From The Bet:
Using the example of copper, Simon made his own extreme claims about mineral resource abundance. He rejected the idea that copper supplies would ever run out. More copper could be made from other metals, he said. “Even the total weight of the earth is not a theoretical limit to the amount of copper that might be available to earthlings in the future. Only the total weight of the universe.. would be such a theoretical limit.”
A bet is the quickest way to see if someone is intellectually honest or dishonest. It instantly makes someone reevaluate their position, and if they refuse to bet, they show that their position is dubious.
Julian Simon seems to have understood this from an early age. From The Bet:
“I first learned to say ‘Do you want to bet?’ as part of an argument about facts when talking to my father,” Julian Simon wrote in his autobiography, A Life Against the Grain. “He would say outrageously wrong things in an authoritative fashion and refuse to hear any questions. There was nothing I could say except “Do you want to bet?”
We have all been told in school not to stereotype. In one class, a teacher provided us a list of people and asked “which ones would you most like to live by?” She then listed all the normal sounding ones and said they were secret axe murders (and the like). And then she took all the oddball ones and said they we upstanding citizens. I tried to point out anyone could make up any story, but she would not buy it. The real truth is that “Stereotypes are more valid than most social psychological hypotheses”. From psychologytoday:
Except stereotypes are not inaccurate. There are many different ways to test for the accuracy of stereotypes, because there are many different types or aspects of accuracy. However, one type is quite simple — the correspondence of stereotype beliefs with criteria. If I believe 60% of adult women are over 5′ 4″ tall, and 56% voted for the Democrat in the last Presidential election, and that 35% of all adult women have college degrees, how well do my beliefs correspond to the actual probabilities? One can do this sort of thing for many different types of groups.
And lots of scientists have. And you know what they found? That stereotype accuracy — the correspondence of stereotype beliefs with criteria — is one of the largest relationships in all of social psychology. The correlations of stereotypes with criteria range from .4 to over .9, and average almost .8 for cultural stereotypes (the correlation of beliefs that are widely shared with criteria) and.5 for personal stereotypes (the correlation of one individual’s stereotypes with criteria, averaged over lots of individuals). The average effect in social psychology is about .20. Stereotypes are more valid than most social psychological hypotheses.
The Bible is a love story. The two main characters are God and the nation of Israel. Reading the Bible is like reading a romance novel. God is the groom. Israel is described as the bride. God even makes the prophet Hosea marry a prostitute to show him how it feels to be betrayed by a spouse.
God, pursuing Israel, charms, woos, and sometimes chastises Israel. Israel, in turn, sometimes stays faithful, sometimes goes astray, and sometimes repents of wrongdoing. The Bible reads just as one would expect from a give and take relationship.
At the climax of the Old Testament, we read in Isaiah about this relationship. Isaiah sets up a parable in which God is a gardener and Israel is a vineyard:
Isa 5:1 Now let me sing to my Well-beloved A song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard: My Well-beloved has a vineyard On a very fruitful hill.
Isa 5:2 He dug it up and cleared out its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, And also made a winepress in it; So He expected it to bring forth good grapes, But it brought forth wild grapes.
God tried to set Israel up in a good location. He gave Israel fertile land. He helped clear Israel’s enemies. He gave Israel laws and government. But they still turned from him at the slightest provocation. Isaiah says that God “expected” them to follow God but they did not: “So He expected it to bring forth good grapes, But it brought forth wild grapes.” Isaiah then appeals to the minds of the people to ask them what they would do with the vineyard:
Isa 5:3 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard.
Isa 5:4 What more could have been done to My vineyard That I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, Did it bring forth wild grapes?
In verse 3, God asks Israel to tell Him what the just actions would be towards the vineyard. In verse 4, it is reiterated that God tried everything He could possibly do, reemphasizing the conclusion that Israel should make. God exhausted His options and thought that even then Israel would repent. But Israel never did. Isaiah, banking on the rhetorical answer of Israel, then describes how God will destroy Israel for not turning to God:
Isa 5:5 And now, please let Me tell you what I will do to My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned; And break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
Isa 5:6 I will lay it waste; It shall not be pruned or dug, But there shall come up briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds That they rain no rain on it.”
Just so Israel is clear about the meaning of the parable, Isaiah then interprets it for them:
Isa 5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, And the men of Judah are His pleasant plant. He looked for justice, but behold, oppression; For righteousness, but behold, a cry for help.
God is the vineyard owner. Israel is the vineyard. The people are the vines. God attempted all He could do to make Israel love and serve Him. God expected that His actions would sway Israel. Israel rejected God, so God curses them.
