KI-Media Note: Wondering how one is dedicated to one's religion? Please see below a message forwarded by one of our readers.
From: Tom Borcherding
Re: Thursday, July 21, noontime talk on religion and public choice
Date: July 20, 2011
The recent TED Conference, in which Paul Zak participated, had a short lecture [TED lectures are all 15 mins. or so] by Tim Harford (the former Financial Times Undercover Economist and author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, on the role of the perception of God (or the gods) in the evolutionary development of the human species, what he calls "The God Complex." Check it out:
If the idea of God is more than a theological, oft-times prophetically generated concept, mediated by cultural norms or what Richard Dawkins calls "memes," its importance in society is always and everywhere going to be enormous, though its forms will be diverse and variegated. The welfare state of the U.K. ,but especially Western Europe, may have substituted for many "services" of organized religion, reducing the latter's former political and social valence, but it will not substitute for the very human demand for ineffability which is "wet-wired" into our brains. Secular humanism of France or Sweden or Manhattan Island has its own dogmas and practices which few in those settings ignore, and in Soviet and Maoist times Marxist Leninism provided a faith, which failed as Koestler tells us, but which was deep enough for many decades. Cradle faiths may be lost, but faith itself may be more durable, since it is deep in our brains.
Here's my more testable speculation for you to think about: The world has roughly four great religious traditions- Aramaic (Jewish, Christian, Muslim), Hindu (polytheistic), Buddhist (several variants all stressing being, becoming, and continuity) and Animistic (the most ancient of faiths seeing the higher spirit in everything in the physical world). New religious forms seem to develop from the bases of these Big Four though none have done much box office since Mormonism, but we can be sure that they will continue to develop. We may be on the cusp of the creation of a new theological model, Darwinistic humanism. We a surety of my conjecture I think that politics will never ignore what is the current major faiths and their differences. Says law says supply creates demand through general equilibrium alterations in the prices of associated goods and their inputs. New religious forms, in the US largely have developed amongst Aramaic confessions (fundamentalism and evangelicalism being the current variants) but possibly it will flower in the Eastern religions as demographics work themselves out from recent immigrant groups. As likely, I see Darwinistic humanism will affect the political economy of our nation in our future. Amen. I
We need to provoke some serious discussion of the role of religion in Thursday's discussion led by Prof. Uhlmann, and in the weeks to follow. My take on theology may well be wrong, but unlike all previous theological statements by people of the cloth, my conjecture has the nice property of being able to be put into testable form. This means that you do not have to die to know if it is correct and have to follow the strategy of Pascal's wager* to insure against it if I am in error, a situation in which I have in many times been.
Amen.
*PW says if I believe in God and He exists, I will be rewarded; if I don't and He exists, I may be in for a rather bad after life. If He doesn't exist, I've perhaps used up valuable resources in conformity to theological norms. Harford et al. think that folks just really need to follow the belief strategy regardless of its truth, or as the great Daniel Dennett of the Santa Fe Institute says, we need a belief in a religion independent of its underlying truth. Belief than is a dominant strategy regardless, which is the observational equivalent to Pascal's utility maximizing prediction"
2 comments:
Thanks KI team for posting this.
This definitely dedicate to our sisters/brother blockers who were intented to spend the time to follow how much I follow my Buddha teaching (which not really a god - definitely to reach nivana)! Well, according to this, which I will attend the disscussion --- I have to believe in god in some way ... just in case s/he exist. The only cost to me is "used up valuable resources in conformity to theological norms." which I am willing to pay at present value...and hope with a high return in the future if god really exist! Definitely, I don't want to a higher price later.
How about you, which god are you follow??
The discusssion had gone wonderfully and really fruitful. There was the question had been post by our prof. -- what role does religion, economics, and political play in our society? In addition one needs to look at from the perspective of production, exchang, utility, and distribution?
Production and exchange is more of the classical views, while utility and distribution is neoclassical. Utility and distribution gear more toward the current society operation in term rights and just!...and if one follows the stand-off between democrat and republicant debate in the US...one can see whether the distribution of the burden for country's depts ---as to who should carry the most burden? The middle-class American or the Rich? In addition what are the lesson that Khmer can learn from this an apply to Cambodian situation right now?
The govt. use religion of an intrinsic value which are khmer so storngly belive to accept one hardship in life as their Karmic had put them there, thus which the people accept their place in the society without question on the "distribution" of the resources that the business people use the govt. as their protectors to make law protect their extract national resources for their own again. While the the govt. people want to maintain the power is willing to except the economic rent from the business people to keep them in office.
Thus, if one can exament this closely how the three pillar: the religion, the govt. institution, and the economics methodology to control and decide as to who should access the public resources that can benefit only a few selectorate of their CPP clants, than we can untangle the puzzle as to why people are not willing to rise up against the oppress govt. regime!
BTW -- the god I follow is the god of fair and just! fair distribution of the economics resources for all! And give justic to all.
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