Category: Religion

*Your Religion is False*

The author is Joel Grus and the link to the book is here.  I am a pro-religion non-believer, but if you wish to hear from an anti-religion non-believer, this is the place to go.  He will tell you that your religion is false.

In addition to its humor, I prefer the content of this book to the better-known "new atheist" tracts.  Grus yields many of the strongest arguments.  For instance the biographical and sociological correlates with belief (most people choose the religion they grew up with, or encountered through a friend, etc.) suggest that, in this area, intuitions which feel "certain" simply cannot be trusted.

Vaticanomics

That's the clever title they gave my piece at the WSJ.  It is a look at the recent papal encyclical, which is full of claims about economics.  There is plenty there to object to, but I didn't think it nearly as "left-wing" as did many other market-oriented commentators.  In fact I was surprised how positive or at least neutral it was about markets, once you cut through some of the rhetoric.  It was pro-micro-credit, it repeatedly noted that globalization can have a positive side, and it stressed the idea that businesses are, in the right setting, capable of doing a lot of social good.

One excerpt:

We should probably not expect too much to come from the encyclical's call for more state power.

Most of the encyclical, appropriately, expresses a desire for
ethical conduct. The importance of ethics for civilization is obvious,
but of course good ethics, consistently applied, are hard to come by.
People are very good at ethical and psychological compartmentalization,
and so it is possible for them to offer the church nominal authority
over the ethical realm while continuing their dubious economic behavior.

Another:

Although it was just issued, the encyclical already feels dated.
Globalization is one of the main concerns in the document. Yet because
of the financial crisis, international trade has been falling apart.
The real worry is not how to manage the economic globalization we have
but how to stop the world's rapid deglobalization, which is at a pace
that matches the collapse of trade in the 1930s. For better or worse,
economic rather than ethical factors will determine the outcome here.

The end of my piece covers what the Encyclical should have discussed, namely the importance of the non-Christian nature of China and India and what that means for the future of the world.

The English-language text of the encyclical is here.

John Calvin as behavioral economist

Tomorrow marks the 500th birthday of John Calvin.  If you read John Calvin you will find a great deal of what we now call behavioral economics.

He wrote about non-convexity:

For there is no medium between the two things: the earth must either be worthless in our estimation, or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

Here is one reason why there is "evil" in the world:

Whatever be the kind of tribulation with which we are afflicted, we should always consider the end of it to be, that we may be trained to despise the present, and thereby stimulated to aspire to the future life. For since God well knows how strongly we are inclined by nature to a slavish love of this world, in order to prevent us from clinging too strongly to it, he employs the fittest reason for calling us back, and shaking off our lethargy.

Adam Smith and David Hume were influenced by Calvin:

If we see a funeral, or walk among graves, as the image of death is then present to the eye, I admit we philosophise admirably on the vanity of life. We do not indeed always do so, for those things often have no effect upon us at all. But, at the best, our philosophy is momentary. It vanishes as soon as we turn our back, and leaves not the vestige of remembrance behind; in short, it passes away, just like the applause of a theatre at some pleasant spectacle. Forgetful not only of death, but also of mortality itself, as if no rumour of it had ever reached us, we indulge in supine security as expecting a terrestrial immortality.

It is odd to call someone so famous an "underrated thinker" but indeed Calvin is.  You'll find the whole text of the Institutes of Christian Religion here; it makes for good browsing.

This chapter is John Calvin imitating Robin Hanson.

Buy the book here on Kindle for 99 cents.

Markets in everything: convert the atheist, on Turkish TV

From The Guardian, via Effect Measure:

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: what do you get when you put
a Muslim imam, a Greek Orthodox priest, a rabbi, a Buddhist monk and 10
atheists in the same room?

Viewers of Turkish television will
soon get the punchline when a new game show begins that offers a prize
arguably greater than that offered by Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Contestants
will ponder whether to believe or not to believe when they pit their
godless convictions against the possibilities of a new relationship
with the almighty on Penitents Compete (Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor
in Turkish), to be broadcast by the Kanal T station. Four spiritual
guides from the different religions will seek to convert at least one
of the 10 atheists in each programme to their faith.

Those
persuaded will be rewarded with a pilgrimage to the spiritual home of
their newly chosen creed – Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for Christians
and Jews, and Tibet for Buddhists.

The real prize, of course, is the conversion itself.  But if you are faking it just to win the trip, I believe Islam is at a disadvantage.  By the way, they do "verify" that you are an atheist in the first place, using a panel of eight theologians (are they so hard to fool?), plus they monitor your behavior afterwards to see you truly have become a believer.

My Bloggingheads with Robert Wright on *The Evolution of God*

It is on theology and religion and you will find it here.  They list some of the specific topics as follows:


Bob’s new book, “The Evolution of God” (09:34)


On being a bad secular Buddhist (03:28)


The God Bob believes in (03:17)


Why agnostic Tyler loves the Hebrew Bible (03:26)


How Bob and Tyler came to their personal theologies (06:49)


Quantum physics and king-sized video games as paths to God (07:42)

For me it was a very interesting exchange, but given the topic I cannot predict that everyone will feel the same way.  Other points we touched upon were the beautiful elements in Islam and its notion of religious ecstasy, the appeal of Sufism, why Unitarianism is not more popular, the pagan polytheistic versions of Catholicism, penalty and punishment in Haitian voodoo, the preconditions of tolerance, my views on meta-ethics, what does the concept of God really mean anyway, why dogmatic atheism is so unfortunate, and what is the real metaphysical problem that everyone needs to face up to.  Bob of course just wrote a book on religion but from my end I view this as a personal dialog rather than me communicating verified scholarly information in an educational manner.

