voluntaryXchange

Take the U.S. Religious Knowledge Quiz

From the Pew Center, that the U.S. Religious Knowledge Quiz.

I got 13/15, and honestly I wanted to change an incorrect answer to the correct one, but my mouse finger betrayed me.

The national average is 7.4.

The Disturbing and Ridiculous Irony of Pope Francis

Pope Francis is visiting the U.S. this week. His views are getting “hands off” coverage in most of the media. This is problematic because I find his economic views disturbing.

While personally, Pope Francis has taken a vow of poverty, he’s been elevated to the top of institution that got rich from just about every means except economic growth, and he’s using that position to criticize societies that got rich from pretty much only economic growth.

I find that ironic and ridiculous, and the lack of public comment upon it … disturbing.

Let me be clear: I have serious doubts that anyone at the top of a wealthy faith can say anything worthwhile about how economic growth did, can, or should work.

FWIW: I’m not Catholic. I live in Utah but I’m not Mormon either. I grew up in a heavily Catholic area, and have many Catholic friends. I have never felt the need to disparage a pope before. Further, I have doubts about the economic insights of all faiths that rely on texts written or set forth prior to the advent of systemic economic growth on this planet around the year 1700.

Technorati Tags: pope,francis,economic,growth,irony,ridiculous,disturbing

Religion of Members of Congress

I had no idea the northeast was so heavily Catholic:

Of course, this is claimed affiliation of members. My guess is that probably 20% of them actually know anything about the faith they claim as their own.

P.S. I wonder how many people outside the intermountain west realize that the Mormons politically dominate a second state that is not majority Mormon.

Technorati Tags: religion,members,congress,house,representatives

On Socialism: Mark Perry Paraphrases Walter Williams

Mark Perry writing at Carpe Diem:

[This] reminds me of something I once heard Walter E. Williams say, “Socialism only works if you know everybody’s name,” implying that central planning, income redistribution, and a welfare-type system with a social safety net might have a chance to work well within a family when you know everybody intimately and personally, but fails when it’s applied impersonally to a large group of people, i.e. society at large.

Preface: I’m a non-Mormon living in Utah. In short, an interloper.

It’s exceptionally hard for me to make the case to my (mostly conservative Republican) Mormon friends and students that some of the actions of their church have great similarities to socialism (like a great many other churches too).

This quote points up an important distinction. Churches, when practicing their form of socialism, emphasize the name-knowing part. In contrast, government, when practicing its form of socialism, downplays the name-knowing part.

Technorati Tags: mormon,lds,perry,walter,williams,quote,socialism,know,names

PCs for the Amish

It’s not a joke: Amish men will buy a PC that does 80’s era stuff (that is productivity-related, like spreadsheets), but not 21st century stuff (that will only be shown to be productivity-related in the future, like web surfing).

FWIW: I am reminded of the popularity in Utah of older movies that, no doubt, were severely frowned upon at the time they were new, like say, Animal House. Or alternatively, the popularity of classic rock (produced by the drug-addled way back when), while the relatively clean Lilith-oriented music of the 90’s remains decidedly unpopular.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Technorati Tags: amish,pc,productivity

About that Obesity “Epidemic”

If we’re all getting fat because or … well, whatever reason you like … why are lab animals on controlled diets getting fatter too?

Moral panic about the depravity of the heavy has seeped into many aspects of life …

… It is undoubtedly true that societies are spending vast amounts of time and money on this idea. It is also true that the masters of the universe in business and government seem attracted to it … What we don’t know is whether the theory is actually correct.

… Many researchers believe that personal gluttony and laziness cannot be the entire explanation for humanity’s global weight gain. … As Richard L Atkinson, Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin and editor of the International Journal of Obesity, put it in 2005: ‘The previous belief of many lay people and health professionals that obesity is simply the result of a lack of willpower and an inability to discipline eating habits is no longer defensible.’

Now, about those animals.

