Month: May 2017

God at War: Interview with Greg Boyd

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for god at warA couple months ago, I gave a talk on “trials and their purpose“, which basically become a discussion of the problem of evil in Mormon thought. I read a number of books in preparation for it, including David B. Hart’s The Doors of the Sea, Michael Austin’s Re-reading Job, and N.T. Wright’s Evil & the Justice of God. Two books that I didn’t finish prior to the talk was Jon Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil and Gregory Boyd’s God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict. The latter in particular I wish I had finished in time. Boyd, a Princeton-educated theologian and pastor, approaches the problem of evil from what he calls the warfare worldview: the perspective that this world is a battlefield between spiritual forces of good and evil. He argues that the

biblical authors generally assume the existence of intermediary spiritual or cosmic beings. These beings, variously termed “gods,” “angels,” “principalities and powers,” “demons,” or, in the earliest strata, “Leviathan” or some other cosmic monster, can and do wage war against God, wreak havoc on his creation and bring all manner of ills upon humanity. Whether portraying Yahweh as warring against Rahab and other cosmic monsters of chaos or depicting Jesus as casting out a legion of demons from the possessed Gerasene, the Bible as well as the early postapostolic church assumes that the creation is caught up in the crossfire of an age-old cosmic battle between good and evil. As in other warfare worldviews, the Bible assumes that the course of this warfare greatly affects life on earth (pg. 18).

Boyd traces God’s conflict with the forces of chaos and evil from the Old Testament (e.g., the hostile waters of creation, Leviathan, Rahab, the gods of Ps. 82, etc.) to the New Testament (e.g., Jesus’ exorcisms, Christus Victor atonement theology). According to Boyd, the evils of this world are not only caused by the free will of human beings, but the free will of demonic beings as well. The book is fascinating and certainly interesting for Mormons, whose own teachings and scriptures depict a pre-mortal “war in heaven” that continues today. Boyd’s analysis brings new meaning to Mormon’s words: “Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil; for the devil is an enemy unto God, and fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually” (Moroni 7:12).

You can see an interview with Boyd below in which he discusses some of these ideas.

Post-Seculars: Science-Oriented, Religiously Inclined

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A fairly recent study by sociologists Timothy O’Brien and Shiri Noy looks at the relation between science, religion, and politics with interesting–and perhaps counter-intuitive–results.

“We were looking at the assumption that science and religion are conflicting sources of knowledge,” O’Brien said. “There is this assumption in the popular imagination that if you’re scientifically oriented you can’t be religious, and if you’re religious you can’t be scientifically oriented. What was found was that it is true to some extent. We found three big groups of Americans based on their attitudes about science, their knowledge about science, and their attitudes about religion.”

The author broke the survey data into three categories:

  1. Moderns: “those most familiar with and favorable toward science.”
  2. Traditionals: “the most religiously devout and the least familiar with science.”
  3. Post-seculars: “whose worldviews blend elements of both science and religion.”

“As you might expect,” O’Brien continues, “moderns tend to hold more liberal or progressive opinions and traditionalists tend to be more conservative or orthodox.” The post-seculars, however, were different from both groups. You can see how they compare to moderns and traditionals below:

  • Human Life: Post-seculars are “less supportive than moderns of making contraceptives accessible to teenagers. Postseculars and traditionals are also less likely than moderns to agree that it is acceptable for individuals to end their own lives and that patients with incurable diseases have a right to die…[P]ostseculars’ restrictive beliefs about abortion and other issues in this domain are evidence that appreciation and understanding of science do not necessarily lead to liberal social attitudes” (pg. 7).
  • Gender and Sexuality: “Results indicate that compared with each other group, moderns hold more progressive views of gender roles, sexuality, pornography, and sex education. There are no significant differences in postseculars’ and traditionals’ attitudes in this area, indicating that as with attitudes about human life, familiarity with science does not ensure liberal sociopolitical beliefs” (pg. 10).
  • Race and Civil Liberties: “Given their liberal views on gender and sexuality, it is perhaps surprising that moderns are less supportive than traditionals of affirmative action. Postseculars are even less supportive than moderns of affirmative action. Yet this pattern aligns with moderns’ and postseculars’ greater likelihood of agreeing that African Americans can overcome prejudice without favors. In addition, traditionals and postseculars are more likely than moderns to explain Black-White differences in terms of innate qualities, whereas moderns are more likely than traditionals to attribute race disparities to educational opportunities and discrimination…Moderns are more likely than traditionals to agree that atheists, communists, gays and lesbians, militarists, and racists should be able to place books in public libraries and to speak publically. Postseculars are also more supportive than traditionals of these civil liberties these groups” (pg. 10).
  • Government and Social Assistance: While “postseculars are more religious than traditionals, they are less supportive than traditionals of government efforts to reduce inequality” (pg. 10).
  • Criminal Justice: “Interestingly, although moderns are less likely than traditionals to approve of the police’s use of force in some situations, moderns are more likely than traditionals to approve of police force under other circumstances. Furthermore, compared with traditionals, moderns report that courts should deal with criminals more harshly. Postseculars’ opinions in this domain generally resemble moderns with one exception: despite moderns’ relatively tough-on-crime attitudes, they are more likely than each other group to support the decriminalization of marijuana” (pg. 10).
  • Children, Families, and School: “Postseculars share moderns’ emphasis on independent thinking but emphasize obedience more and social acceptance less than moderns. Furthermore, traditionals are more likely than moderns to view spanking as an acceptable form of punishment for children. Finally, consistent with the prominence of faith in the traditional and postsecular worldviews, these groups are each more likely than moderns to approve of prayer in public schools” (pg. 10).
  • Personal Well-being and Interpersonal Trust: “Postseculars…report more positive interpersonal attitudes compared with traditionals” (pg. 11).

