A Guy in the Pew

John Broome, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and previously a professor of economics at the University of Bristol, has a very interesting analysis of the ethics of climate change in the Scientific American . the ethical issue he focuses on this this: future generations will benefit the most from the current generation's efforts to stop climate change, but the evidence is that future generations will be richer. As any economist will tell you, in doing a cost-benefit analysis, a critical factor is the selection of the discount rate. As I previously noted , the Stern Report did an economic analysis that set the discount rate very low. Broome explains why this makes sense from a moral point of view. It is a long article. Here are some excerpts: Climate change raises a number of ethical questions. How should we—all of us living today—evaluate the well-being of future generations, given that they are likely to have more material goods than we do? Many people, s...

Scott Bailey thinks we need to call the Prosperity Gospel for what it is--a heresy: I have two suggestions for today. First, it is time to start calling the followers of the prosperity message any name other than Christian. My suggestion is that we call them Mammonians. They are not followers of Christ. They have assumed a set of assumptions from a materialistic society and have projected that onto pieces of the text. They are not the least concerned with the broad range of Scripture or with what Jesus had to say, therefore, we should refuse to call them Christians. However, they are very interested in Mammon. They want more of him. They think about him, they long for more of him in their life and heart. They even turn to other faiths like Christianity and look through their Scriptures to see if they can find any incantations or rituals to bring more of their god Mammon into their life. They worship and love Mammon; therefore, we should call them what they are: Mammonians. Secondly, wh...

In the past week, I have blogged about faith and money , and I have blogged about the inane obsession by some on the so-called "War on Christmas". Well, today I read an article that puts the two together. It seems that a group of clergy have formed a so-called Advent Conspiracy that aims to wage it own Christian war on Christmas--not the religious holiday of Christmas, but the secular comemrcialization of Christmas: Americans will spend about $475 billion this year on gifts, decorations and parties that many won't even remember next year. They will run themselves ragged--shopping, wrapping and celebrating. And some won't pay off their Christmas debt until March, if they're lucky. "We celebrate Jesus' birthday by giving ourselves presents," McKinley says. "We don't give him anything." McKinley is pastor of the Imago Dei Community, a Christian church of about 1,500 members that meets in a high school auditorium here. It dawned on McKinley...

There have been some interesting stories in the press over the last few days about issues of faith and money, including this Wall Street Journal story about the backlash against tithing. Since my wife is the Stewardship Chair at Trinity, and we have been tithing since we were married (Allison insisted), I thought that it was about time to post something about money. After all, this blog has written quite a lot about sex and faith and even science and faith--its time to talk about money. I think that the best starting starting point is this wonderful column by Terry Mattingly: It was the kind of cryptic theological statement that is often found stuck on automobile bumpers. This sticker said: "Don't let my car fool you. My treasure is in heaven." This echoed the Bible passage in which Jesus urged believers to, "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. ... For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." This sticker's creator probably intended it...