Minor Thoughts from me to you

"Something I’ve been thinking lately," our dear webmaster Joe has recently written. "Am I different as a Christian than I would be if I wasn’t a Christian? Am I just wasting my life?"

Then he linked to a rap video appearing to strenously urge its viewers not to knock over convenience stores. DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE, it demanded at its end via big white letters.

It probably goes without saying (but here it is anyway) that I've been worrying for Joe ever since. I had no idea he was knocking over convenience stores. And what's worse, I still don't know what's driven him to it. Does he need the money for crack?

Here's the worst of it: Separated as we are by just under 900 miles of amber waves of grain and purple mountains' majesty, I'm practically powerless to help the guy - except perhaps to wire him a little green, and wouldn't that just be enabling? My budget says yes, yes it would be, which means all I have left are my words.

And here they are, Joe - and on a public blog, no less, because the best antidote for darkness is the bright beam of posterity.

Joe, your dilemma highlights another problem with modern-day Christian theology: that is, what exactly a good Christian is supposed to do with his or her new life in Christ. Many (even most) Christians will of course scoff at the idea that this is any sort of quandary at all. "What does the Bible say?" they might respond. But my opinion stands that 'tis truly a tad tricky.

Here's why: the Christian New Testament of the Bible is an extremely apocalypse-focused collection of texts. Many scholars in fact agree that early followers of Jesus expected the end of the world to occur within their lifetimes or shortly thereafter, possibly because Jesus told them so (Matthew 24:34 - and no, He's not referring to the Transfiguration). Thus the overriding directive for Christians was to go forth and create new Christians, occupying yourself with as little else as possible - indeed, relinquishing the gift of marriage unless you just couldn't resist your sexual urges, and living as if you weren't married if you were.*

(*And as an aside, boy has that advice from our dear apostle Paul resulted in headaches for young Christians since; many are the Bible-believing boys and girls who have had to struggle with the idea that they're settling for serving their beloved God less by exchanging vows. Would that Paul had never written the stupid part - if he actually did. Anyway:)

If you desire to compare your accomplishments to that original standard, Joe, simply ask yourself how many people you've recruited for the Christ, and deduct points for all the time you've spent married when you could've been SAVING SOMEONE FROM ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE SNAKE PITS OF HELL.

Ahem.

There are other yardsticks available with which to measure your faithfulness, though, since as you are probably aware we are now well past those early, heady days, and we must now take note that God's Holy Church has been caught somewhat flat-footed by just how big a procrastinator its saviour has turned out to be. Pastors and priests usually explain our unexpectedly long wait for Jesus' second coming as an act of mercy on the part of the Lord; they say He is pushing back the final hour to allow more chances for salvation. Knowing that God's love is infinite and that He has now shown the sinners of this world so much love that they have waited well over a thousand years longer for His return than they waited for His arrival in the first place (the first references to a messiah at best occur in the Book of Isaiah, written in the 700's B.C.), the Church and we members of it should probably figure out how we're supposed to pass the time.

We will toss Paul's suggestions into the recycle bin, then (because Lord knows, someone will dredge them up again), and consider other Biblical advice. The Teacher of the Book of Ecclesiastes has some, though readers disagree as to precisely what that advice is; Christians and Talmud-lovers suggest Qohelet pushes for his readers to keep their treasure in Heaven, as Jesus would say, while people who actually read the book understand him to be basically proferring the same advice as Voltaire's Candide: "tend your garden", i.e. enjoy your work, wife, and life - in short, function as you were made to function - and leave the rest up to God.

I find it an attractive suggestion, Joe. What say you?

I should warn you, modern Christian thought rather rejects the Qohelet Theory. Rather, the view of today's mainline Protestant congregations is that your lifespan here 'pon Earth is a self-improvement project. You are meant over the course of your days to be slowly but surely perfected, to morph from a vile, despicable convenience store robber into a poor copy of Jesus Christ. The climax to this evolutionary narrative is your death, whereupon you are to complete your transformation (no matter what your spiritual state at the time of your deceasing) into a glorious new creature.

This option is also attractive, actually, but in my experience deceptively so; self-improvement is hard, stressful work if you take it seriously. Martin Luther addressed the difficulties in a treatise on Galatians. To paraphrase him, if you try to become a good man and think you are succeeding, you are a deluded egomaniac - and if you try to become a good man and fail, you will beat yourself up about it, since Mankind cannot be good enough.

Unfortunately, Luther's solution for this problem - "passive-righteousness" - is one of those ideas that sounds great on paper because it makes use of theology, but doesn't make any sense when you actually try to apply it. He claims that we must simply cease to struggle to be good (presumably "active-righteousness") and allow the Holy Spirit to do the work for us.

One only has to ask, "What does this mean I should do?" to realize it's hogwash. By and large, good things happen when we do them; nothing happens when nobody moves. Mankind's effort is clearly involved, So it clearly doesn't pass the real-world test (and is also horrifically debilitating) to declare nobody can be "good" via their own devices. Yes, you can argue that the results will never equal the amazing goodness of an omnipotent, omniscient person, the every action of whom is the standard by which Goodness is judged even if we don't understand how it could possibly be good at all - but what in the world kind of standard is that? A standard which you cannot reach, as I've learned since meeting my mother-in-law, is really no standard at all (and on the opposite side of the coin, any standard which you will reach no matter what is not exactly worth striving for either).

I would therefore say that the modern Christian concept of Life's purpose is usable, but the theology that accompanies it is not. Clearer some people are better than others and you should strive to be one of them. By all means, consider the question of whether you are a better person than you were five years ago and rate yourself appropriately, if you like.

But I'm personally still not quite crazy about it. To quote one of Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt's cabinet members (I forget which), "In the long run, we are all dead." Self-improvement is not a value in and of itself; taken alone, it is but vanity. Reward for self-improvement is only found in its context. Does being a better man, for instance, result in your being a better husband and father, thus benefiting the people you love? Is that a goal of yours? If yes, it is good.

