Freakonomics was sensational when it came out. It transgressed moral boundaries in the field of economics. It pretended like there were no moral boundaries. Yet, the approach represents no new idea, but an old idea (postmodernism) applied to a new field (economics). The author simply applies Nietchze's 'beyond good and evil' to economics, i.e. author tries to apply a non-moral (aka immoral) worldview to an aspect of the world.
This has been done before in most other areas (see Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity; the work of Alfred Kinsey, etc.). But see Schaeffer's response to Skinner, Back to Freedom and Dignity. Also see Van Til's response to everything, The Defense Of The Faith.
In the end, Freakonomics once again proves that it is impossible to get 'beyond' morality -- it constantly moralizes, and takes strong moral stands. Talking about any issue without implying a morality is like saying, "Let's breathe for a moment without oxygen." It's impossible. A presuppositional apologetic would have a field day here, and could use this book for illustrations almost endlessly.
Finally, if you read this book, read this first:
Schaeffer, The Christian At This Moment In History:
“The Bible starts with the question of reality. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The whole lot...total reality... When I say Christianity is true I am sure that I mean something different than most people mean, even Christians... people think of individual truths, as truths... the truth of this, the truth of that. When I say Christiainity is true, I mean it is true to the totality of reality. That is something else different and further... What Christianity deals with is the truth of total reality.”
Schaeffer,
“People are not caught in a closed cause and effect machine... we are creative in the most amazing way... by choice we can change history... that is the most creative thing you can think of... we are not caught in a deterministic system. This is related to God creating because he wished, not because he had to create. Each member of Trinity had others to love and interact with. He created because he wished and willed to. We can create... we can cause bad ripples and good ripples... this is wonderful. Skinner, Freud... only present us with an illusion of significance. Christianity teaches us we have real significance. We have the responsibility of that significance because we can created bad or good ripples in history... the world is abnormal because (Adam and Eve’s) significance was used badly. When I look at history there are many things that should not be there.”
Van Til, Reason and Revelation:
“...we should not try to prove that God exists without defining God in terms of the doctrine of scripture... (the apologist) must not tone down any Biblical distinctives in order to make the faith credible (Revelation and Reason, 119).”
“... the deep problems of apologetics are not finally intellectual, but ethical (Reason and Revelation, 145).”
Frederick Buechner, The Two Loves:
“... the Bible is not first of all a book of moral truth. I would call it instead a book of truth about the way life is. (the scriptures) present life as having been ordered in a certain way, with certain laws as inextricably built into it as the law of gravity is built into the physical universe. When Jesus says that whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will save it, surely he is not making a statement about how, morally speaking, life ought to be. Rather, he is making a statement about how life is (The Two Loves, 85-86).”
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