Elisabeth Tamedly (Lenches), author of this wonderful treatise that we just posted, also contributed an interesting piece found here.
She writes:
Church leaders often call on their flocks to live a life of service to God “regardless of cost.” This exhortation flies straight in the face of economic thinking – and reality. Believers, to be sure, fully intend to live up to this ideal while in church, as reflected by their hymns and prayers. But their everyday behavior tells a different story. The connection between these two life spheres is often tenuous and sometimes non-existent. No wonder hypocrisy is the accusation most often leveled against Christians. Economists point to the inevitability of this conflict between idealism and reality, but they also offer ways to bridge the chasm between them.
We live in a world in which our wants are greater than the available resources (land, labor, factories, etc.) to satisfy them. Economists call this fact “scarcity.” Our plight B the “human condition” – forces us to cope with scarcity as best as we can, i.e. to “economize”. This means that we are faced with alternatives and must constantly choose between them. We tend to choose the options that bring us the greatest satisfaction. The value of the next best alternatives that we have to give up represents the costs that we incur whenever we make a decision. Economists refer to them as “opportunity costs.” So every choice involves a comparison between benefits and costs. Our wants may be material (buying a car) or immaterial (helping the homeless); what counts is that their fulfillment requires scarce resources that have alternative uses. Economists study how we make these unavoidable trade-offs.Nations as well as individuals are plagued by scarcity. When a country wishes to increase its means of production, it can do so only by diverting resources that could otherwise be used to satisfy its citizens’ everyday wants (consumption). Developing countries, for example, can build up their capital stock only by channeling resources away from an already low level of consumption. This is why poor nations seem to become even poorer before they can begin to enjoy the fruits of economic development.
We as individuals experience scarcity by not having enough time and money. When we go to a movie, the dust on our furniture remains undisturbed; when we take that dream vacation, we must do without the home video system we also crave. We just can’t “have it all.” So we are forced to make choices and incur unavoidable costs. Economists view a “rational” choice as one for which the expected benefits to the decision maker are greater than the expected costs. There are no objective costs – and benefits, for that matter. Both depend on our valuations. Even if costs can be expressed in monetary terms, such as prices, the true cost to us is the value of what we sacrificed by spending our money – or time- one way rather than another. Both suppliers and consumers respond predictably to changes in benefits and costs. This predictability is the basis of the law of supply and demand.
Human conduct is therefore an incessant sequence of choices: big choices and small choices, conscious and unconscious ones. The way we choose is, to repeat, determined by our valuations, not by some absolute, calculable standard. It may come as a surprise to learn that economics is about people’s valuations, not about physical quantities.
What, then, determines our valuations? One thing and one thing only: our “self interest.” At this point some believers may want to part company with economists. Isn’t the Bible teaching precisely the opposite: to disregard our self-interest in the service of God? How, then, can a committed Christian like myself also be an economist?
That’s because economic science, the study of self-interested choices in an environment of scarcity, accurately describes and predicts the broad outcomes in all human spheres, including religious ones. Churches, after all, require their members to contribute money and time, which have alternative uses and are therefore scarce. They can thus be provided only at a cost, which limits the amount of both that believers are willing and able to “supply.” When Christians refuse to think in the “unholy” terms of the economist, they pay a high price, because they are giving up a proven, indeed the only proven, method of understanding and explaining human behavior. What gives?
We need to specify the meaning of “self interest.” Much confusion is caused by debates in which key words are left undefined, especially when everyone “knows” what they mean. Isn’t self-interest synonymous with selfishness and greed? Doesn’t it follow (just think about all the folks who regularly donate to charities!) that the economists’ contention that human behavior is guided by selfishness and greed cannot be generally valid?
No, it does not, when we use a broader and more realistic definition. Our self-interest is ultimately governed by the goals (both short-term and long-term) that we have set ourselves and the projects that we wish to accomplish to reach these goals. But how are these goals and projects determined? For answers to this important question, we must look beyond the realm of supply and demand and consider such factors as the families individuals grew up in, as well as their cultural, moral, and religious backgrounds. Many of us are, indeed, consumed by the goal of making it in this world; but others are motivated by compassion for their fellow humans (and even animals) and are thus willing to use their resources to alleviate their suffering (Mother Theresa). We are all at different points on the continuum between these extremes. Our self-interest is a mixture of selfishness and the willingness to share our resources with others, a mixture that is changing and evolving.
