Curses! Dollars and hours are both fungible.

I’ve previously written that dollars are fungible (See “The Curse of Fungible Dollars”). In that article I pointed out that dollars are completely interchangeable.  I noted that there is actually only one kind of dollar and that dollars don’t come pre-labeled as “Christmas ornament dollars,” “pedicure dollars,” “Xbox dollars” or “charitable cause dollars.” I further suggested that we work hard to brainwash ourselves that non-fungible dollars exist and that we are free to spend any dollar we haven’t chosen to label a “charity dollar” on anything at all, conscience free.  To see the absurdity of that mindset, try to imagine a charity refusing your donation because the money you offered came out of your “vacation” fund.

Many Americans would consider my fungible dollars article to be a curse because it has the effect of moralizing every dollar we spend.  That every dollar is potentially a dollar we could (and possibly should) spend to help desperate human beings thus becomes a toxic thought that we prevent ourselves from considering.  It causes too much cognitive dissonance.  .  If you doubt the toxicity of such a thought, imagine speaking freely of the fungibility of dollars at a Las Vegas casino or at any other entertainment mecca where those “entertainment” dollars flow freely. The mere mention that all dollars are fungible will trigger the rapid and painful collapse of elaborate mental worlds constructed by everyone within hearing range. 

With the same dollars we spend to buy tickets to concerts or sports events, …

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What does the New Testament actually say about morality?

In a short article called “The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos,” Sam Harris asks this simple question: What does the New Testament actually say about morality?  As a warm-up, he describes Old Testament morality (sometimes cited and approved in the new testament):

Human sacrifice, genocide, slaveholding, and misogyny are consistently celebrated. Of course, God’s counsel to parents is refreshingly straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13–14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18–21, Mark 7:9–13, and Matthew 15:4–7). We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshiping graven images, practicing sorcery, and a wide variety of other imaginary crimes.

When I told a fundamentalist relative that such writings disturbed me and that they did not inspire me, she said: “You shouldn’t read so much of the Old Testament and focus on those things that trouble you. Instead, you need to read more of the New Testament.” Although she claimed that the Bible was “perfect and without any contradictions,” apparently (for her), the New Testament was more perfect than the Old Testament. Harris has also heard this claim, from Christians, that Jesus is kinder and gentler than the Old Testament God.  Harris therefore checked the New Testament:

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The many faces of Christianity

When I was a kid, I was always curious about why there were so many different kinds of Christian churches in America: Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, Congregational, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, United Church of Christ, Reformed Church of Christ, Mormon, Quaker, Shaker, Greek Othodox, Russian Orthodox, Christian Science…the list seemed endless. It seemed like there were more different versions of Christianity in America than there were non-Christian religions around the rest of the world (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Bahai, Shinto, Confucianism, etc.). Later, I learned that those other religions also had many different versions (Orthodox Judiasm, Ultra-orthodox Judiasm, Hasidic Judiasm, Reformed Judiasm, Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim, etc.), so Christianity is not unique in that respect.

Meanwhile, Christians were fond of telling me that the Bible was written by God and, thus, was both perfect and complete. Naturally, this made no sense to me given the cornucopia of churches. If the Bible was perfect and complete, then why didn’t all Christians understand it the same way? Didn’t God know how to write clearly? More importantly, why were there so many different kinds of churches and what were their actual differences? To my immense frustration, churches of different denominations didn’t have signs out front explaining how they differed from the other churches down the street.

Only recently have I learned some answers to these questions. First, it turns out that the number of different versions of Christianity and other religions that I can name are only the tip of …

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Social conservatives become “pro-choice” to oppose life-saving vaccine for cervical cancer

You might think that social conservatives, especially those in the so-called "pro-life" crowd, would welcome the use of a new vaccine that is virtually 100% effective against two deadly strains of cervical cancer that account for 70% of such cancer deaths and that kill over 3,700 women each year.  Unfortunately,…

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Social norms: conscious choice or unconscious ancestor worship?

Let's do a thought experiment.  Start with a cage containing five monkeys.  Inside the cage, hang some bananas by a string from the ceiling and place a ladder underneath it.  Before long, one of the monkeys will go to the ladder and try to climb towards the bananas.  As soon as…

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