Consider, for example, this troublesome fact, reported in 2010 by the biostatistician David B Allison and his co-authors at the University of Alabama in Birmingham: over the past 20 years or more, as the American people were getting fatter, so were America’s marmosets. As were laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice…

… In fact, lab animals’ lives are so precisely watched and measured that the researchers can rule out accidental human influence: records show those creatures gained weight over decades without any significant change in their diet or activities.

Ah well, our diets are just a little too rich, right?

Such a global hidden factor (or factors) might help to explain why most people gain weight gradually … This slow increase in fat stores would suggest that they are eating only a tiny bit more each month than they use in fuel. But if that were so, as Jonathan C K Wells, professor of child nutrition at University College London, has pointed out, it would be easy to lose weight.

Well then what is the cause? No one is quite sure: too much light? heating and cooling that are too even? chemicals in our food? quasi-Marxist capitalism blaming? infection?

One weak point in the article: nowhere is the uncomfortable fact that heavy people live longer ever mentioned.

FWIW: This is a fair time to note that I am in my 7th year following Seth Roberts Shangri-La diet. I am still below my peak weight, and not having any trouble at all staying there (I exercise, but not much). Shangri-La is all about the thermodynamic explanation (a calorie is a calorie) being totally wrong.

Read the whole David Berreby article, entitled “The Obesity Era” in Aeon.

Technorati Tags: obesity,laboratory,animal

Contrasting Judaism and Christianity

Schmuley Boteach taught me an interesting point, summarized here:

In Christianity, Rabbi Shmuley states, there is no redemption without salvation; faith takes precedence over one's actions and salvation is the keystone upon which Christian ideals lay.  With Judaism, however, personal salvation has never been the ultimate goal. 

Judaism has always been about redemption and leaving the world a better place than you found it. …

Technorati Tags: salvation,redemption,faith

A Paradox of Faith and Law

I had a really interesting thought about religion and law that came out of the comment thread at this post.

A friend who is a minister once used the phrase "the canon of scripture is closed" to describe how his faith differed from Mormons. I thought his wording was particularly powerful, and it stuck with me. Mormons are very different: they believe that God still can and does speak directly on occasion. In short, traditional Christians have more fixed doctrine, while Mormons have a more fluid and evolving one.

Anyway, the traditional Christian idea that revelation no longer happens is analogous to how conservatives think about the Constitution and the Supreme Court. But, the Mormon view that revelation is continuous is analogous to the contemporary liberal viewpoint that Constitutional law is fluid and should change with the times.

Here's the kicker. Contemporary liberals find the Mormon idea that doctrine is editable bizarre, but think nothing of the idea that society can edit Constitutional interpretation as it sees fit. On the other hand, (typically Conservative) Mormons have a faith whose doctrine has evolved through time, but tend to be Constitutional strict constructionists.

This all strikes me as very odd. It's kind of like the observation that those who favor abortion tend to disfavor the death penalty, and vice versa.

Technorati Tags: faith,doctrine,revelation,paradox,constitution,strict

Simon Cricthley’s “Why I Love Mormonism”

Fascinating. A philosophy professor from the oh-so-leftist New School discusses — rather seriously — the doctrine, theology and world-view of Mormons … with the imprint of The New York Times.

… One thing to which I’ve become rather sensitive in that time is which prejudices New Yorkers are permitted to express in public. Among  my horribly overeducated and hugely liberal friends, expressions of racism are completely out of the question, Islamophobia is greeted with a slow shaking of the head and anti-Semitism is a memory associated with distant places that one sometimes visits — like France.

But anti-Mormonism is another matter. It’s really fine to say totally uninformed things about Mormonism in public, at dinner parties or wherever. … This is a casual prejudice [emphasis original]

…

… After about 45 seconds, sometimes less, it becomes apparent that the prejudice is based on sheer ignorance of the peculiar splendors of Mormon theology. “They are all Republicans anyway,” they add in conclusion, “I mean, just look at that Mitbot Romney. He’s an alien.” As an alien myself, I find this thoughtless anti-Mormon sentiment a little bewildering.

As a non-Mormon living in a heavily Mormon part of Utah, I can confirm that this distasteful behavior if very common here too.