I'd argue instead for a result-focused lifestyle (and yes, "self-improvement" can be a result - but as I said, it's of no real use as the ultimate one), in which we strive to create the reality we desire.

Note that I am not suggesting a result-oriented life; there is a difference. A man who sets out to be a good husband and father has a chance of dying satisfied only if he keeps proper perspective about how much control he has over such matters.

We have actually come full-circle, since a result-focused lifestyle is exactly what the apostle Paul was suggesting nearly two thousand years ago, the important difference being of course that he had already taken the liberty of choosing the result on which to focus. When I first met my fiance, I was surprised to find her very skeptical about that focus; unlike me, she'd never thought of the commission as binding upon her. Nowadays I agree, if only because so many of my ideas about Christianity are currently in flux that I don't feel I have enough answers to share with others.

But I digress! Let me know which of these options you choose, Joe, or if you'll be selecting another. In the meantime, remember to adequately scope out your targets before you strike, and pay your taxes on whatever your take is.

The Safeway grocery store chain created its own health plan for its employees. That's not unique -- many employers do that. Over the past four years, the average U.S. company has seen per-capita health care costs rise by 38%. Over the past four years, Safeway's per-capita health care costs have remained flat. That's a tremendous accomplishment and a great competitive advantage.

They did it by giving their employees responsibility over their own health and their own healthcare costs.

Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

... As with most employers, Safeway's employees pay a portion of their own health care through premiums, co-pays and deductibles. The big difference between Safeway and most employers is that we have pronounced differences in premiums that reflect each covered member's behaviors. Our plan utilizes a provision in the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that permits employers to differentiate premiums based on behaviors. Currently we are focused on tobacco usage, healthy weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Safeway's Healthy Measures program is completely voluntary and currently covers 74% of the insured nonunion work force. Employees are tested for the four measures cited above and receive premium discounts off a "base level" premium for each test they pass. Data is collected by outside parties and not shared with company management. If they pass all four tests, annual premiums are reduced $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families. Should they fail any or all tests, they can be tested again in 12 months. If they pass or have made appropriate progress on something like obesity, the company provides a refund equal to the premium differences established at the beginning of the plan year.

Not only have these incentives saved employees a lot of money, they've also dramatically improved employee health.

Our obesity and smoking rates are roughly 70% of the national average and our health-care costs for four years have been held constant. When surveyed, 78% of our employees rated our plan good, very good or excellent.

Safeway would like to make their program even better. But the Federal government won't let them.

Today, we are constrained by current laws from increasing these incentives. We reward plan members $312 per year for not using tobacco, yet the annual cost of insuring a tobacco user is $1,400. Reform legislation needs to raise the federal legal limits so that incentives can better match the true incremental benefit of not engaging in these unhealthy behaviors. If these limits are appropriately increased, I am confident Safeway's per capita health-care costs will decline for at least another five years as our work force becomes healthier.

That's reform that won't cost taxpayers anything. That's reform that will actually "bend the cost curve" and reduce the cost of insurance. That's reform that will improve health not just finances.

Why isn't Washington working on that kind of reform? Why does Washington prevent insurance companies and employers from offering more of those incentives?

I just had two nice, young college age boys stop by my house. They were in the area representing a window installation company. Their company is trying to drum up business by setting up appointments for their "consultants" to tell me how their energy efficient windows will save me money on my energy bills.

That's a sales pitch that only works for those who don't think about it. I have thought about it, so I made them think about it.

I asked a simple question: "what's the payoff time? how long would it take for the new windows to pay for themselves?"

Well, they tried to duck the question. "That'd be a great question for our consultants..."

I interrupted: "Do you have a ballpark estimate?"

"No."

"Tell your consultants to send you out with a ballpark next time and I might be willing to talk." I didn't let them leave me a flyer either.

I've done the math on this before. My gas / electric bill is $170 a month. Installing new windows throughout the entire house will cost us between $2500 and $7000, depending on the make, model, and installer. It's a simple problem of division. Assuming their windows were miracle windows and eliminated my entire energy bill (hah!), it would take between 15 and 41 years for my new windows to pay for themselves.

There are many good reasons to install new windows. Energy efficiency is not one of them. Not even close.

Shawn Tully, at Fortune, details 4 reasons why the current healthcare "reform" bill will do more to raise costs than lower them.

First, they will impose rich, standard packages of benefits, with low deductibles, for all Americans. Those policies, typically containing everything from in-vitro fertilization to mental health benefits, are usually far more expensive than anything most people would pay for with their own money.

Second, the plans would impose on a federal level the doctrine of community rating, in which all customers have to be offered the same rates, regardless of their health risks. Community rating forces young people to pay far more than their actual cost, a main reason for today's 46 million uninsured, while it subsidizes older patients.

Third, Obama would ban consumers from buying private insurance across state lines, perpetuating the price differences in today's fragmented market, instead of allowing all Americans to shop anywhere for the best deals.

Fourth, both plans propose what's known as a "public option," or a Medicare-style plan that would compete with the private offerings. The previous three proposals would make the private plans extremely expensive. With the same subsidies, the Medicare-style plan could put them out of business.

This plan will only lower the price of health care if by "price" you mean premiums and payments made directly to insurers or health care organizations. But if you include the necessary taxes and subsidies in your definition of "price", well, the price is going to go straight through the roof.

Adam, I'm ecstatic to hear about Sam Dodson's recent success. It's about time we libertarians see something positive happen.

And yet, I'm not sure that I feel free to emulate his example. After all, I have a wife and children to support. They depend on my job to keep our house, keep our healthcare, and keep us in groceries that don't come from a dumpster. That's a big responsibility and one I feel daily.

I'd love to follow in his footsteps. I'd love to challenge the State -- and win. I'd love to pledge "my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor" to the service of Lady Liberty. She's a fine Lady. But doing so feels like a self-indulgent hobby when I have more than myself to worry about.

