Category: Religion

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).

Harvard economist Robert Barro has been engaged in a major project on economics and religion. Here is an interview, outlining what he has learned. Here are some results:

1. Religious participation is negatively correlated with economic growth.

2. For the most part religious belief (as opposed to participation) is not correlated with economic growth. Belief in hell is positively correlated with growth, however.

3. Religious pluralism makes people more religious. In other words, the more options available, the more likely that religion will be found appealing.

4. As a country becomes wealthier, its people tend to become less religious (the U.S. is an outlier here; we are remarkably religious for our level of wealth).

Here is the part that surprised me most:

We look at the consequences of having an established state religion. On net, we find that that is actually positive, both for church attendance and for religious beliefs. To some extent, that goes against what Adam Smith said. Smith stressed that established religion would promote monopoly, poor service, and decreased service attendance. He particularly inferred that from looking at the Anglican Church in England.

We find, however, that the net relationship is actually positive, and we think that is basically because state religion tends to be accompanied by the state subsidizing religious activity in various ways. I think an economist, particularly Adam Smith, would generally accept the idea that something that is subsidized will tend to occur more often than something that isn’t. It’s the same as saying that something that is taxed will tend to occur less often.

Here is Barro’s home page, with links to many of his writings. Here is a plug for my colleague, Laurence Iannaccone, who works on related issues and has been conferring with Barro.

Thanks to the ever-excellent www.politicaltheory.info for the link.

Addendum: Here is a recent Barro lecture, thanks to Andrew Grossman for the tip.

With Roman Catholic clergy in short supply in the United States, Indian priests are picking up some of their work, saying Mass for special intentions, in a sacred if unusual version of outsourcing.

American, as well as Canadian and European churches, are sending Mass intentions, or requests for services like those to remember deceased relatives and thanksgiving prayers, to clergy in India.

Here is some more detail:

In Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast with one of the largest concentrations of Christians in India, churches often receive intentions from overseas. The Masses are conducted in Malayalam, the native language. The intention – often a prayer for the repose of the soul of a deceased relative, or for a sick family member, thanksgiving for a favor received, or a prayer offering for a newborn – is announced at Mass.

The requests are mostly routed to Kerala’s churches through the Vatican, the bishops or through religious bodies. Rarely, prayer requests come directly to individual priests.

While most requests are made via mail or personally through traveling clergymen, a significant number arrive via e-mail, a sign that technology is expediting this practice.

In Kerala’s churches, memorial and thanksgiving prayers conducted for local residents are said for a donation of 40 rupees (90 cents), whereas a prayer request from the United States typically comes with $5, the Indian priests say.

Bishop Sebastian Adayanthrath, the auxiliary bishop of the Ernakulam-Angamaly diocese in Cochin, a port town in Kerala, said his diocese received an average of 350 Mass intentions a month from overseas. Most were passed to needy priests.

In Kerala, where priests earn $45 a month, the money is a welcome supplement, Bishop Adayanthrath said.

Here is the full story, from The New York Times.

Thanks to the ever-wise David Nishimura for the pointer.

Addendum: We are also told that “unit of account equivalence” holds:

The Rev. Paul Thelakkat, a Cochin-based spokesman for the Synod of Bishops of the Syro-Malabar Church, said, “The prayer is heartfelt, and every prayer is treated as the same whether it is paid for in dollars, euros or in rupees.”

Not the usual MR fare, but I found the following Richard Rorty essay interesting reading. Rorty appears to have moved away from his anti-foundationalism — (roughly) the belief that truths cannot be proven from first principles — and is calling for a new pluralistic religion of humanity:

Rorty believes that we in the West are all polytheists now because we think that there are various goods and no overarching good. He chooses this term “polytheism” carefully–and not altogether ironically–because he believes that the idea can bring together John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James in the belief that “there is no actual or possible object of knowledge that would permit you to commensurate and rank all human needs.” If gods and goods are plural and serve different people in different ways, why should we feel the need to rank them? In fact, it may be the pursuit of such divergent human ends that benefits us all in the long run…

So far I am close to agreeing…although I recognize the possible use of a “stolen concept” of general well-being at the end. If you can’t rank goods, don’t tell me at the end that recognizing this fact will make us all better off. There is more:

Rorty is convinced that such an inexorable transition from traditional monotheism to this secular civil religion is already under way: “I think that the religion of love has gradually moved out of the churches and into the political arena. That religion is in the process of being transfigured into democratic politics. What is left in the churches is the fear that human beings may not be able to save themselves without help–that social cooperation is not enough.” Rorty hopes that the American civil religion of democracy will be enough for most people, so that those left over will be an inconsequential minority.

I agree with much of this point, though I do not approve as Rorty does. Now how about this part:

…Rorty describes the role of college professors in almost fundamentalist terms: professors should see their work in the classroom as nothing less than an exercise in conversion. They ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.” With no hint of his usual irony, Rorty writes that “students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.”

As this point I will offer no further comment.

If you have lived abroad, it is obvious that the United States is very religious for a wealthy country. Here are some explanations why:

One theory involves the different histories of religious marketing over the last two centuries. Because religion has a long history of state sponsorship in Europe, religious bodies there have perhaps grown lazy. State-supported congregations need not aggressively recruit parishioners to “stay in business.” In the United States, however, religions must support themselves and therefore are more aggressive “marketers,” going to much greater lengths to attract congregants than their European counterparts. In other words, American religious organizations spend a great deal of time and energy advertising, and their advertising nets results (Stark and Finke 2000).

A second theory involves the ethnic, racial, immigrant, and national diversity that typifies American society. Unlike certain European nations that are made up of relatively homogenous populations (Iceland, for instance), the United States is permeated by an enormous array of different cultural groups, whose members may find solidarity and community in religious involvement (Warner and Wittner 1998; Herberg 1955). For example, W.E.B. Du Bois, the first American sociologist of religion, observed the unparalleled importance of the church to black Americans, noting that, beyond promulgating theology, the black churches provided a social space and communal refuge in an often hostile world (Zuckerman 2002). In sum, it is possible that a significant level of ethnic/ cultural/racial heterogeneity, as typified by American society, spurs greater religious participation as people seek a sense of belonging or communal support.

A third consideration involves the possible impact of different social welfare systems. Perhaps when the government takes a greater role in providing social services, religion wanes, and when the government fails to provide extensive social services, religion thrives. For instance, religious belief and participation is the absolute lowest level in Scandinavia, whose countries are characterized by generous social support and extensive welfare systems. In contrast, the United States government offers far fewer social services and welfare programs than any European nation.

A fourth possibility may have to do with differing elementary and secondary educational systems. Perhaps the Europeans have done a better job of conveying rational thinking, scientific methodology, and skeptical inquiry to their children than have American educators.

Here is the full story.

My take: I don’t believe the fourth possibility of greater rationality. A big chunk of Germany, for instance, thinks that 9/11 was an American conspiracy. The first three all ring true. I would add that America is a more rural country with lower population density. This encourages religion over urban entertainments. Furthermore the European churches are identified with aristocratic landholding, taxation, and state privileges. That being said, I do not expect the low religiosity of Western Europe to last. Europe has gone through waves of greater and lesser secularization. Furthermore people may be biologically programmed to believe in myths and religions. The real puzzle is why religious suppliers have been so slow to offer products that suit the new European mentalities.