When the Bible admonishes us to accumulate treasures in heaven, it does not negate our self-interest. In fact it appeals to it by promising us future rewards. In the here and now, Christian life is a process in which we are asked to continuously re-evaluate our self-interest; to keep nudging our goals toward becoming more loving and compassionate, to attach an ever greater value to giving and sharing and an ever smaller value to what we have to sacrifice. However, we cannot abolish scarcity and therefore costs. They will continue to limit our ability and willingness to live a life in the service of God.
Only if we accept this reality as God-given, only if we integrate its constraints into our daily lives, will we be able to experience the joy of our Christian faith and avoid the charge of hypocrisy. Because the ultimate truth for a believer – and the one which connects biblical with economic thinking – is the insight that living in accordance with the teachings of Christ is in our long-term self-interest.
Elisabeth Tamedly Lenches, Ph.D. San Marino, California, June 2003
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“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not accusing atheists/agnostics of being immoral people; most are quite moral. What they lack is a reason for being moral. Everyone has at least a minimal desire to act morally; without God, atheists have no explanation for those desires.”
Sure they do. It’s called empathy, the ability to feel the suffering that others feel as a result of transgressions committed by others. Empathy is, like all emotions, chemical signals to the brain.
“Our concepts of good and evil come from religion and are common to most religions.”
Actually it could rather be said that our religions come from moral codes of an earlier time. Some things never change though and empathy is the ultimate key it seems. And not all religions agree on morals. There are many passages in the Bible supporting slavery, yet most Eastern religions are rather silent on it and don’t have fixed legal systems like Sharia Law or the Law of Moses. We define evil as they which brings suffering into the world mostly though. It’s just that in an earlier time people were afraid of nature, didn’t attempt to study and control it through science and rational inquiry and just automatically thought that gods were handing down judgement for certain behaviors.
“As is typical of most atheists, the “god” you rant about has nothing in common with the God of the Bible. In addition, the God of the Bible shares very little in common with the gods of other religions.”
Actually that god shares a lot in common with other gods.
“In the Bible, God created the perfect universe and a perfect mankind. Mankind rebelled against God and changed perfection into the imperfect existence you describe. (You really ought to read it sometime.) Man’s rebellion against God brought evil into the world.”
Not according to Isaiah 45:7 “I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.” So god created evil.
“Judeo/Christianity, on the other hand, has always taken pride in being very rational.”
Is that why St. Paul once said that the carnal mind has fallen from grace and is not to be trusted?
“You can ask that question and many people have. But in order to keep the questioning from going to absurd lengths, it seems reasonable to posit something as eternal. Before the big bang theory, atheists believed in an eternal universe, which in my opinion was far more defensable than the big bang.”
All of this talk about cause and effect in the creation of the Universe amongst theist obscures a very important part. That being that scientific laws of nature are descriptive, not prescriptive. The law of cause and effect describes what we observe, not some rigid rule that is prescribed. This is why science is so flexible and almost always changing. Therefore it isn’t unscientiflc to assume that there could have been a first cause of the Universe with the Big Bang without a cause of its own. Especially if the effect exists outside of time and space.
“Plotter: ‘Kings invent or support gods to keep the serfs in line and to give the troublesome intellectuals something to keep them busy, by making them into priests and theologians.’
Typical Marxism, and as close to the truth as most Marxism.”
Ironic that you should say that since Murray N. Rothbard and Hans Herman-Hoppe agreed on the same thing, pointing out in “Anatomy of the State” and “Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State” about how State rulers in the ancien regime used intellectuals to convince the masses that the rulers were divinely-inspired by some transcendant source, if not god themselves.
Mrhuh: “It’s called empathy, the ability to feel the suffering that others feel as a result of transgressions committed by others.”