In conclusion,

In most, but not all, domains, moderns’ beliefs are relatively liberal or inclusive, whereas traditionals’ are more conservative or exclusive. However, the postsecular perspective defies this binary. Individuals in this category, who are familiar with and appreciative of science and also deeply religious, are marked by sociopolitical attitudes that cannot be consistently labeled conservative or liberal (pg. 11).

Erased (2016)

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This is part of What I’m Watching.

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I never really watched anime growing up. In my mind, anime was equivalent to Pokemon and I wasn’t having any of that. Plus, the “weird” kids watched anime. I saw maybe two or three anime films as a kid, all by Miyazaki. As an undergrad, I watched the series Moshidora. But this was due to its connection to Peter Drucker, not out of any interest in anime (though I really enjoyed the series). It wasn’t until I was graduated, working, and married that I started taking a slight interest in anime. I remember doing a Miyazaki binge after Nathaniel recommended Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, followed by a couple of non-Miyazaki Studio Ghibli films.

But it wasn’t until last year’s Your Name that I started really paying attention to anime. After binging several series (some of which I’ll likely touch on here at Difficult Run), I was in search of a new one to watch. I came across Erased (the Japanese title translates literally as “The Town Without Me“) as I was looking up well-reviewed anime series and decided–against my better judgment–to check out the first 25-minute episode around 10pm. You know, something to watch before I went to bed. By 3am, I had finished the 12-episode season and then got up at 6am for work. Because I’m stupid. And because it was that good.

Image result for erased butterflyThe story follows Satoru, a 29-year-old loner who experiences what he calls “Revival”: jumps backward in time–signaled by a mystic blue butterfly–moments before deadly events occur. These “revivals” are usually only about 1-5 minutes. However, when his mother (a former journalist) digs up an old kidnapping case and is herself murdered by the kidnapper, Satoru’s revival takes him back 18 years to grade school prior to the original kidnappings that set all of the story’s events in motion. As a child with the memories of his 29-year-old self, Satoru seeks to befriend the kids that would eventually end up as victims in an attempt to save them and catch the killer. While the series is wracked with tension from the unfolding murder mystery, the emotional resonance is particularly potent as the show delves into the subjects of loneliness, abuse, and finding joy in the relationships we create.

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Despite some weak portions, the series had me both on edge and in tears. Highly recommended.

What I’m Watching

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Last year, Difficult Run started “The DR Book Collection” as a way of letting readers know what the DR editors were reading while providing some informative reviews/videos about the books themselves. Aside from the Goodreads-like sharing, the Collection in a sense acts as a window into the intellectual worldviews of the various editors.

But along with serious reading comes a Netflix binge or two. Our “What I’m Watching” section will be the place where DR editors share what new TV obsessions they’ve discovered, what movies moved them like no other, and what series have eaten away many precious hours of their fleeting lives.

Basically, this is where we invite you to join us on the couch in pop-culture nirvana and veg.

