Religious

Archive for Religious

“And if there were a God, he certainly wouldn’t care about me!”

I have heard a variant on the above from several different atheists / agnostics. The comment has always been stated matter-of-factly, as if it were self-evident that any “rational” person would agree that an omniscient, omnipotent being would have much better things to do than to concern itself with the piddly goings-on at the tiny […]

An Un-Christian Argument for Anti-Semitism

When I was in grammar school we saw a video on intolerance. One of the guys being interviewed was a skinhead who said he hated Jews “because they killed Jesus.” Of course any form of hatred based on collectivism is ridiculous. Yet this particular example has always struck me as an absurd justification for an […]

Love Your Enemies

I think David R. Henderson is great, especially on tough-guy issues of war, but I think even he doesn’t go far enough in this piece, “What Game Theory Can Tell Us About Terrorism”: In December 1996, I took this other-person’s-shoes approach with a group of Defense Department officials when I commented on a paper by […]

He Is Risen!

Today is Easter. A simple declaration: I don’t think it’s a metaphor, or a really nice story with a happy ending. I truly believe that there was a man called Jesus from the town of Nazareth, who gave amazing sermons and showed an unbelievable knowledge of Jewish law despite his humble origins. He predicted his […]

Job Sums It Up

I was always in awe of people who memorized Bible verses, because that’s never something I was very good at. Even though I “know a lot” in economics (and I used to in physics), it wasn’t because I memorized things, it was rather because I understood how the principles worked and then I could reconstruct […]

Should Christians Fear the Boom-Bust?

Two housekeeping notes: The blog is still under construction, and the post title is a geek reference to this. Growing up I didn’t read the Bible much at all, especially the Old Testament. So although I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior (on April 16, 2002, if I’m reconstructing the date correctly), […]

Should Christians Support a Necessary Evil?

[CORRECTION within post, below.] Kevin Clauson gave an interesting talk at the Austrian Scholars Conference concerning the apparent (but spurious in his mind) tension between evangelical political views and Austro-libertarianism. During the talk he described government as a “necessary evil” and cited Romans 13 to show that God had instituted civil authority, but that the […]

I Write Six Days a Week, and Rest on the Sabbath

Lately I have tried to do a better job of “observing the Sabbath,” meaning that I try not to work on Sundays. As a consultant, I never have a vacation. At any given time, there is always something I could be doing (or at least get the wheels moving) to bring in more revenue. Currently […]