Category: Religion

Ever since the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-1995, I have been well aware that the Gods of the Dismal Science are cruel and capricious, at times punishing small sins against them with disproportionate retribution.

Here is the full post.  Here are a few of my voodoo flags.  Here are two more.  Here is my favorite.

In a new op-ed, an important Catholic theologian apparently accepts the logic of my argument (and here) on theism and evolution.  Coincidental timing?  Perhaps.  But the probability that the Pope reads MR now increases! 🙂   From the NYTimes.

An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long
been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting
that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be
incompatible with Catholic faith.

The cardinal, Christoph
Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope
Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday,
writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but
evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process
of random variation and natural selection – is not."

Thanks to Roger Sweeny for the pointer.

$12,254, according to one source.  The calculation is "seat of the pants," at the very least, but it makes for an amusing exercise:

The answer (with some help from ebible’s weights and measurements section).

• 1 Roman denarius is equal to one’s day wage for an agricultural worker. As most people in the ancient world were farmers, we can make some basic judgement about the standard of living a denarius could provide.
• 1 denarius = 1/4 Hebrew shekel. Thus, 1/4 Hebrew shekel was probably the going rate for your basic Jewish [?] in Roman times (give or take).
• Judas was given 30 silver shekels to betray Jesus (Matt 26:15)
• 30 x 1/4 = 120. Thus, Judas was paid 120 days of an annual laborer’s wage.
• 120 days is approximately 1/3 of a year
• The average annual income for the American worker is $36,764 (according to a 2002 report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• 36764 * 0.333 (i.e. one third of 36764) = 12254.66.
• Therefore, Judas betrayed Jesus in exchange for what is approximately $12,254 in today’s currency.

A purchasing power parity calculation should be much lower; one-third of an annual income back then simply didn’t buy much.  Or for a classroom exercise, imagine a strangely long-lived forward market in ancient shekels and dollars.  Thanks to Claudio Shikida for the pointer.

Rather than answer all the objections put forward to my theism and evolution post let me state the argument in another way which should make it clear that I am (obviously) correct.

Suppose that God came down from the heavens tomorrow in all his glory, throwing thunderbolts, raising the dead, turning water into wine, whatever it takes to convince everyone of his existence.  If this were to occur I have no doubt that even Richard Dawkins, precisely because he is a rational scientist, would say ‘hmmm, perhaps I wasn’t quite right about all this evolution stuff.’  My point in the post is that many religious people don’t need the demonstration – they already believe and in so doing they logically question evolution just as Dawkins would if he came to believe as they do.

Remember the $28,000 grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary?  The same idiots have bought a Popemobile for $244,000 and it’s not the cool one.

Odds that the next Pope will be named "Damien": 80 to 1.

I assume they are only taking "yes" bets; here is a New York Times link on the relevant papal betting markets.

The ever-provocative Will Wilkinson opines:

In a fit of Beckerite rational choice reasoning, I decided that
theists ought to have higher rates of death by accident. If I believe
that heaven is infinite bliss, then I should be quite eager to join my
maker. Suicide is a disqualification for paradise, but dying in a car
accident isn’t. So, one should expect that theists who believe in
perpetual Miami would take more risks than those who do not so believe,
and that thus, death-by-accident ought to be higher among believer than
non-believers.

My guess is that there is no difference in rates of
death-by-accident among believers and non-believers. If my guess is
correct, then there’s another reason to believe that many people don’t
really believe in God, even though they think they do. Or, at least, there’s a reason for rational choice economists to believe meta-atheism.

My take: Most of all, theists should have stronger reasons to live.  They have their own selfish reasons, plus whatever role they think they are supposed to be playing in God’s plan.  So they ought to take fewer chances; indeed the data suggest that both religious belief and religious participation are correlated with longer lifespans.  And even if theists believe death is paradise, that will come sooner or later in any case.  In other words, heaven brings an "income effect," not a "substitution effect."  We need of course two auxiliary assumptions.  First, theists, given their perceived roles in God’s plan, do not feel a strong impatience to arrive in heaven.  Second, the method of death under consideration should not affect the probability of heaven vs. hell.

That all being said, we don’t have a good theory of how to rank-order infinities (e.g., "infinity plus three" is not mathematically larger than "infinity").  So how can anyone who sees any chance of infinite utility satisfy standard choice axioms?  Even Nick Bostrom can’t answer this question.  (And should theists accept Tabarrok’s Offer?)  But I won’t blame this problem on theism per se.  As Nick argues, atheistic cosmologies can easily have problems with infinite expected values.  And arguably theism could be used to define limits on time, physical space, or the scope of possible worlds.  So both empirics and theory suggest that theists should be more eager to live, and less willing to die (now).