Perhaps some forms of resistance are best left to those who are relatively unattached -- or who feel the jack boot of oppression more strongly. For now, I'm more inclined to support a series of libertarian tracts than I am to risk serious jail time. I don't think that our fellow citizens are beyond persuasion yet.

Perhaps a two pronged approach may yet be successful.

Earlier today, the American Academy of Physician Assistants issued an urgent Action Alert:

In a speech before the American Medical Association today, President Obama once again restated his commitment to building America's primary care workforce of "physicians and nurse practitioners" - omitting PAs from the discussion.

Please contact President Obama today. Let him know that PAs are listening- and that we are gravely concerned that we're not hearing a similar commitment to physician assistants.

PAs are the future of health care, and must make their voices heard. Contact the President today with a special message: PAs are a Critical Part of Health Care Reform.

I knew about it because a friend -- who's studying to become a PA -- emailed me and asked me to contact President Obama. She asked me to emphasize how important it was that PA's be part of the solution. Here was my response.

I can't do that. I disagree with the entire premise of healthcare "reform". The AAPA and Congress are both operating on a flawed assumption: the idea that it's even possible to create a plan that works for all Americans. It's not.

No one person, or group of people -- no matter how smart -- has the ability to create a health plan that meets the needs of 300 million unique individuals. No one group has enough information to make good decisions for everyone. Every patient has different needs, different backgrounds, different abilities, different family structure, different reactions, and different prejudices. I know you've seen this in your experiences in healthcare.

Through family, through friends, through my wife and through my job, I've heard a lot of stories about healthcare. One thing I've learned is that doctors (and PA's) have trouble coming up with a treatment plan that works for one patient. Often, the patient and the doctor have to work together over a period of time to figure out what works best for the specific condition and patient. How much harder -- how much more impossible -- is it to define a plan that works for everyone?

The necessary knowledge doesn't exist in one database, one field, one speciality. It's dispersed through many different people, each holding incomplete and sometimes seemingly contradictory information. I'm not just talking about medical information either. Each patient has a different willingness to undergo treatments, a different tolerance for discomfort, and a different preference for how long to continue treatment. How can one committee, how can one plan, possibly work for all people?

The answer is not to centralize decision making in Washington, D.C. or even in Madison, WI and Albany, NY. The answer is to give each patient, each doctor, each PA, the full freedom they need to reach the decisions that work best in the individual circumstances.

In the end, it's the patient that must be free to make all of the required decisions. Doctors, nurses, PAs, and healthcare organizations ultimately listen to whoever is paying the bills. Right now, that's Medicare, Medicaid, and the insurance companies. As a result, healthcare professionals are far more responsive to the desires of big government and big insurance -- not to patients. The solution is to return control to the patients -- not to take it further away from them.

Here's an interesting statistic (page 417): in 1960, 55 cents of every dollar of health care was out-of-pocket. In 2003, it was down to 16 cents. Today, the rest is paid through taxes and insurance premiums. And all of that insurance hasn't saved anybody any money. Healthcare costs today are 80% higher than they were in 1960. Put a different way, patients are only paying 16% of the costs out of pocket but the total costs have skyrocketed. That hasn't exactly turned out to be a great deal.

I feel very strongly that we'd be much better off if we started paying for healthcare the same way we did in the 1960s. If patients pay more out of pocket at the place of service, they'll ultimately get higher quality care. Overall costs will drop (through increased price transparency and competition) and patients will save money in the end.

And, yes, there will always be people who's injuries and illnesses exceed their financial resources. But they would be better served through block grants than through government plans, payments, and rationing. If they need financial assistance, give them extra finances. But allow them to control how, when, and where they're treated.

That's healthcare reform that will truly change things. Trying to create a nationwide plan by getting all of the special interests involved will just result in more of the same failed healthcare policies that we've seen over the last 20 years.

Confirming what I've suspected: "So far, June's chill is one for the records". http://bit.ly/o5LKx

Last week I said that "my health insurance reform plan would involve shifting healthcare spending from large premiums and all-inclusive health "insurance" plans to small premiums and plans that only offer catastrophic insurance coverage. Patients would have more money left in their pocket, to allow them to pay more money out of pocket".

Two days ago, while driving to work, I saw a gentlemen standing by the side of the road holding a sign. It proclaimed "Doctors support affordable healthcare for all". Great! I'm glad to hear it. We need more people on board with affordable healthcare.

But affordable healthcare isn't always what you think it is. Paradoxically, charging people more -- paid directly, out of their own pocket -- can actually lead to people paying less. And this isn't just pie-in-the-sky ivory tower theory. The savings effects of higher out of pocket costs are real.

The paper contends that, contrary to recently recommended policy changes by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that exclude incentives through copay or co-insurance for chronically ill beneficiaries and high-value medications that target chronic conditions, the effectiveness of such incentives in driving business-based results is documented: At Caterpillar, for example, generic statins for cholesterol management were moved to a $0 co-pay; brand-name statins, to $35 per month or no benefit paid, depending on the dose. The plan, which covers 90,000 people, saw increased medication compliance, contributing to a $750,000 per month savings to the company and $175,000 savings per month to employees.

"These barriers to the implementation of incentives actually reduce their impact and have the potential to reduce any measurable progress," the report says of the CMS recommendations.

At Caterpillar, patients were given a financial incentive: the cheaper drugs cost them less and the expensive drugs cost them more. Normally, these price differences are hidden behind a one-size fits all copay which is supported by the monthly premiums. Normally, the cost of individual healthcare treatments is obfuscated by the overcall cast of the healthcare "plan".

Caterpillar brought some of those costs out into the light -- and reduced them. Obama and the Democrats have been discussing healthcare "reform" for the pat several months. They're desperately looking for a way to "bend the cost curve" and hold down the cost of healthcare. I think Caterpillar found a way. It's simple: charge patients more and they'll pay less.

I hope everyone who supports "affordable healthcare for all" will support my plan.

