I’ve studied economics and taught mathematics to students who became economists, but I’m not an economist. Still, I know enough to recognize that economists sometimes selectively focus on data that fit their liberal or conservative ideologies. At least both sides work with data and try to make convincing arguments for their models. Economists of all stripes recognize that their own models are by no means perfect.

I should have known it would be only a matter of time before biblical economics turned the “dismal science” into something even more dismal. Some conservative Christians are now educating themselves and others with quotes about economics that come from that same infallible “science” book describing a flat earth with four corners resting on pillars at the center of a ten thousand year old universe. It’s also the same book of biblical morals that once justified slavery, anti-Semitism, treating women as property, executing blasphemers and homosexuals, and burning witches and heretics.

Of course our government’s huge national debt is a looming threat to long-term prosperity. Good secular and moral arguments can be made on how best to solve the problem. We should analyze arguments over tax policy and deficit spending. We can have reasoned disagreements about what type of tax is fairest, and whether we should spend more on guns or butter.

Read More (via On Faith)

I consider myself both pro-choice and pro-life, because I support a woman’s right to choose and I oppose capital punishment. I’ve heard reasoned and nuanced arguments from both sides on these controversial issues, and I appreciate people who make it a point to listen to those with whom they disagree. What I don’t appreciate are pandering politicians like Texas Governor Rick Perry, who take simple positions with Bible-based answers, while ignoring any evidence-based, opposing points of view.

You would think that those who oppose abortion under any circumstances and view it as the greatest evil would necessarily favor practical steps to reduce the number of abortions. I’m talking about government funding to promote sex education in schools and accessibility to condoms by sexually active teens. And for poor pregnant women who want to give birth, government funded prenatal health care, day-care programs, and other support systems. But perhaps punishing women for being sexually active and lowering taxes are even greater priorities than addressing abortion in those practical ways.

Continue Reading (via On Faith)

“They can send me to college, but they can’t make me think,” bragged a bumper sticker I recently spotted in my hometown. I can tell you from personal experience that this is sometimes true. It’s even more unfortunate that many college students want to take courses where they can get good grades without being critically challenged.

In mathematics, my field of professorial expertise, lots of students hope to get by through rote memorization. This is not how mathematics works, and any teacher who allows students to memorize their way through a course does his or her students a disservice. Good students learn that mathematics is not cut and dry, and needs to be continually questioned-not only about its internal logic, but also the reasons it leads us where it does. Does the conclusion seem reasonable? Did we expect it? Do the steps seem natural or artificial? Can we state intuitively what we have proved? Can we generalize the result? If mathematics is taught right, students should have more questions going out of a course than going into it. The more we know, the more we know what we don’t know.

And so it is (or should be) with most academic disciplines. I’ve heard it said half-jokingly that the difference between philosophy and religion is that philosophy is questions without answers and religion is answers without questions. I’d like to think that a secular studies program could combine the best of these two stereotypes.

I see a secular studies program as complementing rather than countering a religious studies program. It would be nice if the current religious studies major at universities evolved into a “religious and secular studies” major. Many Americans, not to mention numerous politicians, display their ignorance of what freedom of conscience actually means when they say, “We have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.” I believe that just as you can’t have “of” without allowing “from,” any credible religious studies program that incorporates a variety of worldviews should also include a secular worldview.

Continue Reading (via On Faith)

At ten-years-old, while still an Orthodox Jew, I wondered why an all-powerful God had to take a day off each week to rest. I also worried about what bad things might happen to us if such a controlling God should fall asleep at the wheel of the universe. As an atheist, I now appreciate the sentiment of a perceptive biblical writer more than I did when I believed rest was a commandment from God.

Occasionally the Bible gets it right, and this is one of those occasions. Regardless of theological views, I think we all appreciate the message that humans, including presidents, should periodically take time off from their usual routines to refresh and rejuvenate. I came to this position relatively late in life. I was a workaholic who would normally get by on at most five hours of sleep per night. I felt there would be plenty of time to “sleep” when I was dead, just as I “slept” for billions of years before I was born. I knew I had one life to live, and I wanted to make the most of it.

My views began to change not after consulting holy books but by training to run marathons. I learned from experience that I could do better by alternating hard and easy days and by taking a day off each week. More is not always better. There is now considerable evidence that the ideal amount of sleep for most of us is between 6.5 and 7.5 hours per night. I now try to get as much as 6.5, along with daily relaxation breaks.

But even when religions get it right, they get it wrong. When I was taught to rest on the Sabbath (meaning Saturday not Sunday, because I was Jewish, not Christian), I also learned what “rest” meant. My religious community said we couldn’t turn on the light (defined as “work”) to start the synagogue service, but we could ask a Shabbas Goy (Gentile) to do it for us. For the same reason, we couldn’t push an elevator button, but we could ride on an elevator that had been programmed to stop at every floor. On the other hand, we couldn’t rest in a moving car or airplane because that, too, is “work.”

Continue Reading (via On Faith)