Sunday Sermonette: History repeats itself

Acts 19 is in large part the same tedious story -- Paul goes to a new place and preaches, some people believe him, some don't, yadda yadda. He also performs miracles. He seems to have been given the full healing powers of JC -- in act, objects that he merely touches can miraculously heal people who never come into contact with him. Funny thing, nobody has this power any more although of course some charlatans claim to, and guess what? Charlatans who claim this power show up in this story, but it turns out they are fake. Only Paul is the real miracle healer.

 

But what is really interesting about this chapter is that the converts burn their books. A lot of them. And of course that's what "Christians" want to do today. Fake miracle cures -- now it's ivermectin and hydroxycholorquine, not Paul's magic handkerchiefs -- banning books, spouting gibberish.  We're back in the first century, it seems. 

 

19 While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples ² and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when^[a] you believed?”

They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

³ So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”

“John’s baptism,” they replied.

⁴ Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” ⁵ On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. ⁶ When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues^[b] and prophesied. ⁷ There were about twelve men in all.

⁸ Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. ⁹ But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. ¹⁰ This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

¹¹ God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, ¹² so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.

¹³ Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” ¹⁴ Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. ¹⁵ One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” ¹⁶ Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

¹⁷ When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. ¹⁸ Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done. ¹⁹ A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.^{[c] 20} In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.

²¹ After all this had happened, Paul decided^[d] to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. “After I have been there,” he said, “I must visit Rome also.” ²² He sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer.

The Riot in Ephesus

²³ About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. ²⁴ A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. ²⁵ He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. ²⁶ And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. ²⁷ There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.”

²⁸ When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” ²⁹ Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul’s traveling companions from Macedonia, and all of them rushed into the theater together. ³⁰ Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. ³¹ Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater.

³² The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there. ³³ The Jews in the crowd pushed Alexander to the front, and they shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people. ³⁴ But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

³⁵ The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? ³⁶ Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash. ³⁷ You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. ³⁸ If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. ³⁹ If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. ⁴⁰ As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it.” ⁴¹ After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly.

Footnotes

1. Acts 19:2 Or after
2. Acts 19:6 Or other languages
3. Acts 19:19 A drachma was a silver coin worth about a day’s wages.
4. Acts 19:21 Or decided in the Spirit

I commend your attention . . .

To this piece by Nick Hanauer and Eric Beinhocker in The Atlantic.
 

For decades economists simply believed, based on no evidence, but only their assumptions, that equality and economic growth were incompatible – that any policies that redistribute income from the affluent to the less affluent will reduce overall economic activity. Hanuer and Beinhocker explore the history of this idea. They focus on the minimum wage. Since economists believed ”free markets” allocate resources “efficiently,” a corollary was that raising the minimum wage would inevitably reduce employment, based on the presumed “law” of supply and demand: make something more expensive, and consumers will buy less of it. This was assumed to apply to jobs and employers, i.e. employers are the buyers of jobs.

It turns out there is overwhelming empirical evidence that this assumption is false, but economists and policymakers have fiercely resisted the truth. Seattle raised its minimum wage to $15/hour in 2014, and contrary to the predictions of nearly all economists, there was no discernible loss of jobs and the economy remained strong. The same thing happened when many cities and states raised the minimum wage in subsequent years.

The subject has been much studied since, with not entirely consistent results. However, a very rigorous, well-designed study based on contiguous counties in states with different minimum wages established that minimum wage levels within the actually existing range have no substantial effect on employment. It is even possible that they are associated with slightly higher employment.(11) The authors concluded that studies based on time series analysis that sometimes had contrary results were biased by omitted variables, and this conclusion is now generally accepted. One highly plausible explanation is that employers who are forced to pay higher wages find that they have Wless labor turnover and more productive workers. As Hanauer and Beinhocker go on to say, during the era following WWII when marginal tax rates were much higher than they are now – about 70% and even much higher in the immediate post-war period, annual GDP growth averaged 3.8% annually. When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, the top marginal tax rate fell sharply to below 40%, where it has remained ever since; but GDP growth slowed to an average of 2.6%. The promised benefits in greater prosperity never materialized, and in fact workers’ wages have stagnated. As they and many others argue, income redistribution generates greater prosperity because when people in the lower range of the income distribution have more money to spend, they generate more economic activity. 

 

For decades, economics has been the opposite of a science. The way it has been taught and practiced has been more akin to theology -- start with assumptions, whether taken from the Bible or the interests of the major donors to university economics departments, and work out how the world would be if those assumptions are true. Don't bother to check if it really is that way -- don't look through the telescope. That would be blasphemy. 

Wednesday Bible Study: Unending Tedium

Luke just drones on and on with Paul going to various cities and the same thing happening: some people accept his preaching, some don't, the Jewish leadership is mostly against him, he makes some converts among the Jews and gentiles, and he goes to the next place. Along the way he sometimes meets named people who may or may not journey with him, but for the most part we never hear of them again. Why should we care about all these details and specifics? It's possible that some of it meant something at the time -- maybe people in Corinth would have read this and it matters that Crispus is named, for example. But it means nothing to anyone today.

