News

New study: the longer people live under socialism, the less moral they become

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From Values and Capitalism blog. (H/T Amy Hall tweet)

Excerpt:

The longer people live under socialism, the more their value system erodes. So concludes a recent study of 259 Germans randomly picked to play a simple dice game.

Researchers from the University of Munich and Duke University asked participants to throw a die 40 times and write each result down on a piece of paper. Those with the highest totals received winnings of up to $8. The twist was that each participant had to commit to picking the top or bottom number before rolling the die. They didn’t have to tell anyone beforehand which side they favored, giving them the opportunity to lie when they saw which way the die had turned up.

If no one had cheated, there should have been a roughly equal assortment of rolls from one to six. Instead, when researchers studied the results, they saw disproportionately more high rolls than low. Players were saying they’d picked in advance more fours, fives, and sixes than should have been possible. In short, many were cheating.

Participants were then asked their age and the part of Germany where they’d lived throughout their lives. Some had spent years behind the Iron Curtain, while others had only known life in a unified Germany. When researchers placed the results of the die rolls next to where and when the participants had been born, they came to a stark conclusion.

Those who hailed from socialist East Germany were twice as likely to cheat as those who’d grown up in West Germany under capitalism. Time also played a factor, for the longer a participant had lived in a socialist system the greater their likelihood for being dishonest. Those who’d lived for 20 years or more in East Germany were 65 percent more likely to cheat than their West German counterparts. And the ill-effect of socialism lingered in people’s values long after its demise. Those born in the east after the fall of the Berlin Wall still showed a greater propensity for cheating than their western counterparts.

You can kind of see how socialism works by look at how Obama is taking the country away from capitalism here at home. When the basics of a capitalist economy decline, it’s less attractive to try to make your own fortune, and more attractive to look to government to give you someone else’s money.

The study offers some reasons for their findings:

Participants were then asked their age and the part of Germany where they’d lived throughout their lives. Some had spent years behind the Iron Curtain, while others had only known life in a unified Germany. When researchers placed the results of the die rolls next to where and when the participants had been born, they came to a stark conclusion.

Those who hailed from socialist East Germany were twice as likely to cheat as those who’d grown up in West Germany under capitalism. Time also played a factor, for the longer a participant had lived in a socialist system the greater their likelihood for being dishonest. Those who’d lived for 20 years or more in East Germany were 65 percent more likely to cheat than their West German counterparts. And the ill-effect of socialism lingered in people’s values long after its demise. Those born in the east after the fall of the Berlin Wall still showed a greater propensity for cheating than their western counterparts.

Interesting to note that under Obama’s leadership, fewer people are starting businesses than in previous administrations.

Breitbart explains:

Startup businesses represent the heart of the American economy, but a new report by the Hudson Institute shows the rate of startup jobs during the last two years has been at a record low.

According to the report, Under President George H.W. Bush, who essentially won Ronald Reagan’s third term, there were 11.3 startup jobs per 1000 Americans. Under President Bill Clinton, there were 11.2. Under George W. Bush, there were 10.8. But under President Barack Obama, there have been 7.8 startup jobs per 1000 Americans.

The study “documents a disturbing weakness in startup job creation,” but “does not explain the cause of decline,” even though “there is anecdotal evidence that the U.S. policy environment has become inadvertently hostile to entrepreneurial employment.”

You can’t argue with those numbers. Higher taxes and more regulations are not good for business.

News

Meriam Ibrahim arrives in US after escaping imprisonment for her Christian faith

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Fox News reports.

Excerpt:

A Sudanese woman who faced the death penalty for refusing to recant her Christian faith has arrived in New Hampshire, ready to begin a new life.

Meriam Ibrahim, her husband and the couple’s two children arrived Thursday night at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, where they were greeted by a throng of supporters from the city’s Sudanese community before getting into an SUV and leaving the airport, the New Hampshire Union Leader reports.

“Thank you so much,” her husband, Daniel Wani, told reporters. “I am so relieved.”

Ibrahim, who met Pope Francis at the Vatican last week after fleeing the U.S. embassy in Khartoum, did not speak.

Her brother-in-law, Gabriel Wani, said Ibrahim has been granted asylum by the United States and will soon meet with U.S. State Department officials.

