[ExI] Rick Warren on religion

[Stuart LaForge]

BillW wrote:

> So you are saying, I think, that obedience is best obtained in a religious
> context when the demands are given by a similarly religious person, and
> not that obedience is more of a generalized tendency in religious persons
> (which is what I thought you were saying first)

No actually you were right the first time. I am saying that religious
people are more prone to obey those they percieve to have authority. The
caveat however is that the authority must be perceived to be ligitimate.
And that perception of legitimate authority is largely subjective. Thus
someone who is very strongly religious (like a fundamentalist extremist)
might not recognize secular authority (like a scientist) as being
legitimate.

This is merely a hypothesis on my part but it is largely the result of
anecdotal evidence from observations of the religious people that I know.

I don't consider the study you cited to be statistically sound enough to
draw any real conclusions regarding my hypothesis upon, since it had a
very small sample size. For example, the there were only 4 or 5 "extremely
non-religious" students involved in the study.

But the data does suggest my idea might have some merit. This could
explain why nationalistic sentiments are often combined with religious
sentiment as in "For God and country!", "God and King Richard!", and other
such common phrases.

Stuart LaForge