George Barna and Human Irrationality

I've heard quite a bit about George Barna recently. I've heard his reseach quoted in various forums and he seems to be reasonably highly thought of. I looked up his web-site and found a study which, if at all accurate, would give strong credence to the beliefe that humans are basically irrational.

Take this, Barna defines a "Born-Again Christian" (BAC) as someone who says that they have made a personal committment to Jesus Christ which is still important to them and who says that they expect to go to heaven when they die because they repented their sins and trusted in Jesus as their Saviour. He claims that there are between 80 and 85 million such folks in the USA. Now my first comment has to be that, from a biblical and patristic viewpoint, this is a totally unacceptable definition, however, we'll let that slide for the time being. The study further says that the number of BACs in the USA is between 80 and 85 million.

Now according to Mr. Barna:

* 98% of BACs say that their faith is very important to them (this might sound high, but have a read of the definition of BAC and ask how could the remaining 2%- 1.6 million Americans- possibly fit that definition and then say their faith is not very important to them)

* 38% of BACs say that a person can earn heaven by their own moral efforts (so they think they are going to heaven because they repented and recieved Christ as Lord but other people can get there some other way.)

* My personal favourite; 32% say they believe in moral absolutes. So the remaining 68% of BACs- rougly 55 million Americans- say that they are going to heaven because they've repented of their sins and accept Christ as Saviour but also deny the existence of moral absolutes. Can someone please explain to me what these people are thinking?

All in all, the reading of Barna's reasearch left me scratching my head at how people can believe such obviously contradictory things, and this from Christians. It left me feeling profoundly depressed about humanity's capacity for reason.