May 4, 2017: Erased (2016)

May 10, 2017: Death Note (2006-2007)

May 19, 2017: A Silent Voice (2016)

Sept. 13, 2017: Anime Catch-up

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006, 2009)

One-Punch Man (2015)

Attack on Titan (2013, 2017)

One Week Friends (2014)

Your Lie in April (2014-2015)

The Devil Is a Part-Timer! (2013)

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009-2010)

Scum’s Wish (2016-2017)

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (2013, 2015)

Haikyuu!! (2014-2016)

Quality vs. Size of Government

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Economist Ed Dolan has a couple of interesting posts at the Niskanen Center. His first one draws on data from the Economic Freedom of the World index, the Legatum Prosperity Index, and the Human Freedom Index. Based on his breakdown, personal freedom and economic freedom are positively correlated.

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And while the relationship between personal freedom and economic freedom and real GDP is nonlinear, a “one-point increase in EFI is…associated with a 0.61 point increase in the PFI rather than the 0.91 point increase that was estimated without including GDP.  All of these results are statistically significant at a 0.01 level of confidence.”

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In short, “personal freedom and economic freedom are positively associated with each other, and…both freedom indexes are positively associated with prosperity as measured by real GDP per capita. Good libertarians should expect these results and be gratified to find them confirmed.”

These indices also demonstrate that “human freedom in both its economic and personal manifestations contributes positively to human well-being as measured by data on education, health, and personal safety—another result sure to please libertarian readers.”

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And yet, “[w]hen we look at the simple correlations between the personal freedom index and the EFI components, we find they are all are positive, as expected, except that for the size of government (SoG), which is negative. The correlation of SoG with the personal freedom index is -0.16. Remember that for all components of the EFI, a higher value means more freedom, so the negative coefficient means that a larger government is associated with greater freedom. That is not what most libertarians would expect. Is this just an anomaly or a real statistical regularity?”

After pointing out some of the shortcomings of the EFI’s “size of government” measure, Dolan instead employs data regarding the ratio of total government expenditures to GDP from the IMF World Economic Outlook. Check the comparisons below:

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What these measurements show is:

  1. First, the data appear to support notion that economic freedom makes a positive contribution to personal freedom and prosperity. That holds true whether we measure prosperity in a narrowly economic sense, as GDP per capita, or in a broader sense, using noneconomic indicators of education, health, and personal safety.
  2. Second, the data do not support the notion that a larger government is necessarily detrimental to either freedom or prosperity.  On the contrary, countries with larger government sectors tend to have more personal freedom and higher indicators of education, health, and personal safety.

I’m reminded of Nathaniel’s review of Francis Fukuyama’s books on political order: “Fukuyama is dismissive of arguments about the quantity of government in favor of arguments about the quality of government.” In Dolan’s second post, he attempts to measure the quality of government using subsets of the same three databases as before:

  • “Legal system and property rights” (EFI): “indicators of judicial independence, impartiality of courts, and protection of property rights.”
  • “Rule of Law” (HFI): “indicators of procedural justice, civil justice, and criminal justice. These subcomponents consider factors such as adherence to due process and the presumption of innocence, the risk of arbitrary arrest, and the degree to which civil and criminal courts are subject to corruption and improper government influence.”
  • “Governance” (LPI): “measures of confidence in the government and elections; the corruption perceptions index from Transparency International; a measure of the level of democracy; and an overall measure of government effectiveness from the World Bank’s Doing Business survey.”

Check out how quality and size of government go together below:

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And to drive the point home:

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Dolan obviously provides much more detailed explanations than what I’ve shown here, but the graphs alone should make his conclusions fairly clear:

  • The size of government per se is not an especially useful indicator. Simple correlations based on cross-country data suggest that by and large, people who live in countries with relatively large governments, as measured by the share of GDP devoted to government spending, are better educated, healthier, safer, and generally more prosperous. They also tend to enjoy greater personal freedoms.
  • On the other hand, cross-country data on the rule of law, protection of property rights, and other measures of the quality of government show strong, positive associations with quantitative indicators of freedom and prosperity.
  • When size and quality indicators are compared directly, using multivariate analysis that controls for the effects of per-capita GDP, quality dominates. In such tests, the size of government turns out to have little effect one way or the other on most measures of freedom and prosperity.

Dolan is quick to point out, “There is a lot of variety in the world. Too strong a focus either on statistical regularities or on selected outliers can draw us too strongly toward conclusions that, in reality, admit of many exceptions. For example, the small-government city states of Singapore and Hong Kong are rightly admired for their prosperity and economic freedoms. However, it gives one pause to note how many small-government countries enjoy neither. Chad, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, labeled in the chart, are just the outliers among a whole cluster of countries in that category.”

Perhaps the focus should be on improving our government rather than simply shrinking it.