And what is the rational explanation for empathy? How did it develop in the process of evolution? We might assume that animals have empathy for other animals of their immediate clan, such as a wolf pack, but we don’t know because we can’t read their minds. It might be something else completely. But let’s assume it’s empathy. Still they have it only for their pack, not for wolves of other packs and certainly not for sheep. And it doesn’t seem likely that an empathy gene would increase the likelihood of survival, more likely to decrease survival.
Neither do humans have a great deal of empathy for others, especially those of other races and nations. If human empathy were the basis for morals, I can understand why the human race is such a mess! Besides, when people speak of morals, they usually mean rules that apply to everyone everywhere, regardless of whether you empathize with others or not.
Mrhuh: “Not according to Isaiah 45:7 “I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.” So god created evil.”
Isaiah was talking about the punishment God promised to bring on Israel for their wicked ways, such as the child sacrifice they practiced in Isaiah’s day. And that introduces a typical technique of atheists: using poor hermeneutics to attack the Bible. Hermeneutics is the science of the correct way to interpret any manuscript, but essentially it says to be honest when interpreting someone else’s writings. Don’t make it say what ever you want it to say. That’s what the socialist judges on the Supreme Court do with the Constitution. Honest people try to determine from the context what the author intended to say. Atheists never do that with the Bible.
But in another sense, which Isaiah didn’t intend, God did create what we call evil. The Bible teaches that God introduced natural disasters and disease as punishment for mankind’s rebellion. Wars and crime are another punishment in that because mankind refused to end its rebellion against God, He decided to step back and let us have our way. The corrupted nature that mankind has inherited because of the rebellion causes crime and war. See Romans chapters one and two.
Mrhuh: “Is that why St. Paul once said that the carnal mind has fallen from grace and is not to be trusted?”
Again, an example of poor hermeneutics. To Paul, the carnal mind is the mind unregenerated by God’s grace. The carnal mind doesn’t seek the things of God; it’s not interested in truth at all, but only cares about fleshly (carnal) needs and pleasures, especially sex and alcohol. The spiritual mind is one in which a person has accepted the gift of salvation offered through Jesus Christ. The result of that acceptance of God’s grace is that God regenerates the spiritual side of a person’s being so that he/she can communicate with God and understand His will better.
“Honest people try to determine from the context what the author intended to say. Atheists never do that with the Bible.”
Neither do Christian fundamentalists who believe in a literal and infallible translation of the Bible.
“The Bible teaches that God introduced natural disasters and disease as punishment for mankind’s rebellion.”
How is this any different from some Pagan gods.
“To Paul, the carnal mind is the mind unregenerated by God’s grace. The carnal mind doesn’t seek the things of God; it’s not interested in truth at all, but only cares about fleshly (carnal) needs and pleasures, especially sex and alcohol.”
So you’re saying that Socrates and Aristotle (both atheists) and Ludwig von Mises (whom claimed to be an agnostic) were only interested in carnal needs and pleasures like sex and alcohol?
“The result of that acceptance of God’s grace is that God regenerates the spiritual side of a person’s being so that he/she can communicate with God and understand His will better.”
I’m curious as to how you might apply this to someone such as Pat Robertson. How exactly does having blind, unquestioning faith (where any doubt must have been planted there by Satan or as a test of faith by god and not honest inquiry) mean that one actually loves truth more than carnal desires and pleasures as well as their own pride and arrogance at believing that they are automatically right.
mrhuh: “Neither do Christian fundamentalists who believe in a literal and infallible translation of the Bible.”
Fundamentalists don’t take everything in the Bible literally; they apply sound hermeneutics for the most part, something atheists know nothing about.
mrhuh: “How is this any different from some Pagan gods.”
Non-Christian religions have a lot of truth in them, otherwise no one would follow them. No one would accept a religion/philosophy that was wrong in every doctrine. So yes, the God of the Bible has a few characteristics in common with pagan gods. So what?
mrhuh:”So you’re saying that Socrates and Aristotle (both atheists) and Ludwig von Mises (whom claimed to be an agnostic) were only interested in carnal needs and pleasures like sex and alcohol?”