Sam Dodson

On June 9th, a remarkable event occurred at Cheshire County Jail in New Hampshire: one of its inmates - a Mr. Sam Dodson, arrested two months past and held on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, possession of property without a serial number, common law contempt of court, and refusing to be processed - was not so much released from his cell as ejected from it, and so fast that the officers who escorted him out the building doors did not bother to repossess the orange prison uniform Dodson was then wearing.

What makes this abrupt end to Dodson's extended stay at the facility a watershed moment in modern libertarian (small "l", so as not to be confused with the Libertarian Party organization - and even then, Sam Dodson and his Free State Project friends might bristle at the term) activism is that it marks the end of a battle of wills between Dodson and Keene District Court's Judge Burke with an unambiguous victory for a principled, noncompliant activist against government rule of law.

From his arrest through the entirety of his 60-day incarceration, Dodson refused to recognize the Keene District Court's legitimacy; he denied their "duty" to lock him up for the "crime" of video-recording in the courthouse lobby, forced his arresting officers to carry him to the institution, refused on arrival to give so much as his legal name for their documentation (which Judge Burke answered by illegally refusing him a trial), forswore all solid foods for a month-long hunger strike, and worked with fellow activists to both promote his case in the public eye and pelt the court with stinging motions that Judge Burke ignored at his peril.

Judge Burke

In short, Sam Dodson put into practice exactly the strategy so long now argued for by Free Staters and other anarchists/libertarians/voluntaryists in resisting government encroachment on our personal freedoms: he just did not consent to his own victimization. All demands on the part of his kidnappers - for that is what they were, he says - to comply with their rules were met with long, careful replies that ultimately amounted to a simple: "No."

The apparent success of this approach seemingly taken straight out of an Ayn Rand novel is giving food for thought to the many self-described minarchists, voluntaryists, and anarchists who empathize with Dodson's politics but have remained unconvinced tactical disobedience can make a real difference. As LewRockwell.com's blog has noted, the "common critique of activism and civil disobedience is that those participating in it accomplish nothing other than being jailed or fined, putting their property and lives at stake... [That the most it really does is help in] spreading the word about the beast that is the state." The events of June 9th may shift some of those fence-sitters' views.

As for those libertarians already in league with him and to Dodson himself, the release is as intoxicating as blood in the water to a pack of predators; they'll be following up the win with further pressure on both judge and court. Quite likely they'll be including among their next moves a set of their own civil and criminal complaints. After all, even anarchists and statists can agree it should be illegal to kidnap and hold a man for two months against his will without trial.

LINKS:

"Free Minds TV", a primary YouTube channel of the Keene activisit network, has an interview with Sam here.

The Free State Project-associated FreeKeene.com website has been reporting on Dodson's story from the beginning. The latest is always here, as well as two months' worth of articles that give a fuller picture of the ordeal's twists and turns.

Sam Dodson's own personal project in the service of our liberty - his Obscured Truth Network - will likely soon be updating again as a result of his return.

The height of Sam Dodson's fame (or infamy) during his protest was this article in the Boston Globe and this featured interview on FOX News' Freedom Watch.

Something I've been thinking lately. Am I different as a Christian than I would be if I wasn't a Christian? Am I just wasting my life?

In My Blood

Katongole offers a clear and insightful history of what happened in Rwanda before the genocide, including the fast advance of Christianity. He then offers compelling analysis of what happened during the genocide, particularly amongs Christians, who were using machetes to violently kill one another. But Katongole doesn't stop there. He challenges us to learn lessons from this ugly history. He challenges us to never think that "I'd never do that!" or "That will never happen here!"

Last night I read these words in Mirror to the Church: "Maybe the deepest tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is that Christianity didn't seem to make any difference. Rwandans performed a script that had shaped them more deeply than the biblical story had. Behind the silences of the genocide, Hutus and Tutsis alike were shaped by a story that held their imagination captive." Then, Katongole goes on to offer this challenge: "Paying attention to history helps us to see that this was not just Rwanda's problem. The story that made Rwanda is the story of the West. When we look at Rwanda as a mirror to the church, it helps us realize what little consequence the biblical story has on the way Christians live their lives in the West. As Christians, we cannot remember the Rwandan genocide without admitting that the gospel did not seem to have a real impact on most Rwandan's lives. Seeing this, we have to ask: does Christianity make any real difference in the West?" Wow.

Don't Waste Your Life

Suffer/ Yeah do it for Christ if you trying to figure what to do with your life/ if you making a lot money hope you doing it right because the money is Gods you better steward it right/ stay focused if you ain't got no ride/ your life ain't wrapped up in what you drive/ the clothes you wear the job you work/ the color your skin naw you Christian first/ people living life for a job/ make a lil money start living for a car/ get em a house a wife kids and a dog/ when they retire they living high on the hog/ but guess what they didn't ever really live at all/ to live is Christ yeah that's Paul I recall/ to die is gain so for Christ we give it all/ he's the treasure you'll never find in the mall/ Your money your singleness marriage talent and time/ they were loaned to you to show the world that Christ is Divine/ that's why it's Christ in my rhymes/ That's why it's Christ all the time/see my whole world is built around him He's the life in my lines/ I refused to waste my life/ he's too true ta chase that ice/ here's my gifts and time cause I'm constantly trying to be used to praise the Christ/ If he's truly raised to life/ then this news should change your life/ and by his grace you can put your faith in place that rules your days and nights.

Health Reform's Savings Myth, by Arnold Kling:

Anyway, what I was looking for on the web was a link to this article, which says that modern doctors are too beholden to insurance companies, rather than to patients. Nowhere does the the author mention that in 1960 fifty percent of personal health care expenditures were paid for by patients themselves, whereas now it is only ten percent. Instead, he writes as if modern doctors are greedier than they used to be.

Doctors have bills to pay into. But most patients expect their doctor to ignore the person paying the bill and listen to the person demanding that they (the doctor) do something that might reduce the payment. And then the patient gets angry when the doctor does no such thing.

