Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 437

The nature of Hell

Something interesting I found exploring the Patheos neighborhoods:  A discussion from Ryan Adams (whom I assume is not the same person as the former lead singer of Whiskeytown) on the Eastern Orthodox understanding of Hell, which is defined as the suffering that comes from being loved by God and yet rejecting that love.  He talks [...]

Getting bin Laden: The Movie

I saw Zero Dark Thirty, the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Earlier, the word was that it would be released just before the election, which had conservatives up in arms, fearing that a cinematic treatment of President Obama’s victory was Hollywood’s plot to get him re-elected. But there is nothing triumphalistic about [...]

Hobby Lobby owes $1.3 million a day

Having lost its court case, Hobby Lobby is refusing to pay for abortifacient drugs, as mandated by Obamacare.  So since January 1, it has been racking up fines of $1.3 million every day.  There is a company that is putting its money where its convictions are.  Does anyone know any other companies owned by pro-life [...]

Tweaking the blog

Thanks, everybody, for your kind words and what I think is a pretty successful launch in the Patheos big city (as someone called it). The comments on the “introductions” post offered some suggestions, and I want to follow up on that. First, what is your opinion of posts that only show the first six lines [...]

Transitioning to Patheos

As I said would happen, at long last this blog is moving to Patheos, the big religion hosting site.  Visitors to the address I’ve been using on my DreamHost server, www.geneveith.com, will eventually, over the course of a week or so, be automatically redirected to the new address:   www.patheos/blogs/geneveith.com.

As I understand it, that will happen sooner for some and later for some.  In the meantime, you can go to the new site here.  If you want, you can set a new bookmark, redo your RSS feeds, etc., though eventually the old address should start working again.

I begin posting at the new site  TODAY.  That’s where you can read today’s posts.

It would help me greatly if you would go ahead and click on to the new site rather than waiting for the automatic redirect.  This is especially so for longtime readers and commenters.  I have written a post on the new site to introduce the Cranach blog to the Patheos universe.  I call on longtime readers to help in that effort, so I hope a lot of you post comments so as to introduce potential new readers to the kind of community we’ve got going here.

Also, I know what some of you are going to say:  “I HATE IT!”  The Patheos format has its quirks that will take getting used to.  The text boxes are smaller than we’re used to, necessitating clicking “Read more.”  I think I’ve increased the pre-set size, but that may be an annoyance for some of you, though I have been aware that my posts are sometimes too long for good visual design.  (Also, when you click “read more” and jump to another page, that adds another page view, and page view totals are what for-profit sites are selling to their advertisers.  And I guess that includes me now, since Patheos will pay me for the number of page views I generate.)  You’ll be annoyed at the big Patheos banner at the top.  You’ll be annoyed with some of the ads.  I’m going to see what I can mitigate or change.  But Patheos also has some excellent features, including links to other interesting and related posts, both on other of their blogs and on earlier Cranach posts.  It will take me awhile to get used to the Patheos template, and there usually are glitches of one kind or another.  Please be patient and please stay with me!  In a little while, I suspect neither you nor I will notice the differences.

For the third time, here is the link to the new address.

The conversion of Steve McQueen

Southern Gospel Yankee has an interesting account of how the late actor Steve McQueen(a.k.a. “the King of Cool”) became a Christian.  (The narrative is the familiar one of a flagrant sinner getting witnessed to, “accepting Christ,” and becoming a changed person.  The details, though, are intriguing.)

via Greater Grace: A Story of God, Redemption, and Steve McQueen | Southern Gospel Yankee.

 

HT:  Nicholas

Has the lost tribe of Mannaseh been found?

A tribal community in India that calls itself Bnei Menashe (Hebrew for “children of Mannaseh”) is claiming to be the the remnant of the Hebrew tribe of Mannaseh, one of the “lost tribes” that was taken into captivity by the Assyrians some 3000 years ago.  And the state of Israel is recognizing their legitimacy by according them the “right of return,” whereby all Jews are allowed to immigrate to Israel.  Some of the Bnei Menashe have moved to Israel, which some Christian groups are hailing as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.  See ‘Lost Tribe’s’ Return to Israel Fulfilling Prophecy? – Inside Israel – CBN News – Christian News 24-7 – CBN.com.

