Streams of Confusion: Thirteen Great Ideas That Are Contaminating Our Thought and Culture

by Brad Scott

Book Overview

Ideas trickle down the intellectual and cultural mountainside, become streams of confusion, and ultimately turn into roaring waters that drown out the voice of truth and overtake the world. In the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1581340591
• ISBN13: 9781581340594
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Crossway Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Streams of Confusion

This book was used but the description described it as being like new. It was just that and I am very satisfied.

This book made me grow.

Author Brad Scott artfully spins an historical perspective on the tragically incongruous thoughts and behaviors of these modern times.As I read, I began to recognize the flawed perspectives espoused by society. But more importantly, I recognized the flawed philosophies of my friends, family, and most of all - myself. Many of the excesses and lapses of my youth can be attributed to the watered-down-for-mass-consumption version many of these philosophical mistakes.To my mind, the existentialists had the best grasp on reality as it could possibly be had when one does not know God. Without God, all is hopeless and meaningless! Imagine my amusement upon realizing that The Great Teacher, King Solomon, was the first existentialist three millenia before Sartre and Heidegger (read Ecclesiastes). As usual, the Bible beat them to it.I enthusiastically recommend this book - especially to college students and also to parents who want to provide a firm intellectual and moral foundation for their children. It will forever change your perspective.

Stemming the Tide

If you are a non-believer and confused about what exactly you do believe in but are not quite satisfied with a lot of your assumptions about man and life-- Or if you are a Christian who pretty much know what you believe in but are a bit uneasy about all those "modern" views you don't quite understand-- Or if you are simply someone fascinated by large-scale ideas and like to see them argued out-- If you are any one of these sorts of people, you should read Brad Scott's STREAMS OF CONFUSION. This impressive study of great minds that have shaped the modern world since the seventeenth century for better or, as Scott argues, for worse, follows some thirteen "mega-ideas" from their inception in thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche to their final form in today's assumptions that underlie so much of our thinking, such as "Man is good by nature but corrupted by society," "Man is determined by his environment or by his genes or by both," and "Everything is relative; you have your morals and I have mine." To understand where our assumptions come from is to free us to judge them--no small value provided by any book. Scott, however, offers more; he provides a Christian backdrop against which to judge the "mega-ideas," rather than simple display them in a vacuum. No matter what you come away thinking, you will know that you haven't wasted your time, that you at least understand better what you believe and are the better for it. And you may get a great deal more than that as well.

4 centuries of philosophical decay lead to modern muddle.

Why has our civilization fallen so far from sober behavior? Former New Ager Brad Scott exposes the downward spiral of philosophical thought which has allowed things to get so morally bankrupt. Hobbes said, "Man no longer needed God's objective authority", and Hume said, "Man has an innate trustworthy moral sense". From Roussea we derive the social contract and the "noble savage", leading us to Darwin's natural evolution and the demotion of man from God's highest creation to just another animal. John Stuart Mill said, "individuals are their own sovereigns" and that "happiness is the goal of life" (rather than serving God) which led to "if it feels good do it". Marx said "change is only accomplished through the material"; Nietzsche declared "God is dead" and that "supermen" deserve to be in charge (which paved the way for the Nazis); Freud said "sex is all that drives humans" and that "God was just an invention for simple minds"; Sartre believed life was meaningless; Bertrand Russell ridiculed Christ openly; and Huxley advocated LSD for self-enlightenment. No wonder society is in a mess! The Book which predates all these man-centered rationalizations can refute them, too. Scott exposes these philosophies for the destructive dangers they pose to society. Read "Streams of Confusion" to trace the long road from the Enlightenment to the Entitlement, from Courtly Love to Courtney Love, from the Middle Ages to the Muddled Ages. Gutsy book!