It’s a very hard thing to deal with this politically too: as a conservative who is wholly unconvinced that Romney is the right way to go, I live surrounded by Mormons who are sure he must be, and non-Mormons who are sure he can’t be out of no reason deeper than prejudice.

Critchley continues:

Mormonism is properly and powerfully post-Christian, as Islam is post-Christian. Where Islam, which also has a prophet, claims the transcendence of God, Mormonism makes God radically immanent. Where Islam unifies all creatures under one mighty God to whom we must submit, Mormonism pluralizes divinity, making it an immanent, corporeal matter and making God a more fragile, hemmed-in and finite being … [the use of immanent is not a typo]

Yet unlike Islam, for whom Muhammad is the last prophet, Mormonism allows for continuing revelation …

… To claim that it is simply Christian is to fail to grasp its theological, poetic and political audacity. It is much more than mere Christianity. Why are Mormons so keen to conceal their pearl of the greatest price? Why is no one really talking about this? In the context of you-know-who’s presidential bid, people appear to be endlessly talking about Mormonism, but its true theological challenge is entirely absent from the discussion.

That’s from the end, but this snippet is from the middle:

Thereby hangs a story. Because of my convivial contact with these philosophers from B.Y.U.,  I was invited in 1994 to give a series of lectures…

Things went pretty well. But right at the end of the final lecture, something peculiar happened. A member of the audience asked me a question. He said, “What you have been telling us this week about romanticism and the death of God where religion becomes art is premised on a certain understanding of God, namely that God is unitary and infinite. Would you agree?” “Sure,” I said, “At least two of the predicates of the divinity are that he/she/it is unitary and infinite.” Gosh, I was smart back then. “But what if,” he went on, “God were plural and finite?”

There you have it. Is the prejudice of liberals (who are often non-believers) based in the very core, ancient, Middle-Eastern, and monotheistic belief in God rather than god? Maybe

May be indeed.

Technorati Tags: mormon,lds,critchley

Violating Rights and the War On Drugs: Cedar City Makes the National News Again

It’s odd, living in a remote, predominantly Mormon town, and seeing the local items that draw national attention.

Today, it’s this. I draw your attention to the following part:

Parents and faculty members had asked police to bring a K-9 to the scene before the bus departed to check students' bags for drugs.

Who was on the bus?

About 100 students from Canyon View High School in southern Utah had just graduated Thursday night and boarded the charter bus for their senior trip …

Where were they going?

… A bus full of recent Utah high school graduates headed to Disneyland …

Here’s what I wonder.

• Was there probably cause? If so, why wasn’t it mentioned?
• No doubt parents had to sign permission slips. Were they informed that this included submitting their kids to a search with dogs?

I’m all for parents policing the actions of their children, and schools avoiding legal liability. But, bringing the government in to do this under these circumstances violated the spirit of the First and Fourth Amendments.*

Also, what does this say about local students? About 80% are LDS. In this area, those who are not LDS are often immigrants who are unlikely to be able to afford a school trip. They were going to Disneyland. Have our moral borderlines shifted so far that we don’t see a problem presuming that a group of predominantly well-off Mormon kids going to Disneyland are violating the law?

Oh yeah … and who do you think they caught? The bus driver (queue Simpsons’ joke) … the local paper contained no reports of kids having drugs (although with Utah leading the nation in prescription drug abuse, this is kind of surprising). No kudos to the legacy media, who decided the most interesting thing about this event is that a bus driver was caught.

* The First Amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. So, technically this would only be a violation if Congress passed a law saying that assembling for a school trip to Disneyland was a problem, thus a violation in spirit.

The Fourth Amendment reads: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. I’m not sure that this case doesn’t go beyond a violation in spirit to just a plain violation. Is it unreasonable for parents and teachers to ask the police to use dogs to search a bus full of kids without probable cause (other than they’re teenagers, and there’s a high probability of finding something)? I would say no.

Technorati Tags: cedar,city,disneyland,k-9,dog,drugs,bus,lds,mormon