That's why my health insurance reform plan would involve shifting healthcare spending from large premiums and all-inclusive health "insurance" plans to small premiums and plans that only offer catastrophic insurance coverage. Patients would have more money left in their pocket, to allow them to pay more money out of pocket.

Do that and you'll discover that doctors are suddenly more responsive to patient needs and desires.

The Bible is not the "Word of God"; it is not "inerrant" nor "divinely-inspired", except in the same sense that any book can be said to be inspired by its subject.

That's a statement you've probably heard in some form or other fairly often, at least if you live in a Western or Western-ized country; one of the unique traits of this latest century is that it does not lack for atheists and agnostics. But you've certainly never heard it from me, because at least until three years ago I took the supernatural accuracy of the "Good Book" to be a given, indeed as one of the unassailable axioms at the foundation of my world view.

Now I don't. Can't, really - and the irony of my new inability to agree with the churches assuring us of a flawless text is that I developed it through my obedience to those same "spiritual authorities". A parade of pastors, professors, missionaries, and friends enjoined me to study the Word for myself, so I did - and my resulting growth in understanding quite naturally produced disbelief.

This is not to say that I blame (credit?) any of my teachers, amateur or professional, for my decision to renounce the misconception of the Bible as "perfect" - I have never been told anything by them but that unvarnished truth lies between the leather covers. My conclusions are my own and anyway, obviously other people in possession of far more detailed information about the life and times of the Testaments have remained believers (the apologist Dr. Norman L. Geisler, for instance). I merely tip my hat to them all for pointing the way to the evidence.

For evidence for disbelief it is, to any who are willing to interpret it without undue bias in its favor - and even to some who interpret with it. I was in fact a member of that latter camp back when I first began my concerted effort to be Biblically literate (for that matter, I still think I am). If ever I ran across a charge of inconsistency against the Bible, I took care to absorb the best arguments I could find from both the prosecution and defense (considering Geisler's defense, for instance, on one hand and prominent anti-christs such as Dan Barker on the other). When I judged that a reasonable doubt existed, I acquited.

Far too often that reasonable doubt just doesn't exist, though - and worse, some of the Christian arguments employed on the part of the Bible's defense are on their very face so absurd I want to remonstrate their proponents for either their dishonesty or stupidity. The very same Christians who put forward the ideas of which I speak (but which I shall not at the moment detail, as point-by-point refutation is not the point of this particular missive) would sneer or laugh if the same arguments were suggested to them by members of other religions.

Incidentally, those same arguments would be suggested, too, if those Christians actually took time to read what other religions are saying, which brings to my mind a tangential issue I nevertheless feel the urge to herein mention: the seemingly near-complete lack of authentic investigation of other beliefs and counter-claims by Christians. By "authentic investigation", I mean the consideration of primary sources of information: actually reading what Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris have to say, for instance, instead of only reading what Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, and Timothy Keller have to say about what atheists say. Allowing the defenders of your faith to cherry-pick quotations from your enemies to feed you - and relying mainly on that information to inform your world view - is dishonest, not to mention ineffective, since surprisingly often the people you assume to be honest (because hey, they're Christians, right?) aren't nearly as trustworthy as you'd like. Exhibits A, B, and C: the supposedly famous archaelogist Dr. Ron Charles (the provided link leads to an earlier Minorthoughts.com post about him), "Dr." Jason Gastrich, and the makers of the film Speechless: Silencing the Christians.

Now that I've gotten that off my shoulders, back to the Bible. A Christian might reasonably ask: "You say that reasonable doubt doesn't exist. Yet clearly many disagree with you, including people with doctorates. How can you think the Bible's mistakes are _so _evident when people who know more than you don't see what you see?"

That's not necessarily a question I can wholly answer. I do have my theories. One is that some who claim inerrancy secretly don't believe it and others - this I know for a fact - consider some of the Bible's "problems"to be signs of God actually influencing events by making people suddenly forget things, etc. Another theory is that there's an important difference between many of them and us skeptics: whereas they bring their full attention to the Bible as an act of worship, we considered it important to approach it from a neutral perspective and did so. Finally and certainly, the fact is that most people who want to believe something will, regardless of how obviously incorrect or totally ridiculous; modern cults and political parties (which aren't much different from cults, really) prove it on a daily basis. To the extent people feel it necessary to justify their beliefs, they have demonstrated that their justifications can be invented with little to no pricking of their consciences. I see no reason why those who claim to be Christians or religious Jews should be any different, whether they are laypeople or deans of Christian colleges.

I'll conclude this statement of disbelief with a few words on what I still do believe and what I don't. At least for now, I remain willing to believe in God, as well as a version of Jesus the Son of God somewhat less fanciful than the so-called "Four Witnesses" would recommend. I confess that I'm holding onto that conviction with my fingernails at the moment and feeling my grip lessen with each subsequent discovery; it's possible I still believe only because of my previously-mentioned bias to do so. I was raised to love God and to love Jesus. And I do. To let them go entirely would be emotionaly devastating, many times as difficult as letting go of the Bible (what my professor once referred to as the "fourth member of the Christian Quadrinity") has been. Also the implications of a godless multiverse utterly terrify me, for very good and well-known reasons. I don't want to die. I don't want my soon-to-be wife to die. Nor her grandfather, recently diagnosed with inoperable cancer, or my grandmother, nearing 90 and afflicted with Alzheimer's...

Those are the negative reasons for wanting there to exist a god. Positive ones exist, too. The gift of life is so precious and rewarding that I often feel infused with gratefulness for it, as though the emotion were pumping itself out of my heart and distributing through all my circulatory system. I would very much like this gratefulness to have an object that comprehends it.

I digress. Some items within the Bible I find unsupported and unconvincing include: its inerrancy and incorruptibility, most of the supposed 600+ messianic prophecies, Mary's miraculous pregnancy, stories of Jesus' childhood, Hell as presented, the historicity of the Book of Job, the historicity of the Book of Jonah, the assertion that the Book of Ruth is historical or even of a religious character, the historicity of Genesis's first several chapters, the doctrine of "original sin", the idea that all of the Bible's books combine to present one unified and convincing theology, the Biblical assertion that all who have not believed are "without excuse", the theological assertion that the Bible should be treated as one work by one author instead of as an anthology of works by multiple authors, and the complete reliability of each of the four Gospels' accounts.