Paul was making a general statement about unbelievers. Of course there will be degrees of carnality. But by definition, atheists and agnostics aren’t spiritually minded, so in Paul’s terminology they are carnal, i.e., they are interested more in the things of this world than in spiritual things or eternity, and yes, even more than the truth about God.
mrhuh: “How exactly does having blind, unquestioning faith (where any doubt must have been planted there by Satan or as a test of faith by god and not honest inquiry) mean that one actually loves truth more than carnal desires and pleasures as well as their own pride and arrogance at believing that they are automatically right.”
You’re attributing the power of God to yourself when you claim to be able to judge the thoughts and intentions of a person’s heart. You have know idea whether Pat Robertson has blind, unquestioning faith. Like many Christians, his faith may have involved years of struggle. So who is really arrogant here?
If you don’t believe in God, you can’t possibly be interested in the truth, because His existence and power is obvious. Besides, I have the authority of years of research in the field of public relations behind me. That research shows that very few people care about the truth in any situation; most people decide what they want to be true for emotional reasons, then search for a rationale for their decision. If you want to believe something badly enough, even atheism is easy to rationalize.
mrhuh:”So you’re saying that Socrates and Aristotle (both atheists) and Ludwig von Mises (whom claimed to be an agnostic) were only interested in carnal needs and pleasures like sex and alcohol?”
I wanted to add to my previous response that the rejection of truth and God, and therefore carnality, may manifest itself in a variety of ways. An obsession with sex and alcohol are just two of the more obvious ones. I mentioned sex because I’ve read that David Frost (a talk show host from decades ago) interviewed Huxley once and asked him why people so quickly adopted the theory of evolution long before any evidence for the theory existed. Huxley responded that he guessed it was because people wanted more sexual freedom, and that by de-throning God, the theory of evolution offered them that.
But carnality as Paul understood it can appear in other forms, such as obsession with business or academic achievement, or sports. A carnal mind, in the Bible, is one that has rejected the true God, and therefore does not have the guidance of God in his decision making. And a person may care about truth in many areas of live and reject in only in regard to religion. Obviously with respect to economics, Mises was brilliant and cared deeply for truth in that sphere. Unfortunately, he seems to have had a blind spot where religion was concerned. That doesn’t cast a shadow over his achievements in economics at all, but I can’t help wonder what he might have achieved had he applied the same diligence in the search for truth concerning the question of God.
I dont want to get into the whole ‘does god exist ‘ debate here . Suffice it to say that Im a formerly devout agnostic, now lapsed.
But the point I do want to make here goes to the heart of the (welfare state) socialist vs free market debate.
Charity (and compassion, which probably comes to the same thing) is clearly a virtue, whether you are a believer or an atheist makes no matter. Giving up some of your time or wealth to ease the suffering of another in less comfortable circumstances than yourself is most admirable, even in the eyes of most libertarians ( Hardcore Ayn Rand fans or social darwinists aside….).
But it can only be seen as a virtue in so far as actions contemplated with a charitable or compassionate motive are undertaken by real free choice. Donations, say, to worthy causes, that are compelled by law or coercion cannot be regarded as virtuous, And, most importantly, the actions of those doing the compelling are quite the opposite, because he cannot ever show that the suffering he is causing to those so compelled is any less real than the suffering he intends to alleviate on the part of the beneficiary of the largesse.
(the same point applies to adherence to any religion-inspired moral principle, be it alcohol sales on Sundays, recreational drug use, or prostitution, but I digress……) .
And this distinction is where the socialist/welfare state mentality falls down, as its stated altruistic intention is always negated by the means used to effect the ends : Motivated by a sense of outrage for all the ills of the world, the (sincerely well-meaning) socialist seeks to force OTHER people to subscribe to the worthy causes that HE deems important. And since his list of worthy causes has no objective claim to priority over a different list in anyone else’s mind, his approach can never be regarded as moral or virtuous.
this is also why no Christian ( or Muslim, or Jew) can legitimately attempt to foster any ‘moral’ or ‘virtuous’ behaviour by the use of the law to compel compliance. The Christians among the Austrians ( and I gather there are lots of them) seem to know and understand this, but there are millions more out there who seek to ram their moral codes into the statute books and make crimes out of private sins, and enforcing virtue at the barrel of a gun. And that, frankly, is profoundly evil .