 

An Economic View of Mental Health

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“The factors involved in mental health are many and varied,” writes economist Isamu Yamamoto,

but for a working person, work styles in the workplace are an important factor. For example, if workers have to put in long hours, have little discretion over their work, or get few opportunities to change assignments or workplaces, this adds to their stress and increases the likelihood of deteriorating mental health.

On the other hand, there has been little research on mental health problems in the field of labour economics, which focuses on analysing work styles in the workplace. As for Japanese work styles, we see moves everywhere to try to change from so-called ‘Japanese employment’ practices. New aspects now include reducing long working hours, seeking a better work/life balance, diversity management, and encouraging women to be more involved in the workplace. These moves suggest that work styles under conventional Japanese employment practices create some kind of difficulty for workers. In other words, there are concerns that work styles under Japanese employment practices are a major factor in causing mental health to deteriorate.

In Yamamoto’s view, there are at least two economic approaches that could be utilized regarding mental health research:

  1. “The first approach is to reveal the characteristics of work styles, based on labour supply-and-demand mechanisms and internal labour market models, and use those characteristics to explain the impact that work styles have on workers’ mental health and the role of the business in mental health.”
  2. “The other approach is to reveal work style factors that impact mental health from observed data (controlling for heterogeneities between individual employees and businesses, and other noise), and to show how mental health affects objective indicators such as business productivity and profitability.”

Using findings from the Labor Market Analysis Using Matched Employer-Employee Panel Data research project, Yamamoto provides the following insights:

First, the research shows that factors affecting employees’ mental health include long work hours, job characteristics, workplace management methods, workplace climate, job transfers, and promotions, among others (Kuroda and Yamamoto 2016a, Sato 2016). Second, mechanisms that cause employee mental health to deteriorate include working irrationally long work hours because of such psychological tendencies as overconfidence bias (i.e. the employee has too much confidence in his or her own health), which could result in unexpected health damage (Kuroda and Yamamoto 2016b). Research also has looked at the impact of deteriorating mental health on corporate performance, with the results showing that businesses with higher sick leave or turnover rates of employees with mental disorders tend to have poorer performance as measured by return on sales (Kuroda and Yamamoto 2016c).

There are still just a few examples of research that validate mental health problems from an economic perspective, and more research needs to be done. Moreover, mental health is a major issue that is relevant to a number of fields, including medicine, epidemiology, industrial health, and psychology. As such, it is important to address it with interdisciplinary research, and researchers in various fields should collaborate in this regard.

The Challenge Matches the Reward

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A Hopeless Dawn 1888 Frank Bramley 1857-1915 Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1888 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N01627

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

President Spencer W. Kimball:

You will find so-called Mormonism to be a growing, vibrant, dynamic, and challenging church, indeed a way of life, touching upon every avenue of living, every facet of life.

What an interesting way to describe the church: “challenging.” Other words you could pick include: demanding, exacting, and strict. From the same talk:

Prophets say the same things because we face basically the same problems. Brothers and sisters, the solutions to these problems have not changed. It would be a poor lighthouse that gave off a different signal to guide every ship entering a harbor. It would be a poor mountain guide who, knowing the safe route up a mountainside, took his trusting charges up unpredictable and perilous paths from which no traveler returns.

There are a lot of people who wish that the Church would changes its message on fundamental matters of morality. It’s not going to happen. The challenge, the demand, the exacting expectations are here to stay. Discipleship is difficult by design.

President Monson described how, “for [those] who have loved and lost dear ones, each dawn is hopeless,” this being “the experience of those who regard the grave as the end and immortality as but a dream.”

Against this darkness, President Monson contrasts the reality of a literal resurrection:

This is the knowledge that sustains. This is the truth that comforts. This is the assurance that guides those bowed down with grief out of the shadows and into the light.

There are many who see Christianity—perhaps all religion—as a kind of cosmic bribe. If you are good, then you can have a reward. I understand the misperception, but it is misperception. The deliberate difficulty of the discipleship is not some arbitrary test for which divine blessings are meted out, like a trainer putting a dog through an obedience course.

But there is a symmetry. It is simply not the symmetry of a barter or exchange or tit-of-tat. It is the deeper symmetry or resonance. Discipleship is part of a shaping process that fundamental changes who we are, and prepares us to recognize, receive, and appreciate the blessings God has prepared for His children.

It is less, “If you are good, you can have something nice,” and more “If you strive to become good, you will—with God’s help—become good; and the truly good truly experience joy.”

The apparently transactional nature of the relationships is an illusion, but the symmetry is not. The challenge matches the reward. Much is asked; much is given.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!