SelfishReasons.com

Remove the fear of death and punishment, and are you left with any belief?

The philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal explained the odds of a wager for faith. You have two choices in faith: believe or disbelieve. And there are two outcomes: Either God exists, or He doesn’t.

The gamble is obvious: If you believe, and there is a God, you stand to gain much, but if you disbelieve, you have lost much. If God does not exist, either choice is equal. Therefore, your bet ought to be belief, in case you are right and against that awful scenario where God exists and you have disbelieved.

There is something intuitive to this gamble. Why not believe? What harm can it do?

And yet, this concept has been sharply criticized. What if you believe in the wrong God? Should you believe in all religions, just in case? What if God will not accept a kind of faith that is placed on odds?

And would you waste your life by believing in a God that doesn’t exist? Wouldn’t you then squander your time, your energy, your money, your choices? How much could you have done with those so many Sundays, going to church and reading Bibles, when all along you could have pursued a hobby, taken trips, or flown kites?

In one sense, the gamble seems reasonable. In the other, it seems like a stacked deck.

In his book, I Told Me So: Self-Deception and the Christian Life, Gregg A. Ten Elshof recalls a sign advertising a church apologetics class for young adults. The sign proclaimed, “Find Out WHY You Believe What You Believe!” He writes,

“…What a curious thing to find out from someone in a class! How do they know why I believe what I believe? I bet most of the people enrolled in the class had never heard of the arguments presented in the class prior to having attended. But then how could these be the reasons for their belief? …They’re coming to the class to acquire reasons for their conviction. But why?”

Elshof explains that this is a product of rationalization. We hold beliefs and afterwards justify our beliefs by making persuasive arguments for belief, and claim that those arguments are what led us to believe. And yet for most of us, those arguments weren’t the thing that caused us to believe. They supplement our beliefs, and make them seem more convincing and palatable, but they aren’t the cause of our faith.

I think it is safe to say that we rationalize because internally, we are playing Pascal’s wager. We look at the odds, recognize the payoff, and hope for the best. But we’re not fully convinced of the gamble – at least, not enough to be proud that the gamble itself is our reasoning. So we pretend we have better reasons, and we hope that if we are convincing enough, and if we forget our wager, perhaps God will be forgiving enough to count it as faith.

We don’t feel comfortable admitting that our faith might be based on intuition, on a certain sense of rightness about the existence of God. As children of a scientific age, it seems disingenuous to have that kind of a foundation for a belief, so we believe for one reason but argue our faith from another.

All the same, we often aren’t quite sure which beliefs we must hold. Those nagging doubts, the cracks in the façade that we’ve built around our foundation, creak and groan and demand our attention. Which beliefs are right? What if I don’t believe all of the right things? Will my wager be insufficient?

The safe bet, we believe, is to hedge our bets further. If a doctrine comes our way from an authority we trust, we add it to the list. If it’s plausible, add it on, just in case. Ambiguity isn’t an option, because it leaves one more open spot on our roulette table. God might just care very deeply about that particular issue, so we’d better figure out once and for all what we believe about it.

Christian doctrine teaches that God is a forgiving God, and that he desires to show mercy. It teaches that a person can be “saved”; that is, forgiven of one’s sin. But do we believe that? It seems that we believe God has a standard He judges His own children by, but He also withholds the scale from us, so we can never be sure when we’ve finally lived up to the invisible standard. It’s like the big reveal on a reality show, where Surprise! this one is good enough, and Surprise! that one is the loser. The condemned man believed, but unfortunately didn’t believe the right things.

If fear forces us to feign belief, then how can we be sure that we have faith at all?

It’s one thing to say we have faith. But it’s another to describe what we have faith in. It’s safer to keep it undefined, it seems. And yet, this kind of faith is unsteady and wavering. It’s exactly the kind of faith that Jesus argued against.

If we say that we place our trust in God, it will be demonstrated by actual trust. We must no longer fear death and punishment. Faith precludes it! So why do we continue to fear? Why is that the basis of our faith?

We act as though God is bound by some even greater power, some law that he is forced to comply with, almost as though an even greater, unknown God were behind Him, needing to be obeyed. “I have no choice,” this middle-God would say. “I’d like to forgive this or that mistake, but I just can’t.”

This popular concept of faith based in fear encourages a disingenuous attitude. Just say you believe, and fake it as well as you can – until you convince yourself – and it just might be enough to save you.

For many Christians, a belief in a literal hell forces the concept of the Pascal’s wager. But what would happen if we removed the fear of hell, if we chose to believe based on the merits of faith itself? Would it be insufficient to convince the so-called believer? If we aren’t saved from something as permanent and horrific as hell, and instead are only saved from our own griefs and sins – “saved from this wicked generation,” as Peter explained – would it be worthwhile?

Is hell necessary for us to behave like Jesus? Are we really that corrupt and irredeemable?