Daniel Wani, a U.S. citizen since 2005, met Ibrahim on a trip to Sudan in 2011. He traveled to the war-torn African country last year to arrange for his wife and child to move to New Hampshire.

Ibrahim had been sentenced to death over charges of apostasy. Her father was Muslim, and her mother was an Orthodox Christian. She married Wani, a Christian from southern Sudan, in 2011. Muslim women in Sudan are prohibited from marrying non-Muslims. By law, children must follow their father’s religion.

Sudan initially blocked Ibrahim from leaving the country even after its highest court overturned her death sentence in June.

That’s good news. I find it interesting that she chose New Hampshire, the live-free-or-die state. She certainly made her choice to live according to her own conscience or die in the attempt. She’s a hero. Thank God there was a happy ending this time.

Commentary

The loss of pastoral credibility

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Eric Chabot of Think Apologetics posted this on Facebook.

It’s a medium-length read. I want to highlight one problem – the problem of pastors never showing their work.

Excerpt:

Around this point, it can start to dawn on one that many church leaders have only been trained in forms of discourse such as the sermon and, to a much lesser extent, the essay. Both forms privilege a single voice—their voice—and don’t provide a natural space for response, questioning, and challenge. Their opinions have been assumed to be superior to opposing viewpoints, but have never been demonstrated to be so. While they may have spoken or written about opposing voices, they are quite unaccustomed to speaking or writing to them (not to mention listening to or being cross-examined by them). There are benefits to the fact that the sermon is a form of discourse that doesn’t invite interruption or talking back, but not when this is the only form of discourse its practitioners are adept in.

Many church leaders have been raised and trained in ideologically homogenous cultures or contexts that discouraged oppositional discourse. Many have been protected from hostile perspectives that might unsettle their faith. Throughout, their theological opinions and voices have been given a privileged status, immune from challenge. Nominal challenges could be brushed off by a reassertion of the monologue. They were safe to speak about and habitually misrepresent other voices to their hearers and readers, without needing to worry about those voices ever enjoying the power to answer them back. Many of the more widely read members of their congregations may have had an inkling of the weakness of their positions in the past: the Internet just makes it more apparent.

A system is only as effective as its weakest component in a particular operation. The same is true of the human mind and the communities formed around thinkers. Where the capacity of agonistic reasoning is lacking, all else can be compromised. If one’s opinion has never been subjected to and tried by rigorous cross-examination, it probably isn’t worth much. If one lacks the capacity to keep a level head when one’s views are challenged, one’s voice will be of limited use in most real world situations, where dialogue and dispute is the norm and where we have to think in conversation with people who disagree with us.

The teachers of the Church provide the members of the Church with a model for their own thinking. The teacher of the Church does not just teach others what to believe, but also how to believe, and the process by which one arrives at a theological position. This is one reason why it is crucial that teachers ‘show their working’ on a regular basis. When teaching from a biblical text, for instance, the teacher isn’t just teaching the meaning of that particular text, but how Scripture should be approached and interpreted more generally. An essential part of the teaching that the members of any church need is that of dealing with opposing viewpoints. One way or another, every church provides such teaching. However, the lesson conveyed in all too many churches is that opposing voices are to be dismissed, ignored, or ‘answered’ with a reactive reassertion of the dogmatic line, rather than a reasoned response.

This is probably the biggest thing that annoys me about church. Being talked at by somebody who never explains why they believe what they believe, and who never answers criticisms to what they believe. They don’t want to show their work. I really don’t like that. Being forced to sit still and silent while someone else talks.

In math class, you don’t get any marks for just writing the correct answer to a non-trivial problems. You have to show the steps that led to your answer. I think talking about why we believe, though, can be agitating to some people who are there in church to be comforted and to have feelings and emotions. So that’s probably why pastors don’t show their work, because it disrupts the comfort / happiness vibe. Still though, I think it would be a good idea for us (and I mean me, too!) to get better at hearing voices on the other side. The way I usually do this is by watching debates and reading debate books. I like there to be two sides interacting. I get annoyed when there is only one side. That’s why I prefer reading evidential apologetics to philosophical theology and I prefer philosophical theology to devotional reading (A.W. Tozer and G. K. Chesterton are the worst things to read in my view, and most men I know can’t stand reading them). The more testable something is, the easier it is on me. I don’t like to be preached at about things that can’t be tested. It annoys me, even if I agree with it.