manual or talking to its creator. So I guess archaelogists are just all wet. Not to mention every kid who's ever explored a junkyard and deduced the purpose of some interesting discovery.


KING: Is a gay person a sinner?

WARREN: I think a gay person is a sinner just like I'm a sinner. I don't think ...

KING: No different from your sin?

WARREN: Oh, I think the worst sin is pride. In fact, the Bible says it. The Bible says that pride is the worst sin. It is, as the Bible says, it's the sin that got Satan kicked out of heaven. It's the sin that caused Nebuchadnezzar to lose his kingdom, and King Herod and a bunch of others. Pride goes before destruction.

Because pride is basically saying, "I'm in charge." The middle letter of pride is I, and the middle letter of sin is I ...
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Wow, they share the same letter. How profound. :rolleyes:

And the final irony, considering that religion is at the heart of most of the "drives" he lists below:

You know, everybody's life is driven by something. That's why I called this book "The Purpose Driven Life." Some people are driven by fear. You know people like this. They are driven by the opinions of others. They live for the expectations of their parent or husband or boyfriend or something like that.

Some people are driven by worry. They're driven by guilt. They're driven by shame. Some people are driven by loneliness. And I don't think God wants any of our lives to be driven by these things. I think the bottom line is that we were put on Earth for a purpose.
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I prefer the porpoise-driven life, myself.


I thumbed though purpose-driven life once. In the introduction it said something like this:


"Think about it, it is no accident that you have come to be reading this book at this moment. From the beginning of time, God has known that this moment would happen, the moment when you are holding this book in your hand.... "


... blah blah blah.

I'd love to make a sticker out of that and put it in evolution textbooks. Or copies of Hustler, for that matter.


Talk about grandiose. Talk about pride.

Glad that GOD is pushing your book, aren't you, Rick Warren?
 
Yeah,I caught some of Larry King last night with the two pastors.A lot of people seem to glean a great deal of inspiration from the whole thing.One of them said something like "it's amazing how god uses people in these ways"Was he using Nichols to off some bad eggs?How was he using the fellow that killed Smith's husband?I guess god is only resposible for anything good.Funny logic
 
I read the excerpt available through amazon.com. I suppose the excerpt represents the opening pages of the book.

What a load of nonsense. I tried to find some merit in the excerpt, but I couldn't. Well, the spelling was good. And the typeface was easy to read. But the content was illogical, anti-intellectual and, in my judgment, rather insulting.

The illogic and the insult comes from the view that, unless you make a deity the center of your life, you are a selfish b*st*rd who has made yourself the center of your life. This is the root of bigotry, as it leads quickly to the conclusion that atheists and agnostics (among others) are necessarily bad people, that they don't care about anyone but themselves.

The anti-intellectual aspect comes from the notion that, to find purpose, you have to do what God says. Only you can't get answers directly from God, you have to go by what this bible says, and by what a self-appointed spokesman for the Almighty says it means.

If this excerpt represents the foundation upon which the book is built, then I do not see it can provide benefit to anyone except to those who have already surrendered their intellect to faith. And even to the faithful, I wonder about whether it provides a benefit. If the book teaches or even suggests that a person should not find a sense of purpose by thinking for himself, then that is an unwise lesson.
 
how might you have delt with the atlanta fugitive?

would you still be alive today?
 
Riddick said:
how might you have delt with the atlanta fugitive?

would you still be alive today?
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Hey, I think Ashley Smith did a brilliant job. I can only hope that I would do something similar in that kind of situation.
Of course, since I'm an evil atheist, I wouldn't have "A Purpose Driven Life" in my apartment, so I'd have to think of something else.
 
Ipecac said:
Because pride is basically saying, "I'm in charge." The middle letter of pride is I, and the middle letter of sin is I ...

Wow, they share the same letter. How profound. :rolleyes:
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There's no "I" in masturbate. It must be ok, then...
 
Brown said:
I read the excerpt available through amazon.com. I suppose the excerpt represents the opening pages of the book.

. . .

If this excerpt represents the foundation upon which the book is built, then I do not see it can provide benefit to anyone except to those who have already surrendered their intellect to faith. And even to the faithful, I wonder about whether it provides a benefit. If the book teaches or even suggests that a person should not find a sense of purpose by thinking for himself, then that is an unwise lesson.
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You're correct. It's a terrible, terrible, anti-intellectual, pro-slavery to god, type of book. I had given my mother "Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction : Where Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins" and she read it. Afterwards she asked me to read "A Purpose Driven Life". Her whole church had studied it.