According to a rabbinic legend, the soul knows the entire Torah before it comes into the world. “As soon as it comes into the world, an angel arrives and slaps it on its mouth and causes it to forget the whole of the Torah.” The angel strikes the embryo on the philtrum, the dimple on the upper lip. It leaves the scar as a reminder of what it once knew and what it should aspire to remember.
One never learns anything new, but only recalls what it has forgotten.

(Source: Kabbalah, by David Ariel)

By the receding of waters was the Earth made.
By the receding of the upper waters was the Heaven made.
By the receding of God was existence made.

Chaos is order so complex that it cannot be grasped or understood. It appears as disorder because our finite minds cannot see far enough to view it all.

From:  Chicago Tea Party: CNBC’s Rick Santelli Defends the Common Man

This is the big question on everyone’s mind now: “Will the second stimulus package work?”

It would be very easy to say: “I hope so.” Obama’s claim that it “will create 3 million jobs” could never be claimed in a financial setting. The SEC would immediately be down on language like that. It’s like saying this: “This investment will create a positive cash flow of 10 percent in the next 10 years.” How can you predict the future?

Any financial instrument or financial package with a claim like “this investment will produce a 27 percent gain in value in the next five years” would be taken right off the market. Anyone (i.e. part of the administration or an economist) claiming a future result is as precise as predicting Chicago weather and as full of hot air as global warming.

According to Bloomberg.com there is enough money in the bailout, bank guarantees, and stimulus packages to pay off 90% of the nation’s mortgages.

It is enough money to send a $1,430 check to  every man, woman, and child in existence.

President Obama spoke last week regarding the opposition to his plan.  He explained, “So then you get the argument, ‘Well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill,’ What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point.”

He’s right, you know.  That is the point.  Those who believe in Stimulus Packages believe that government spending will grease the wheels of the economy, and get everyone spending, like a pull-cord on a lawnmower.  Once you pull the cord, the motor runs on its own, so the theory goes.

But there is a crucial error in that line of thinking.  What is the cost of the Stimulus?  No, I don’t mean the dollar amount.  We know that cost is only $9.7 trillion (so far).  I mean, what is the offset?  Where does that $9.7 trillion come from?

It’s magic money, mostly.  Let’s face it, they can’t tax us enough to pay that off, and they can’t really float that much money for very long and keep Government bond money worth anything.  (How could they raise that much money in bonds, when no one believes that the US Government is good for it?)  The only thing they can do is turn on their Wonderful Magic Money Machine and start printing.  That makes ALL money worth less.  Eventually someone has to pay the price.

Walter Williams recently explained it by analogy.

…If Congress taxes to hand out money, one person is stimulated at the expense of another, who pays the tax, who is unstimulated. A visual representation of the stimulus package is: Imagine you see a person at work taking buckets of water from the deep end of a swimming pool and dumping them into the shallow end in an attempt to make it deeper. You would deem him stupid. That scenario is equivalent to what Congress and the new president proposes for the economy.

I’d add the old President in that analogy, too.  Let’s face it, Democrats don’t own the market on dumb; the Republicans are heavily invested there too.  Obama, rhetoric aside, is using the same tired tactics that got us here.  It’s just a matter of who receives the Magic Money – who the checks are made out to.  Are they Republican special interests or Democratic special interests?

But as long as we’re  determined to go down this path, I have to ask, Why not pay off 90% of the mortgages in America?  Talk about directly affecting Joe & Suzy Everyman.  Think of how much free spending cash we’d all have THEN!  We could afford to be more charitable, to drive more economical cars, to upgrade our energy-wasting appliances with earth friendly ones.  After all, we wouldn’t be making house payments!

Think of the charity we’d be free to support.  Think of the time we could spend with loved ones, if only we didn’t have to work so darn hard to pay for our homes.  We could afford organic food.  Heck, we could all get our taxes doubled and still come out ahead!  Think of all the new money for government programs with double taxation!

There would be no more bad mortgages, and all banks would get their money back in full, thus eliminating any issues with backing iffy banks.  We could all afford to run to Best Buy and purchase our Digital TV Converters – or new TV’s, for that matter!

If there is nothing wrong with the Stimulus Package in general, there is nothing wrong with this version of it.  But if you’re thinking clearly enough to figure out what’s wrong with this idea, then you’ll have a tough time explaining how Obama’s spending plan is any different.

In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut could declare Eminent Domain over private property for any darn reason they choose.  They evicted Suzette Kelo and fourteen other neighbors who liked where they were living, thank you, and didn’t desire to move from their waterfront Victorian homes.  The city demolished neighborhoods which had stood for a hundred years so that they could build something else and tax it.

Where before there was general consensus that Eminent Domain was so that government could force the purchase of land for a fair price in order to use if for public use, now the Supreme Court said that government doesn’t need to bother with using it pubicly.  Instead, they could simply declare that someone other citizen would use it better.