The Pharisees in the time of Jesus were fatalists (see Josephus on this). Fatalism seems to be the default human belief. We find it as far back as Job. Job’s friends try to explain to him that things just do not just happen for no reason. If Jesus was not a fatalist, we would expect there to be some sort of confrontation about this. In fact there is:
Luk 13:1 There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
Luk 13:2 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?
Luk 13:3 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
Luk 13:4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?
Luk 13:5 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
Because the Pharisees and many people were fatalists, they were looking for some sort of meaning in the deaths of the innocent Jews by both Pilate (volitional murder) and the tower of Siloam (accidental death). A Pharisees would have decried the dead as terrible sinners, but Jesus does not do that. Instead Jesus seems to mock that position.
In Jesus’ answer to the question, he gives a non-answer. He counters the prevailing reasoning and then uses this event to illustrate future death. Jesus was not a fatalist, sometimes things just happen. But Jesus also tells us, there will be a time when future people perish and this will be for a reason (they do not repent).
Later, when one Pharisee (“teacher of the law”, lawyer) asks Jesus “who is my neighbor”, Jesus (almost mockingly) uses a Samaritan as an example of a good neighbor. And then Jesus adds that it was “by chance” that the Samaritan entered the scene (and all others). This is very pointed against the fatalistic notions of the Pharisees:
Luk 10:30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
Luk 10:31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
Luk 10:32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
Luk 10:33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
Both of these stories are only found in Luke. It is possible that Paul’s ministry (Luke was Paul’s traveling companion) focused more on the subject of fatalism than the other apostles.
In this video, a slightly bearded man attempts to mock “Arminians” as to what their prayer should be.
Follow his logic.
1. There has been a bunch of meetings about this; we even wrote out prerecorded statements. Why aren’t Christians convinced yet?
2. When Arminians pray they are not consistent. He then quotes Charles Spurgeon’s mocking prayer.
3. The apostle Paul states that we shouldn’t boast, and that obviously means we had no part in anything so we cannot possibly boast.
How many non-sequiturs can a Calvinist introduce into one video?
1. This is the fallacy known as an Appeal to Authority. What is really interesting is that these authoritative decisions to which he appeals often exclude people who are not like minded. It would be like a fundamentalist at the Jesus Seminar.
2. This is the fallacy known as a Straw Man. Those who say we have free will do not believe God is forced to give salvation. But because God offers salvation based on parameters, we can choose to accept His free gift. If I was giving out candy for Halloween, the children coming to my door can use their own free will to accept my gift. The ones who do not choose to come to my door have used their will to not accept my free gift. And, why on earth would someone be praying about how they are happy they are saved and others are not? Those who believe in free will would pray that the unsaved would be saved. The Calvinists have a fixation of being “chosen” or “elect” (aka better than everyone else), and they try to project their megalomania on everyone else. Lastly, the narrator also just assumes the mocking prayer is blasphemous without ever explaining why.
3. This is a faulty generalization. The video narrator quotes Ephesians 9:
Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
Eph 2:9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Paul was not saying: “you have no volition in being saved and thus you should not boast.” Paul was saying “your faith was a gift, you did not earn it, thus you should not boast.” You still have to choose to accept a gift. In no culture is a gift something that is forced upon someone. The entire theme of Romans is not about volition, but the dynamics of works in salvation.
The strange bearded man actually believes he is making some sort of coherent argument.
I have my own mocking Calvinist prayer:
Dear Lord,
Why on Earth are you forcing me to pray? It wastes my time and yours.
Amen.
Here is Josephus (37AD-100AD) talking about the trends in Judaism around the time of Christ. Pay attention to the afterlife, fate, and salvation:
Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly, and despise delicacies in diet; and they follow the conduct of reason; and what that prescribes to them as good for them they do; and they think they ought earnestly to strive to observe reason’s dictates for practice. They also pay a respect to such as are in years; nor are they so bold as to contradict them in any thing which they have introduced; and when they determine that all things are done by fate, they do not take away the freedom from men of acting as they think fit; since their notion is, that it hath pleased God to make a temperament, whereby what he wills is done, but so that the will of man can act virtuously or viciously. They also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever they do about Divine worship, prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to their direction; insomuch that the cities give great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses also.
4. But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies; nor do they regard the observation of any thing besides what the law enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent: but this doctrine is received but by a few, yet by those still of the greatest dignity. But they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.
5. The doctrine of the Essens is this: That all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for; and when they send what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not offer sacrifices because they have more pure lustrations of their own; on which account they are excluded from the common court of the temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves; yet is their course of life better than that of other men; and they entirely addict themselves to husbandry…
Karl Marx summed up Communism with the phrase: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Communism is the principle that people pool resources and the resources are then distributed according to people’s needs. People have fought capitalism is various ways: changing the symbolism of money, trying to eliminate middleman costs, and even downright pooling of goods. The results are always the same throughout history: utter catastrophe.