Everything else I'm still thinking about.

Maybe you should start thinking about it, too.

Future posts, when they are forthcoming, will concern themselves with specific questions within and about the Scriptures I'm currently investigating.

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial, we have always been - and, I believe, continue to be - in too many ways . . . a nation of cowards. We . . . simply do not talk enough with each other about race." - Attorney General Eric Holder

"Oh, fine. Have it your way." - Adam Volle

I'm not the sort of man who worries himself a lot about racial issues.

I've never felt any need to wear a "White Power" t-shirt in order to make a point about "Black Power" ones. I think Affirmative Action is an obviously flawed concept, but it's not a pet issue. Illegal immigration bothers me little more. And hey, if a buncha folk of whatever bloodline care to celebrate "(X) History Month", I say, "Hey, sounds interesting," because y'know, really, it does.

Also, I'm aware that any discussion of "white people", "black people", etc. is fairly useless at best and racist at worst, since what you're really talking about when you discuss "white people", for instance, is a set of ethnicities (nevermind how many individuals) so diverse that only the most vague and general statements will be accurate. Take a hike through Europe (no, really; you won't regret it) and you'll be amazed at how much attitudes change as soon as you cross a border. You will find, for instance, that in Italy most traffic lines are considered mere suggestions, while in Switzerland you will be glared at for jaywalking. The same is of course true of "black people" or even just "African people", who in fact recognize the differences among themselves so well that we can't keep them from killing each other.

Finally, I'm an individualist. Ultimately I believe we are a planet filled with people, not races and nations. The idea of discussing races as though this world is populated by a half-dozen hive-minds with histories strikes me as largely nonsensical. A person does not bear part of any 'group responsibility' because he or she is born into a certain group.

So let's be clear: I'm not really interested in talking about various levels of responsibility attached to different skin colors. People like Eric Holder are. And it's only because they seem desperate to have a discussion of this sort that I'm now saying OK, fine - I'll do it. I will discuss how white people relate to black people, and red people, and yellow people, and everyone else. If only this one time, I will enter into our national dialogue on race relations and discuss both the role I think my own "white" race has played and will continue to play on God's green earth. I will do this thing, and I will do it for Eric Holder.

When you're finished reading, just remember to at least give me credit for this: I did wait until Black History Month was good and over first.

OK. That all said:

White people are at least thus far the coolest race to ever walk the face of this planet.

In all of recorded history, no other people has achieved so much in the sciences, nor on the battlefield, nor shown so much compassion off of it. No other demographic has contributed as objectively great a gift to the world as "our" (boy, how strange that feels to write) ideas of government and human rights. And no race, finally, has so well born the brunt of others' unmerited anger.

All of the above probably sounds like sick humor or absurd delusion to those familiar with the events of just the last half a millenium. Haven't white people committed many of the worst atrocities in history, they rightly ask? What about Slavery? What about Colonialism? What about all the genocide - from the wiping out of Native-American cultures to the Holocaust? What about Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

But such condemnatory questions - and the standard by which their answers are typically judged - depend on a very myopic world view. That is, you can only talk about how awful white people were to, say, own slaves, if you ignore the fact that Slavery is a worldwide institution that has existed in almost every known culture (including those of Africa and Israel) since time immemorial. A society of slaves has always been the standard rule by which other instititutions are judged, not the exception - and it would indeed be unfairly unobjective to judge any other way.

According to that standard, then, slaveholders prior to the 1800s were not especially evil. Instead, people who did not own slaves were especially good.

And who didn't support slavery prior to the 1800s? Very few people - some of whom were white abolitionists.

White people - indeed, all people - must be held to that same standard when we discuss the cringe-inducing subject of genocide. Though we may find it distasteful to think about, acts of cultural and ethnic genocide have long been common in world history. The ancient empires - those created by the Assyrians, Mongolians, Jews, Huns, Greeks, Babylonians, Japanese, Tamerlane, and numerous others - all often either completely eradicated entire cities full of their enemies or forced them to intermarry, opting for the complete destruction of others' identities than their physical forms. The city of Babylon, for instance, no longer exists for a reason, and Baghdad's population level did not recover from its visit by Tamerlane until the 1800s (!). In the context of this past, comparatively humanitarian countries such as the U.S.A. are the rogue states; the People's Republic of China, Nazi Germany, and North Korea look especially competent but not original.

Which brings us right 'round to judging the morality of the white races of Europe and eventually North America. Against this backdrop, this standard of racial and national relations, "our" conquering most of the known world was extremely impressive for the skill with which it was done, but not its depravity. Morally, all that is unique about the European race is what "we" did after placing "our" collective jackboot on the necks of other nations: We simply took it off. Other races were given not only their freedom, but equal representation in "our" governments.

This is an absolute miracle. In the history of the world, the white races are almost totally unique in having pulled up other races and given them equal standing within their own territories - in even encouraging other races to join them, to participate fully in the government. In fact, such openness is still comparatively rare in the countries of other races (how welcomed are immigrants to Asian lands? Arab ones?).