Anyone who cares the slightest about liberty will be glad to know that in the years since they knocked over citizens’ homes, they haven’t done a darn thing with the land.

Pfizer built a headquarters building adjacent to the land.  But the rest of it is a barren wasteland.  Perhaps one day they might build new houses.  You know, since the old ones people were living in weren’t good enough.

Thanks, government.  Once more, you’ve saved the day.

http://www.bizzyblog.com/2008/06/03/the-kelo-new-london-calamity-continues-barren-land/

Diane Rehm Show audio interview with Jeff Benedict, author of the book Little Pink Houses, which discusses the case.

Eminence defined: high status importance owing to marked superiority.

Eminent indeed.

There are so many problems with this story.

While driving home from work today, I had my radio on our local NPR station to hear about the plight of L.A. Teachers who are facing “budget cuts.”  (I put that in quotes for a reason.)

After that story, I could not tell you what else was on the radio.  I was too obsessed with the school employees featured in the story to hear anything else.

To begin with, it’s important to note that the L.A. teachers walked out of class to protest a purported budget cut.  The only problem is that they are receiving a $200 Million budget increase.

Oh, but it doesn’t cover their standard of living increase, they complain.  They received $200 million extra.

Oh, but it doesn’t cover new education mandates.  They receieved $200 million extra.

Now, they may think it is an inadequate increase, but a larger budget is a budget increase, even if it is only a single dollar, and no matter the cost of living.  The budget has increased!

But that wasn’t the bad part.  (We’ve heard this (il)logic come out of Congress every year.)  The part that made me weep for America was their chant.

Teachers with megaphones were shouting, “What do we want? No Budget Cuts! When do we want it? Now!”

These are teachers.  TEACHERS!  They are responsible for guiding kids to education! And they couldn’t figure out that bit of poor logic?  Not one math teacher or physics teacher came out and said, “Guys, let’s not do that particular chant…” And this while they are asking for a raise?

L.A. Unified Superintendent Brewer said that he “supports the teachers 200%…” Really? 200%? Did you learn math and statistics from the same teachers who are in charge of explaining logic?

In the end, the point they are trying to make is that they aren’t receiving what they feel is fair compensation for the demands of their work.  We’ll ignore the fact that they work at their mutual pleasure, and can leave at any time. The reality is that they are not receiving a budget cut. They shouldn’t assume that the public is too stupid to understand the reality of an inadequate budget as opposed to a budget cut – unless they are too ignorant to understand the difference, which I doubt. Rather than treating the public as idiots, they should be genuine in their requests.

Furthermore, is there no teacher in the L.A. school system who can explain how their rhetoric makes them sound like the least capable people to be receiving any kind of budget benefit, let alone be put in charge of educating others?

***SPOILER ALERT***  While I don’t believe I’m giving any secrets away, use your discretion if you don’t want to know any plot details.

An article by Jeffery Tucker on Mises Economic Blog asks the question, Is Speed Racer Anti-Capitalist?

The conclusion there is that any anti-capitalist rhetoric was weak and ineffectual, if intended.  Instead, Tucker writes, “if you consider the core institutions of capitalism as private property, consumer sovereignty, competitive rivalry, and the like, this movie actually heralds all of them.”

He notes that in the film, “…the underdog with no money or power goes up against the well-funded and well-connected champion machine and prevails through guts and determination, etc., and, in the course of it refusing to be bought out or to sell out. The crowd goes wild. So far as I know, this is the most typical plot device one can imagine.”

Tucker is right, but I think you can go further in analyzing the movie in light of capitalist economics.  If the writer and director do have an anti-capitalistic agenda (and ignoring the more likely agenda of the money-making portrayal of the Hero going up against the Giant, which crowds do love), they failed to demonstrate it’s shortcomings and actually exemplify its power.

On the surface, the movie portrays business as universally corrupt in a generational tradition. Speed Racer’s brother, Rex, fought them when he was young. His dad seems to be the victim of such battles. The fix had been in for every race, and it was organized by capitalists to manipulate their stock prices. Every corporation was in on it, and the silent conspiracy made a watertight oligopoly.

Evil corporations!  Government should step in to fix this.

But who did fix it?  An individual.  He was faster and better than the racers of the oligopoly.   He broke their stranglehold on the industry as a byproduct of winning their race.

This is more than a David-and-Goliath scene.  It’s an education in the unsustainability of monopolistic power.  Although it was maintained for generations in this story, it was weak and vulnerable to the first major challenge it faced.

It’s why price fixing doesn’t work.  While oil companies are often accused by grumpy and suspicious individuals of colluding to determine a high price, it will always be in some company’s interest to break the compact and undercut the competition.  When higher prices cause lower demand (by lowering sales), some company will gain least, and probably face the brunt of the lost demand. Their first step in undercutting the price fix causes the whole system to collapse.