I read it out of consideration for her but made sure to mark it up thoroughly in hopes that she or someone might read my notes and think a little more critically about the book. One of the main points I tried to make was how the book seems to contradict some of the things that her church believes. I told her I was surprised that they liked it so much.

All in all, a real slog to finish.
 
PURPOSE DRIVEN - MONEY DRIVEN

Forgive my current memory lapse in that I don't recall the woman's name who lived in the north Atlanta apartment where the psycopathic murderer entered by force. Soon, however, her name will be a household handle when she writes HER book.

Last evening I tuned in to the FOX News channel. Knowing what I was about to take in, I asked my wife to velcro my arms to the chair thereby forcing myself to watch capitalism at its sickest.

Bill O'Reilly reran an interview he taped earlier with Rick Warren. O'Reilly says at the end of the interview "this book (The Purpose Driven Life) is just flying off bookstore shelves" - interview was taped a year ago.

If they were 'flying' off shelves then just imagine how many searching souls are plunking down their $$ NOW to find their life purpose. I mean, if THIS book cold-stopped a crazed gunmen/murderer in his tracks, just imagine the power resident in those inspired?! words.

I then watched interviews shown on Hannity and Colmes with Scott Peterson's sister - now an author, and the highly stupid ramblings of Amber Frye, new author/airhead, sitting alongside her Hollywood attorney Gloria Allred: You know Gloria - the plastic smile, always sensing the opportunity to quickly pounce on tragedies when, and only when, the $ signs become obvious.

Are people in America as stupid as I perceive?

Can they not see this "inspired, purpose driven life", "My Blood Brother" and whatever Airhead - sorry, Amber's book title is, revolves around ONE THING ONLY: $$$???

Ratings drive the content of these so-called "news" forums - $$. Knowing that is true, millions of people now know about these three books: Again $$.

My wife had to perform a simple de-velcro then she politely asked me to discontinue watching (DAMN! I missed Greta) as loud obscenities eminating from a disillusioned, angry...me were disturbing her activity in an adjacent room.

Disillusioned and angry, because I discovered something I had always known would unmistakenly manifest itself one day. The dumbing down of America is in full downward spiral.

When a double murder becomes gloriafied, I mean glorified, and a quadruple murderer simply is exhausted from 48 hours of killing and running but later claims a lady reading from a book convinces him to give it up, America BUYS IT (literally). Then, following these tragedies, like vultures, the people surrounding or related to the events are perceived celebrities, authors (using that term very loosely) become very rich and then live happily ever after.

Enough said...I don't feel very well.

Now...where did I put that half-full (or is it half-empty?) bottle of Emetrol?
 
KelvinG said:
Hey, I think Ashley Smith did a brilliant job. I can only hope that I would do something similar in that kind of situation.
Of course, since I'm an evil atheist, I wouldn't have "A Purpose Driven Life" in my apartment, so I'd have to think of something else.
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Have you come up with a good, atheistic, course of action?
 
KelvinG said:
Hey, I think Ashley Smith did a brilliant job. I can only hope that I would do something similar in that kind of situation.
Of course, since I'm an evil atheist, I wouldn't have "A Purpose Driven Life" in my apartment, so I'd have to think of something else.
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I wonder how the story would have been covered if she had say.....diverted his attention with her ouija board,and kicked him in the groin while cracking him over the head with a bottle of Jack Daniels
 
hammegk said:
Have you come up with a good, atheistic, course of action?
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No, I haven't really thought about it in much detail? I figure the odds of something similar happening to me are remote enough that it's probably best not to get to hung up plotting a course of action for something that will likely never happen.

What would you do?
 
This simply fits into religious mythology well, I can't read a whole lot of importance in it.

A David and Goliath theme where a simple religious mom takes on giant killer. Made for Sunday school.

What bothers me is this guy was a dangerous killer and is using people's religious sentiment to make things easier on himself. He's probably thinking right now that maybe when he gets out he'll become a minister. Let's see how the tune changes when he figures out that there's no 'out'.

I'm sorry and this is mean, but how quickly and easily religion spreads its legs for this monster. Everything he did was cold and calculated, but at the first hint of finding 'God' they fawn all over him.

Like, I'm sure he would ever read that book, or care for a moment who he killed or didn't, except to save ammo for more dangerous opponents.
 
hammegk said:
Have you come up with a good, atheistic, course of action?
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Introducing a person to existential angst will incapacitate him faster than any God-talk.
 
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