Let us also understand that other races were truly given the equal standing they now enjoy in white-dominated countries - for instance, the civil rights of African-Americans in the United States. The true triumph of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s many marches is not that he marched and freedom resulted; all of the marching in the world would have accomplished little if a majority of whites in the U.S.A. had not agreed that black people deserved all the rights they enjoyed. The glory of the Civil Rights movement instead is that the U.S.'s white establishment did not kill everyone involved. Yes, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s volunteers very bravely faced down dogs, a few arsonists, and police brutality, which are impressive obstacles - but let's admit that they were not exactly on par with the response of the Chinese government when its citizens tried to do the same:

[caption id="attachment_909" align="alignnone" width="755" caption="Tianenmen Square"][/caption]

To review, then: in the white races we have a set of people who not only successfully conquered other races, but then proceeded to return their freedom to them - and in some cases repay them for the inconvenience. In the context of world history or even just modern times, they/we are saints - doubly so if you consider our forbearance when confronted with people like Reverend Lowery, who at President Obama's inauguration declared he pines for the day "when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

(A couple of points for you, Reverend: (1) by and large, we whites aren't asking for the blacks to give back anything; in fact as far as I can tell it's you guys and the reds who keep demanding reparations. We whites don't even need a 'thank you' for freeing you. We'd be content if you'd just shut up. (2) Also, a big 'Jump in a river' on behalf of 'yellows' everywhere. (3) The only society in the world that has so 'embraced what's right' as to allow a minority member to become its chief executive is... the U.S.A., dominated for the whole of its existence by white people.)

If I did indeed attach differing levels of group responsibility and value to various skin colors, I'd consider white people about the best possible group to which I might belong. While as guilty as anyone of history's ugliest acts, in the last couple hundred years white people have - almost as a race - evolved.

But that would only be if I thought of races as truly possessing their own identities. I don't.

If you do, though, then A.G. Eric Holder's comments notwithstanding, you may just want to shut up about it. It's not really a dialogue in which history is on your side.

Keith Hennessey: Basic facts on the General Motors bankruptcy. http://bit.ly/kJJFg

Ian Murray on GM: Cut out the union liability and the requirement to build small cars and you have a profitable company. http://bit.ly/7cmsz

GM files for bankruptcy. http://bit.ly/axWCW It should have happened a year ago and it should have happened without government bailouts.

It's a little-known fact that Steve Ditko, hailed by readers of comic books for co-creating Spider-Man and much of that character's supporting cast, occasionally still publishes new stories.

It's little-known for several reasons. First, all of these new tales can only be found between the covers of small-press magazines with extremely low print runs and sometimes a complete absence of color; Mr. Ditko's refusal to allow any publisher to compromise what he believes to be his artistic integrity has resulted in such publications being his only outlet. Second, the content of Mr. Ditko's stories nowadays is generally unattractive to mainstream audiences, as they adhere entirely to Objectivist principles of morality. All of Mr. Ditko's new fiction is and has now for years been unapologetically and indeed preachily (to the point wherein the narrator often lectures the reader on how to interpret the story) libertarian. Some of his product even eschews the art of fiction entirely and simply serves as visual for his pro-liberty ideas.

The piece of his below, entitled "Mutual Consent/Force", is a great example of that:

I think it's a quite effective presentation; it reminds me of Jack T. Chick's successful series of religious tracts. The Libertarian Party should hire him to produce something similar they can hand out at information booths and conventions... but then, there are many things the Libertarian Party should do.

Anyway, thanks to Dinosaurs Garden's putting it up on their site, an online .pdf file containing the whole of Mr. Ditko's long out-of-print "Avenging World" comic book is now available for your perusal, should you be so inclined. It's an extremely well-drawn presentation of our world's problems and their libertarian solutions, hosted in an endearingly cliche manner by our own beleaguered Planet Earth.

Law professor Richard Epstein doesn't like Judge Sotomayor either. He points out that she issued a lousy opinion trampling all over property rights.

Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the "public use language." Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion--one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.

I have written about Didden in Forbes. The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined. Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he owned in a redevelopment district in Port Chester over which the town of Port Chester had given Greg Wasser control. Wasser told Didden that he would approve the project only if Didden paid him $800,000 or gave him a partnership interest. The "or else" was that the land would be promptly condemned by the village, and Wasser would put up a pharmacy himself. Just that came to pass. But the Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: "We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation."

She may be empathetic towards plaintiffs but I'm not sure how that's suppose to reassure me. I didn't grow up poor and I didn't graduate from Yale law school, but Greg Wasser's demand sure sounds a lot like extortion to me. If her court will allow rich, politically connected developers to use government connections to demand payoffs from politically weak property owners -- where exactly does that leave the poor?

Was Bart Didden's case just not sympathetic enough for her?

The pharmacy profession likes to think of itself as an indispensable part of the healthcare landscape. The APhA (American Pharmacists Association) says that pharmacists are "essential in patient care for optimal medication use". That implies that pharmacists spend a lot of time educating patients about their drugs and advising doctors on the best drugs to use.

But talk to a retail pharmacist about her job sometime. Listen closely to what she does most often. You'll find that she's basically a human vending machine. When she's not grabbing drugs off of a shelf and putting them in a bag for patients, she's probably swiping an insurance card and figuring out how much they owe. Occasionally, she'll get to answer questions about how the drug works and how it interactions with other medicines, but that's comparatively rare.

Enter the pharmacy vending machine.

Integrity Urgent Care, 4323 Integrity Center Point, in northeast Colorado Springs, recently installed a machine stocked with dozens of common prescriptions -- antibiotics, painkillers, asthma inhalers and oral steroids. It dispenses patients' medications like a bag of potato chips or package of Skittles, and it is the first such machine in Colorado, according to the Minneapolis-based manufacturer, InstyMeds.

The process works like this: The doctor or physician's assistant submits the prescription electronically to the machine and gives the patient a code. The patient types in the code and a birthdate and receives the medicine after the bar code is triple checked.

A phone on the machine connects the user directly to a pharmacist 24/7 if the customer has questions or concerns.

If you're job is to perform the function of a vending machine, you probably won't be too happy that an actual vending machine is being used. Enter, the APhA spokesperson:

Kristen Binaso, a New Jersey pharmacist and spokesperson for the American Pharmacists Association, said people need quick access to their medications, but she said people should understand that a drug is not a package of Ritz crackers. Even certain common drugs can increase sensitivity to the sun, react negatively to alcohol, cause diarrhea, or interact with vitamins, herbs and over-the-counter drugs.