Monopolies are not able to maintain their power unless they are supported by force – government, usually. Absent that kind of power, a monopoly will eventually have to compete with someone who is not falsly inflating their value and their price.  When Speed Racer met the competition, they were not as good as they proclaimed because it was not necessary for them to be so. If you are the chosen winner, you don’t have to gain the skill necessary to surpass the skills of your competitors.

Meanwhile, governments in every nation prop up monopolies – often owned and operated by those same governments.  They eliminate competition and allow the operators to pretend that they are immune from market factors.  Those monopolies act as though inefficiency cannot affect them, because they are never made to feel the effects of inefficiency and choice.  Government influence only shields companies from the realities they face regarding supply and demand.

If Speed Racer was a race car driver in modern America, he would likely be prevented from racing by government regulation. Of course, there would be problems in the pit crew (which included children and animals) as well as the dangerous track conditions. But more importantly, government regulations tend to protect the interests of the established industry powers rather than ensuring that all citizens can compete if they so desire without adding unnecessary expense and difficulty from government “helpers.”

All monopolies will come to an end as long as capitalism rules, because markets move scarce resources to their most beneficial uses.  Monopolies are notoriously inefficient, and can only survive by force.

Speed Racer, then, embodies the power of a free-market capitalist to break down the superficial power of the oligopoly.

When restaurant owner Danny Falcone wanted to put up an awning with the colors of the Italian flag, the Edmond Planning Commission voted against it. The city council then voted against it. They didn’t object to the awning itself. They objected to the colors.

The awning at Falcone’s is now a single shade of red. Below it, the lower-quarter of his windows is painted the red, green, and white which would have otherwise adorned his awning. The city council and planning commission had no say on that subject.

As a result of the vote, Falcone’s now bears a sign above the front counter banning three women responsible for the controversy.

The sign reads,

“We [respectfully] reserve the right to refuse
service to the following people:
Suzy Thrash and Ingrid Young
of the Edmond City Planning Commission,
Lydia Lee of the Edmond
Neighborhood Alliance
You are not welcomed here, please take
your business elsewhere and do not come
back on our property
Thank you”

When the matter came before the city planning commission, only three members were present that evening. Two voted against the colors. One citizen from the neighborhood alliance stood to speak in opposition to the awning.

No one disputes Mr. Falcone’s right to refuse service to any individual. The question of decorating taste is irrelevant to this discussion as well. The real question is this:  Should these city organizations have the right to make such an arbitrary decision? Do they have a compelling and vested interest in the color of the awning outside Falcone’s restaurant?

One of the three, Lydia Lee, argued that it wasn’t a personal issue until Danny Falcone made it one. Lee stood at the commission meeting to argue against the colors.  She claims to be an advocate of free speech, arguing that she has just as much right to her opinion as he does. Her belief in free speech does not extend to his expression of heritage, apparently.

Mr. Falcone has invested his own money in his restaurant. He has absorbed the risk of the business. If it fails, he loses money. If it succeeds, he profits. He is risking his livelihood in this restaurant, and failure could affect his ability to provide for his future and feed his family.  Since poverty can lead to starvation, and prosperity leads to security, the choices Mr. Falcone makes in running his business are his personal struggle to live.

The reader may think I’m overstating the issue - it is just an awning – but the issue is a matter of degree. If the awning at Falcone’s is attractive to consumers, they may be influenced to stop. If it sends a subtle negative signal, they may drive by and eat elsewhere. Either way, the gamble potentially determines the future of Mr. Falcone’s livelihood.

When the city tells Mr. Falcone that he may not install the colors he wishes, they are preventing him from working towards his own survival.

Will he live or die based upon that awning? Probably not – though it may be a factor in his success. (His darn good Prosciutto and Mozzarella sandwich should keep him in business.)  The rub is that the city is forcing him to act against what he believes to be in his best interest.

Some might argue that the city has an interest in maintaining a certain look. However, if it is beneficial to the business, the owner will choose to maintain the local look – or else suffer in sales because of it. There is a reason why fancy commercial districts tend to look similar – and it’s not simply that the city forces the look. If it is not beneficial to the business, then why should the business owner be forced to work against his own best interest? Why should he be forced to take steps toward his own demise?

The difference between this situation and a centrally-planned government is a matter of degree. Tyranny on a small scale is still tyranny.

The city has nothing but a difference in taste as justification for this act. The women involved would be wise to consider how they might feel if the city decided to disallow their curtains, their house color, their shrubbery. They might consider their own well-being if they were forced to spend their hard-earned income on projects which might cause their own financial ruin.

But I doubt they will lose sleep, satisfied in knowing that their decorating sense is the approved one, so they are in no danger from being out of style.  Power has its advantage.