The tribe does seem to have some traditional songs and legends with echoes of the Exodus.  But according to the Wikipedia article, the Bnei Menashe are part of a larger tribal culture of animists and headhunters that converted to Christianity in the 19th century.   In 1951, a Pentecostalist preacher in the tribe said that he had a vision from God that the people should turn back to their ancient religion of Judaism.  (So do the Christians getting all excited about this believe that this was the work of the Holy Spirit?  Telling people to give up their Christianity?)  So about 9,000 of the group adopted Judaism.  (The tribe of Mannaseh would have known only the sacrificial system of the Temple, in the unorthodox version of the northern tribes.  That was quite different from the Judaism that arose after the destruction of the Temple.)  The larger population of the ethnic group, the Chin-Kuki-Miso remained Christian and oppose this movement.

The CBN article linked above says nothing about the recent history of this group, but reports the return of Mannaseh as simple fact.  That the modern state of Israel is taking this seriously, though, is interesting, though the official rabbis are requiring the Bnei Menashe to undergo an orthodox conversion process, just in case.

The trillion dollar coin reconsidered

Here is a solution to our national debt problem that is  being floated seriously with various economists and Congressmen buying into it:  Mint a trillion dollar coin out of platinum (other metals have statutory limits on how much they can be worth) and put it in the bank.  We blogged about this idea during last year’s crisis, but it has come back, perhaps in a more sophisticated form.

Economist Joe Wiesenthal, in explaining the scheme, argues that the coin would not necessarily spark hyperinflation and other dangers of creating money from thin air as long as it is not plopped into the economy, but simply deposited into the Federal Reserve as a technical solution to the technical problem of the national debt limit, allowing the government to simply continue paying its bills as it has been.  (But if the government pays bills without either having money or incurring debt, won’t that still inject unbacked money into the economy with all of the consequent hyperinflation?)  Anyway, let’s let Wiesenthal have his say:

In the section of the law which specifically relates to the Treasury’s ability to create money coins and bills section K says this: “The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.”

In other words, when it comes to platinum coins, the Secretary who is currently Tim Geithner has discretion on the designs, specifications, quantities, and denominations of platinum coinage.

So let’s say, Tim Geithner decided to stamp out a $1 trillion coin. What does that accomplish?

The idea is that after it was created, Geithner could walk it over to the Federal Reserve, and deposit it in the Treasury’s bank account. Then the Treasury, rather than having to issue new debt because remember, Congress hasn’t raised the limit can make sure its checks clear against this money.

Voila, crisis averted!

Now, that sounds all nice, but people have all kinds of objections upon hearing this idea. So we’ll address them here.

MYTH #1: This will cause massive hyperinflation.This is an understandable fear, because the idea of creating new money out of thin air to pay our debts brings to mind situations like Weimar and Zimbabwe, and trillion dollar bills being tossed about it in the streets.

But this is not about using the coin to pay back our debts, it’s staying within the law, while avoiding the technically nonsensical debt ceiling.Think about the mechanics, the trillion dollar coin goes to the Fed, but in terms of the real economy, government spending takes place exactly as normal. Now it is true that the Treasury might not be doing bond purchases at this time, and that this could leave more money in the system, that could heat up and cause inflation, but this is easily remedied, because the Fed has a gigantic pile of Treasuries it’s sitting on that it could sell back into the open market to “sterilize” the government spending.

The bottom line is: Because this trillion dollar coin isn’t being used as “helicopter money” money dropped directly into the economy you don’t get the inflationary effects you’re used to seeing when you hear about governments creating money in large denominations. This is purely a technical fix for a bad situation.