Her statement ignores something: the FDA mandates that all drugs come extensively labeled with warnings about every possible danger or complication. So, it sounds like a vending machine can replace much of what a retail pharmacist does on a regular basis.

And, this is a good thing. I wish that more pharmacists would recognize this. There is a very limited future in taking an average prescription, putting the pills in a bottle in a bag, reading the list of drug warnings, and taking payment.

The future of pharmacy is in the work that machines can't (yet) do: helping a patient recognize what the "blue pill", "red pill", "square yellow pill", and "round yellow pill" actually are. Helping that patient understand what each drug is supposed to, how it should make them feel better, what to be aware of when it it's not working, knowing which side effect goes with which drug(s), etc. Pharmacists have a great future in helping patients know whether their particular cocktail is safe or whether there's a potentially deadly interaction between multiple drugs.

But all of that counseling work can't be done well in today's retail setting. Today's retail setting is focused around volume, not around thorough counseling sessions. And that's not going to change until retail pharmacists are willing to allow vending machines to take over the tedious, rote work of actually dispensing pills.

On a closing note: what does it mean when people talk about a shortage of pharmacists? Are they referring to a shortage of dispensers? Well, technology can help with that? Or are they referring to a shortage of counselors? Technology can help with that too. By freeing pharmacists from the drudgery of being a vending machine, technology will create more pharmacist hours to be used for counseling. It will be as though thousands more pharmacy graduates entered the market, ready to help.

Thank you InstyMeds. You're helping to take us forward to the future.

President Barack Obama nominated appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court today. I don't like her, as a judge.

Here's what I mean. The Law is the bedrock foundation of society. It is the set of rules by which society operates. For a society to be just, it must have one set of rules that applies to all people. Judges apply the rules to individual events as cases are brought before them.

For a society to be just, the judges must apply the Law the same way every time. It doesn't matter if the plaintiff is rich or poor, young or old, of minority or majority race, male or female, popular or unpopular, respectful or vulgar, thin or obese, short or tell, blonde or brunette -- it doesn't matter. The justice must apply the Law the same way to everybody. Any other standard is an injustice.

Now, it's true. Certain legislation may lead to unjust outcomes. But that is a political issue, not a legal issue. People must work through their government representatives to change the Law. Judges can only apply the Law as it is written. If each judge hands down the opinion that he or she feels is most "right", a person's rights and privileges depend not on impartial Laws but on the whims of powerful, unaccountable individuals.

I don't think that Justice Sotomayor meets that standard. She has fallen short in both her words and her previous judicial rulings.

In 2001, she gave a speech entitled A Latina Judge's Voice. She said:

Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Here she is explicitly saying that "wise" judicial rulings don't come from an impartial application of the rules. Instead, she believes that "wise" judicial rulings depend on one's gender and cultural background. Apparently, she believes that the Law changes with each person ruling on a case, that there is no fixed standard. That scares me.

While speaking at Duke University in 2005, Judge Sotomayor said that the Federal Appeals courts are "where policy is made". She didn't see her job as an impartial application of rules. She saw it as a place to decide what the rules are. If you're going before Judge Sotomayor, you can't know in advance what to expect. You can expect her to decide what the Law is based on who you are and how sympathetic she is to your case. That's a recipe for tyranny, not liberty.

So how has she decided cases? Well, let's take a very recent example: Ricci v. DeStefano.

In 2003, the New Haven, Connecticut, Fire Department sought to fill captain and lieutenant positions. Because its union contract required promotions to be based upon examinations, the City contracted with Industrial/Organizational Solutions, Inc. ("IOS") to develop exams, which were administered to qualifying applicants.

Pursuant to a City regulation known as the "rule of three," once test results are "certified," the Department must promote from the group of applicants achieving the top three scores. Immediate application of the "rule of three" to these exams would not have allowed for the promotion of any black firefighters. More broadly, black applicants' pass rate on the lieutenant exam was approximately half of the rate for white applicants - a disparity more marked than for prior exams. However, if additional vacancies opened, black applicants would have been eligible to be considered for those promotions, based upon these exams' results.

Because of these outcomes, the City's independent exam review board, which must vote to certify test results, held hearings to consider the possibility that the tests were racially biased. The board heard from a representative of an IOS competitor, who testified that the results showed "adverse impact" and that he could design tests with less disparate results and better measuring the jobs' requirements. He also conceded that the City's tests did not show an adverse impact greater than that allowed by law. Another witness, an experienced firefighter, testified that the exams were comparable to those he had taken in the past.

A City official testified that if the board chose to certify the results, then the city could be subject to a disparate impact suit from the minority applicants who did not qualify for promotions. Yet, his testimony may have been contradicted by IOS's "technical validity report." There is some evidence to suggest IOS was prepared to issue such a report, which might have "establish[ed] the City's lawful use of the test results." However, the City argues that IOS never offered to prepare the report nor would the report have "proved" the legality of the test.

Because the exam review board split evenly, 2-2, on whether to certify the exam results (with one member recusing herself based upon a conflict of interest), they were not certified.

A group of white firefighters, one of whom is also Hispanic, who scored some of the highest results on the administered exams, filed suit against the City and its officials, alleging that the City's action violated Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court granted the City's motion, agreeing that the City did not need to certify the results because doing so could subject it to litigation for violating Title VII's disparate impact prohibition.

Basically, the District Court threw out the case saying that even though the firefighters had met the stated criteria for promotion, the city did not have to promote them if the promotion would unduly benefit one racial group over another. The firefighters appealed their case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Sotomayor was one of three judges who upheld the decision of the District Court. Judge Sotomayor failed to engage the Constitutional issues at stake and failed to defend the firefighters who had played according to the rules. By signing on to the flimsy opinion of the majority, she upheld a racial ruling instead of making a colorblind ruling according to the Law.

Justice should be blind. Judge Sotomayor has shown a willingness to take off the blindfold and decide which side of the scales she likes better. For that reason, I consider her unfit to serve as a United States Supreme Court Justice.