I think it was Steven Weinberg (the physicist) who said:
with or without religion, good men will do good things and bad men will do bad things. But for good men to do bad things, takes religion.
tO stretch the applicability of that quote, Am I stretching a point if I include ‘socialism’ under the category ‘religion’?
“But carnality as Paul understood it can appear in other forms, such as obsession with business or academic achievement, or sports. A carnal mind, in the Bible, is one that has rejected the true God, and therefore does not have the guidance of God in his decision making”
But how do you know that it’s the true god to begin with? And also what about atheistic religions, like Buddhism, Taoism, Scientific Pantheism, etc.
“Like many Christians, his faith may have involved years of struggle. So who is really arrogant here?”
Pat Robertson’s faith may have involved years of struggle to get there, but once he has it, that’s it. He’s right and everyone else is automatically wrong by default.
“Fundamentalists don’t take everything in the Bible literally; they apply sound hermeneutics for the most part, something atheists know nothing about.”
That’s ridiculous. Almost all of them believe in some literalism and innerancy of the Bible. Just look at many on the Religious Right.
“Our concepts of good and evil come from religion and are common to most religions.”
If this is the case then why do many believers admit that there have been many evils done against humanity in the name of religion? Our concepts of good and evil are mostly humanistic. Good is that which helps human beings out. Evil is that that which threatens it.
Mrhuh: “But how do you know that it’s the true god to begin with? And also what about atheistic religions, like Buddhism, Taoism, Scientific Pantheism, etc.”
Excellent question! Obviously I can’t take the necessary space on a blog to answer that fully. So I suggest you read “How Should We Then Live” by Francis Schaeffer. But here’s a clue: the true religion/philosophy should be consistent with human nature. Human’s can’t live without morality (most of us, anyway). So the true religion would have a rationale for this human obsession with morality. Atheism says morality doesn’t exist; the ideas we have about morality are left over from an ancient situation in which they helped us survive but are no longer necessary.
Or atheists say that morality is nothing but a social contract. But people don’t mean social contracts when they talk about morals. Morals are binding on everyone, an no human has that kind of authority over other humans. Only a god does.
Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and Scientific Pantheism are in the same boat as other atheists on the issue of morals. Without a god, we can’t even talk about good vs. evil, for all actions are equal. As someone once wrote, it doesn’t matter whether you help the old lady across the street or push her in front of the bus.
Islam is in a similar place to atheism. Orthodox Islam (which most Muslims don’t know much about) teaches that humans have no free will; Allah has determined every decision we make from before creation. Therefore, if people act in an evil manner, it’s because Allah made them do it.
mrhuh: “He’s right and everyone else is automatically wrong by default.”
Isn’t that true of everyone? When scientists decide that something is true, doesn’t every theory that disagrees with it become false? Is it possible to believe that President Bush exists and doesn’t exist at the same time?
mrhuh: “Almost all of them believe in some literalism and innerancy of the Bible. Just look at many on the Religious Right.”
I am part of the Religious Right. I am a fundamentalist’s fundamentalist. I think I know a little more about the Religous Right than you do. I can’t speak for everyone, but for the most part, we attempt to determine the intent of the author and interpret history as history, poetry as poetry. We definately don’t take poetry in the Bible literally. We also use history and culture. The key is to be honest and try to determine what the writer intended passages to mean. As for believing in inerrancy, that means nothing more than that the Bible is accurate.
mrhuh: “If this is the case then why do many believers admit that there have been many evils done against humanity in the name of religion?”
Some people murder in the name of love. Should we abandon the concept? Most professional historians are Marxist atheists, yet with few exceptions they agree that the 20th century was mankind’s bloodiest. But who killed all of those people? Except for WWI, atheist/socialist Hitler, atheist/communist Stalin, Mao Tse Dung, Pol Pot. Atheists have been responsible for more murder than religion could ever hope to attempt. Does that truth make you want to give up on atheism?
Of course, devout atheists will claim that socialism/communism is a type of religion and try to wash of the blood from atheism’s hands. But all of those men, and their henchmen, claimed to be atheists and acted in the name of atheism. Claiming that communism/socialism is a form of religion is a dishonest cop out.
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