MYTH #2: The trillion dollar coin will destroy the dollar!  This is pretty much the same as the first argument. What would destroy the dollar is if the government just started printing $1 trillion bills, declared them legal tender, and then dropped them from a helicopter onto cities. Soon, the buying power of a single dollar bill would be zilch. But alas, because the coin isn’t a direct injection into the economy, but rather a stopgap that lets the government continue to spend on various services, you don’t have that destructive effect.

MYTH #3: If this idea is so great, then minting a $16 trillion dollar coin could just solve our debt problem!This line of reasoning ignores the point completely. People who say this or say we should print a $100 trillion coin are mistakenly thinking that the point of this exercise is to pay off our debts and get out of the hole.

That’s not it. Our debts are plenty manageable at current levels, and with interest rates the way the are. The point is to stay within the law, while getting around the technical problem of the debt ceiling. So there’s no point to the $16 trillion coin or the $100 trillion coin, or anything else so absurd. This is not about having money to spend. This is about avoiding a legal crisis where the government had obligations to much such as on its debt but didn’t have the authority to borrow and spend money.

And furthermore, if we actually did try to eliminate our debts just by creating a coin, we would create the aforementioned inflation problem via a massive expansion of money and it would result in buyers less inclined to buy dollar assets.

BOTTOM LINE: This won’t create hyperinflation, and it’s not the solution to all of our economic problems. It’s just a way to stay within the law, while avoiding the debt ceiling nonsense.

Joe Weisenthal  3 Huge Myths About The Plan To Save The Economy With A Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin – Business Insider.

However the economics would work, my interest in the trillion dollar coin is literary.  There is a great comedy here somewhere.   The treasury worker taking the coin from the mint to the Federal Reserve has it in his pocket.  When he takes out the keys to the car, it falls out and rolls into the gutter.  A kid picks it up and puts it in a school vending machine.  The guy that restocks the machine thinks it’s a Susan B. Anthony dollar.  He uses it to buy cigarettes at a convenience store.  The owner recognizes what it is.  He flies to Switzerland and deposits it in a secret account. . . .(You can take it from here.)

Atheist church

An Atheist church has opened in London:

Yesterday [January 6] saw the first ‘service’ of The Sunday Assembly, London’s first atheist church.

Priding itself on its tagline ‘live better, help often, wonder more,’ The Sunday Assembly is the brainchild of Sanderson Jones and musical comedian Pippa Evans, and aims to take the best things about religion and religious ceremonies, but to do it without all the god-talk. Or, as Sanderson himself has put it, it’s “a godless congregation that will meet on the first Sunday of every month to hear great talks, sing songs and generally celebrate the wonder of life.”

The first ‘service’ was held yesterday morning at the deconsecrated church The Nave in north London, and featured a talk by children’s author Andy Stanton and was shaped around the theme ‘Beginnings’.

via Comedian Sanderson Jones opens ‘London’s first atheist church’ – TNT Magazine.

Do atheists believe in “the wonder of life” like religious people do?  I thought atheists are scientific, materialist reductionists who think everything has a rational explanation.  Anyway, it’s touching, though somewhat inexplicable, that some people like church as long as God is left out of it.

Here is their liturgy from the Sunday Assembly’s website:

Welcome / notices
Song
Guest speaker
Song
Reading
Final Address
Song

These are very low church atheists.  I wonder what they sing.  “Imagine,” probably.  “Is that All There Is.”  What else would work as atheist hymns?

HT:  Tristyn Bloom

Protect our rights with a police state?

My colleague Mark Mitchell feels some cognitive dissonance with the NRA’s response to gun violence in schools:

NRA president Wayne LaPierre called for a new initiative to place policemen in every school in America. It’s curious that in attempting to defend one right, the consequence is a dramatically increased police force. While I am doubtful that limiting the sale of certain guns will have any dramatic impact of gun violence, it is disappointing (though perhaps not surprising) that the best the NRA leadership can do is propose more policemen. And why stop at one policeman per school? With the size of many public schools, one police officer is simply inadequate. An officer in every hall might be a better plan. In short, we need a police state to protect our right to own all the guns we want? That’s the best idea the NRA has?

via NRA Proposes More Policemen | Front Porch Republic.