Category: Religion

Markets in everything, Jesus vs. germs edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

A company called Purity Communion Solutions
was founded in 2007 to market "germ-free products that take the worry
out of contracting germs while receiving communion, and ultimately
increasing communion participation and church attendance." Purity
Communion Solutions already has 375,000 client churches, church supply
houses and the like, and its Web site features all sorts of information
about the H1N1 virus, as well as products that aim to keep you in
church, and keep you healthy. They include an automated host dispenser
in gold, silver, or white, as well as wafers infused with wine:
"Improved taste and texture" and "eliminates germs, spills &
waste."

And if you don't already know:

Christians [sic] not only gather together for worship at least weekly, but
they also dip their fingers in common fonts of holy water, pass baskets
up and down the pews to collect donations, exchange handshakes and hugs
at the sign of peace, and — in varying formats — share bread and wine
at communion, sometimes drinking from a single chalice or picking from
a loaf of bread. Those churches in which a priest or minister gives out
individual wafers of consecrated bread aren't much better off, studies
show, especially if the minister is dipping the Host in a chalice or
placing it on each communicant's tongue.

Here is the full story and I thank The Browser for the pointer.

Addendum: Here is a related article.

The countercyclical asset, a continuing series

by  Tyler Cowen in

Religious goods stores have been doing a record business in St. Joseph statues.  Buried in the garden of a home for sale, the doll allegedly helps the house to find a buyer.

Here is more information.  One seller said:

Some find the notion of magic house sales distasteful. “If you just
bury the statue in the ground, you’re not going to sell your home,”
said Gerard Siccardi, whose family runs a religious-goods business in
White Plains. “You’re supposed to pray. You’re supposed to have some
reverence about this. It’s a faith-based item.”

Assorted Links: God and Mammon Edition

by  Alex Tabarrok in
  • "Accountants and clergy are both well educated and intelligent, yet we
    pay accountants a lot more than the clergy. Is this because we care
    more about money than about God?"  Robert Whaples explains.

Mullah maximization

by  Tyler Cowen in

It turned out the Shah's curators knew what they were doing.  They had bought some outstanding contemporary paintings — including Warhol's Suicide (Purple Jumping Man) and the stellar Woman III — to fill the museum that was never built.  Say what you want about the Ayatollah, but despite his public rhetoric about the decadence of the West, his regime knew valuable assets when it saw them.  The regime hung onto the paintings, rather than burn them along with the American flag.

That is from Richard Polsky's new and fun i sold Andy Warhol (too soon).  The book is a sequel of sorts to Polsky's earlier I Bought Andy Warhol.  I am also a fan of Polsky's earlier Art Market Guides.

The culture that is Brazil

by  Tyler Cowen in

Reborn in Christ is among a growing number of evangelical churches in Brazil
that are finding ways to connect with younger people to swell their
ranks. From fight nights to reggae music to video games and on-site
tattoo parlors, the churches have helped make evangelicalism the
fastest-growing spiritual movement in Brazil.

…The night of the Extreme Fight, dozens of teenagers and young adults
hovered around the church. In the front room, booths sold hot dogs and
pizza, and young people lined up in one corner to get religious-theme
tattoos like “I Belong to Jesus.” In the main room, there were video
games, a D.J. spinning a mix of hip-hop and funk, and a projection
screen showing a DVD of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Though most
came for the main event, the Extreme Fight, they lingered. After four
fights and Pastor Maffei’s sermon, members paired up. One placed his
hand over the other’s forehead and spoke of Jesus Christ; the other
closed his eyes tightly.

Here is more.

Insurance markets in everything, no arbitrage condition edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

I enjoyed this one:

You've committed your life to Jesus. You know you're saved.  But when the Rapture comes what's to become of your loving pets who are left behind?  Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind. 

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you've received your reward.  Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.

We are currently active in 20 states and growing.  Our representatives have been screened to ensure that they are atheists, animal lovers, are moral / ethical with no criminal background, have the ability and desire to  rescue your pet and the means to retrieve them and ensure their care for your pet's natural life.  

…Our service is plain and simple; our fee structure is reasonable. For $110.00 we will guarantee that should the Rapture occur within ten (10) years of receipt of payment, one pet per residence will be saved.  Each additional pet at your residence will be saved for an additional $15.00 fee.   A small price to pay for your peace of mind and the health and safety of your four legged friends.

Unfortunately at this time we are not equipped to accommodate all species and must  limit our services to dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and small caged mammals.

Thank you for your interest in Eternal Earth-Bound Pets. We hope we can help provide you with peace of mind.

For the pointer I thank The Browser.

Adam Phillips on moderation and balance

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the closing bit of the essay:

There is, though, a third possibility, the one that I want to end on because it seems to me potentially the most interesting, though perhaps the most daunting. This is that the religious fanatic is someone for whom something about themselves and their lives is too much; and because not knowing what that is is so disturbing they need to locate it as soon as possible. Because the state of frustration cannot be borne – because it is literally unbearable, as long-term personal and political injustice always is – it requires an extreme solution.

In this account our excessive behaviour shows us how obscure we are to ourselves or how we obscure ourselves; how our frustrations, odd as this may seem, are excessively difficult to locate, to formulate. Wherever and whenever we are excessive in our lives it is the sign of an as yet unknown deprivation. Our excesses are the best clue we have to our own poverty, and our best way of concealing it from ourselves.

Bill Maher unleashes his inner Bryan Caplan

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Bill Maher at the Huffington Post:

Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is….

Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks….

People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%….

And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy?

Very funny. If only it were not true.

*Your Religion is False*

by  Tyler Cowen in

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

by  Tyler Cowen in

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

by  Tyler Cowen in

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

by  Tyler Cowen in

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.