You can buy Bob's book, The Evolution of God, here.

Claims I wish I understood better

This is from the July/August issue of Discover magazine:

Hawking is now pushing a different strategy, which he calls top-down cosmology.  It is not the case, he says, that the past uniquely determines the present.  Because the universe has many possible histories and just as many possible beginnings, the present state of the universe selects the past.  "This means that the histories of the Universe depend on what is being measured," Hawking wrote in a recent paper, "contrary to the usual idea that the Universe has an objective, observer-independent history."…Hawking's idea provides a natural context for string theory.  All those universes might simply represent different possible histories of our universe.

The Islamic roots of *Star Wars*

This is even better than having a Muslim President:

…the Arabic word for "great," akbar, has been adapted into George Lucas's Star Wars franchise, in the form of Admiral Ackbar, a heroic character and military commander whose success in space helps Luck Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance repel Darth Vader's Galactic Empire.  Featured in Return of the Jedi, Ackbar is just one of many characters and settings in the Star Wars universe that have an Arabic background.  Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, takes its name from the Tunisian city of Tataouine (al-Tataouine in Arabic).  Darth Vader's home planet is Mustafar, a slight variation of Mustafa, an Arabic name that means "the chosen one" (and is one of 99 names for the Muslim prophet Muhammad).  Attack of the Clones showcases Queen Jamilla, whose name is a slight variation of jamilla, an Arabic word for "beautiful."  And Revenge of the Sith features Senator Meena Tills, whose first name means "heaven" in Arabic.

That is from Jonathan Curiel's often interesting Al' America: Travels Through America's Arab and Islamic Roots.  The book also has an intriguing discussion of Islamic influences on the architecture of the World Trade Center.

The renegade guru

For some non-obvious reason I thought of Bryan Caplan when I was reading this article:

As a toddler, he was put on a throne and worshipped as by monks who treated him like a god. But the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of a spiritual leader has caused consternation – and some embarrassment – for Tibetan Buddhists by turning his back on the order that had such high hopes for him.

Instead of leading a monastic life, Osel Hita Torres now sports baggy trousers and long hair, and is more likely to quote Jimi Hendrix than Buddha.

Yesterday he bemoaned the misery of a youth deprived of television, football and girls. Movies were also forbidden – except for a sanctioned screening of The Golden Child starring Eddie Murphy, about a kidnapped child lama with magical powers. "I never felt like that boy," he said.

The story is here.  Successive photos are here.  And:

At six, he was allowed to socialise only with other reincarnated souls – though for a time he said he lived next to the actor Richard Gere's cabin.

He is still revered by the Buddhist community although here is a bit more on the embarrassed responses.  I wonder how many gurus come to such realizations but do not speak up.  Does living in Spain have an effect?

Respecting the elephant

I would not go so far as some who would insist that a Hindu is not the person to ask about Hinduism, as Harvard professor Roman Jakobson notoriously objected to Nabokov's bid for chairmanship of the Russian literature department: "I do respect very much the elephant, but would you give him the chair of zoology?"

That is from Wendy Doniger's new and noteworthy The Hindus: An Alternative History.  Here is a favorable Michael Dirda review of the book.  Read the Wikipedia section on "Criticism" of Wendy Doniger, some of it from fundamentalist Hindus.  Here is a defense of Doniger.

Repo markets in everything, Passover edition

This is an example to inspire Jeffrey Williams:

When Jaaber Hussein signs an agreement with Israel's Chief
Rabbis tomorrow, he will be inking the only Arab-Jewish accord sure to
be meticulously observed by both sides. The deal will make him the
owner for one week of all bread, pasta and beer in Israel – well a huge
amount of it anyway. The contract, signed for the past 12 years by the
Muslim hotel food manager, is part of the traditional celebrations
ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Jews are forbidden by biblical injunction to possess leavened bread,
or chametz, during Passover and ironically an Arab is needed to
properly observe the holiday. The agreement with Mr Hussein offers a
way of complying with religious edicts without having to wastefully
destroy massive quantities of food.

If only our capital markets could run so smoothly:

Tomorrow, Mr Hussein will put down a cash deposit of $4,800
(some 20,000 shekels or £3,245) for the $150m worth of leavened
products he acquires from state companies, the prison service and the
national stock of emergency supplies. The deposit will be returned at
the end of the holiday, unless he decides to come up with the full
value of the products. In that case he could, in theory, keep them all.

At the close of the holiday, the foodstuffs purchased by Mr Hussein
revert back to their original owners, who have given the Chief Rabbis
the power of attorney over their leavened products. "It's a firm,
strong agreement done in the best way," Mr Hussein said.

I thank Michael Webster for the pointer.

Markets in everything

Deron Bauman reports to me:

Information Age Prayer is
a site that charges you a monthly fee to say prayers for you. A typical
charge is $4.95 per month to say three prayers specified by you each
day.

"We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each
prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying," the
company states. "Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of
the subscriber displayed on screen.

"Prices, however, are dictated by the length of the prayer. As noted
in the Information Age Prayer FAQ, "A discounted prayer will cost less
than other prayers of similar length."

Here is the full story.