Plymouth Rock
Jamestown
New Harmony, Indiana
Modern Times
Utopia, Ohio
In Acts, there is an interesting instance in which communism is attempted.
Act 2:44 Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common,
Act 2:45 and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.
…
Act 4:32 Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.
Act 4:33 And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all.
Act 4:34 Nor was there anyone among them who lacked; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold,
Act 4:35 and laid them at the apostles’ feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.
This was communism. One Christian protested to me: “it was not communism, everyone did it voluntarily”. Voluntary communism is still communism and still leads to the same results. All the societies listed above were more or less voluntary, and they all failed. The Acts commune was no different. A famine soon hit Jerusalem, and the saints, impoverished by communism, were hard hit. Part of Paul’s ministry was to travel the world, acting like a Christian “Feed the Children” campaign:
Act 11:28 Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar.
Act 11:29 Then the disciples, each according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judea.
Why Judea? Because they sold all their property and started a commune. Like all other communes, it broke down due to lack of incentives. This left them all impoverished. Here is Paul gathering funds in his letters.
1Co 16:1 Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given orders to the churches of Galatia, so you must do also:
1Co 16:2 On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come.
1Co 16:3 And when I come, whomever you approve by your letters I will send to bear your gift to Jerusalem.2Co 9:5 Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren to go to you ahead of time, and prepare your generous gift beforehand, which you had previously promised, that it may be ready as a matter of generosity and not as a grudging obligation.
Rom 15:25 But now I am going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints.
Rom 15:26 For it pleased those from Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem.
So the funds are targeted to Jerusalem and targeted to the poor. The collection is very direct and strong (Paul devotes 2 chapters in 2 Corinthians to it). Why are the Jerusalem poor in much worse shape than the “poor” in Galatia and Corinth? Why couldn’t the rich in Jerusalem (the Mecca of Judaism) take care of their own poor? We know the reason: Communism.
So the question remains: why did they create the commune in the first place? And why does the Bible portray it in a positive light? It led to death by starvation within 16 years.
The reason is that the apostles, according to the teachings of Jesus, were predicting an imminent end of the world. If the world is going to end, then it is a really good idea to start a commune. If instead God changes His mind, delays the end of the world, and turns to the Gentiles (as described in Romans 8-11), then that commune will fail.
Communism in Acts is portrayed in a positive light because it really was “a good idea at the time”. Calvinists like to ignore these details, and if they dislike communism then they hang their hat on the “voluntary” aspect, although the scheme is endorsed by the Bible and failed like so many other Communist communes.
If the future is set, either by God’s foreknowledge or by God’s decree, then there should be no such thing as the future being changed. Either God would have always known the new events would happen (making second set of events fixed) or God would be making the new events happen (making those events fixed). So if God knows the future (like watching a movie), there should be no such thing as someone who God says is going to die then getting 15 extra years as a result of his prayers. But we see just that in 2 Kings 20 (paralleled in Isaiah 38):
2Ki 20:1 In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.’ ”
2Ki 20:2 Then he turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the LORD, saying,
2Ki 20:3 “Remember now, O LORD, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
2Ki 20:4 And it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the LORD came to him, saying,
2Ki 20:5 “Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD.
2Ki 20:6 And I will add to your days fifteen years…
So God tells Hezekiah that he is going to die (which he does not). Hezekiah then petitions God. God then adds 15 years to his life. How does this happen with a set future?
To top it all off, the first thing that Hezekiah does is bring in emissaries from the Babylonians (showing them his wealth), and promptly getting cursed:
2Ki 20:17 ‘Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and what your fathers have accumulated until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left,’ says the LORD.
2Ki 20:18 ‘And they shall take away some of your sons who will descend from you, whom you will beget; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ ”
Hezekiah’s response: “Don’t care; it won’t happen to me.”
2Ki 20:19 So Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD which you have spoken is good!” For he said, “Will there not be peace and truth at least in my days?”
The modern world really doesn’t understand our current wealth. A large section of society even believes they would be able to survive off the land if they were forced to do so. Nature wants to kill us, it is only technology that has made our modern lives possible. We have gone from a world in which 50% of children did not live past age 10, to a society in which children age 19 and under suffer a annual 65 in 100,000 mortality rate. And no one understands or cares! Jeffery Tucker uses the term “miracle fatigue” for the concept that amazing things happen all around us that we just take for granted:
Oddly, hardly anyone seems to care, and even fewer care about the institutional force that makes all this possible, which is the market economy. Instead, we just adjust to the new reality. We even hear of the grave problem of “miracle fatigue”—too much great stuff, too often. Truly, this new world seems to have arrived without much fanfare at all… We adjust to amazing things and don’t think much about their source or the system that produces them.
We should all take Louis CK to heart:
To hear Jeffery Tucker’s audio see:
reality is not optional 