 

A couple of oddities about this chapter. First of all, since when has Paul been a tentmaker? When we first met him, as Saul, he was a tax collector. Second, he shaves his head, because he "had a vow." This apparently means he became a Nazarite (viz. Numbers 6), which is a special devotee to Yahweh, but a) it's a little odd since supposedly we've left all that jive behind and b) he's doing it wrong. First, he's supposed to stop cutting his hair, abstain from alcohol, not touch dead bodies, yadda yadda, then he's supposed to shave his head. Not that there's any evident point to all this anyway.

 

Third, it's rare for women to be named in the New Testament, but here Priscilla gets billing ahead of her husband. Again, we don't hear any more about them except that they sailed with Paul to Syria and he ditched them in Ephesus. Why are we told this? Why does it matter? Your guess is as good as mine for all of this detail.

8 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. ² There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³ and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. ⁴ Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.

⁵ When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. ⁶ But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”

⁷ Then Paul left the synagogue and went next door to the house of Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. ⁸ Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.

⁹ One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. ¹⁰ For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” ¹¹ So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

¹² While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment. ¹³ “This man,” they charged, “is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.”

¹⁴ Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to them, “If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanor or serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. ¹⁵ But since it involves questions about words and names and your own law—settle the matter yourselves. I will not be a judge of such things.” ¹⁶ So he drove them off. ¹⁷ Then the crowd there turned on Sosthenes the synagogue leader and beat him in front of the proconsul; and Gallio showed no concern whatever.

Priscilla, Aquila and Apollos

¹⁸ Paul stayed on in Corinth for some time. Then he left the brothers and sisters and sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. Before he sailed, he had his hair cut off at Cenchreae because of a vow he had taken. ¹⁹ They arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila. He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. ²⁰ When they asked him to spend more time with them, he declined. ²¹ But as he left, he promised, “I will come back if it is God’s will.” Then he set sail from Ephesus. ²² When he landed at Caesarea, he went up to Jerusalem and greeted the church and then went down to Antioch.

²³ After spending some time in Antioch, Paul set out from there and traveled from place to place throughout the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.

²⁴ Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. ²⁵ He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor^[a] and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. ²⁶ He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

²⁷ When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers and sisters encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. When he arrived, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. ²⁸ For he vigorously refuted his Jewish opponents in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Messiah.

Footnotes

1. Acts 18:25 Or with fervor in the Spirit

 

 

A National Catastrophe

The Supreme Court ruling that the president can fire heads of independent agencies without cause may not seem like a big deal to most people. It certainly isn't getting a big reaction from the corporate media or even, as far as I have noticed so far, Democratic politicians. But it's disastrous.

The world is complicated. Making rules and regulations requires expertise, and it has to be reality based. People and businesses need to be able to put reasonable faith in the agencies that make those rules, and they need to know that the rules are going to be reasonably stable. 

The reason Congress established independent regulatory agencies is to shield them to some degree from political interference. No, it doesn't work entirely but it works well enough. These agencies are not under a cabinet secretary and are not part of the Executive Office of the President. Here they are:

 

: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

CPSC: Consumer Product Safety Commission

CFTC: Commodity Futures Trading Commission

EEOC: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

FCC: Federal Communications Commission

FEC: Federal Election Commission

FDIC: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Federal Reserve: The Federal Reserve System

FTC: Federal Trade Commission

NLRB: National Labor Relations Board

NRC: Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NTSB: National Transportation Safety Board

SEC: Securities and Exchange Commission

The SC exempted the Federal Reserve from today's ruling but I think you can see why Congress didn't want the rest of these agencies, along with the Fed, to be apolitical. Sure, the president nominates their directors, but they have to be confirmed by the senate. If the president can just fire any of them, at any time, for no reason, and the president happens to be an intellectual and moral idiot, whose main goal in office is to accept extravagant bribes, I think you can see right away why our society will be in big trouble. 

Sunday Sermonette: Much Tedium

 Chapter 17 just rattles on with pretty much the same repetitive story. Paul and whoever happens to be around -- in this case some unexplained character named Jason suddenly appears without an introduction -- go around preaching and some people believe them and some people don't, and they either get into an argument or they get imprisoned or whatever, and on and on it goesThey generally seem to get a better reception from the Greek pagans than they do from the Jews, which is no doubt the basis for anti-Jewish sentiment among later Christians. I don't really have anything more to say about it. 

The translators don't bother to explain, but Areopagus (v. 19) is the Athenian judicial council. It's also the name of a big flat rock on which they met. Apparently it affords a good view of the city and is a tourist attraction today.

 

17 When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. ² As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, ³ explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. ⁴ Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

⁵ But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.^{[a] 6} But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, ⁷ and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” ⁸ When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. ⁹ Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.

In Berea

¹⁰ As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. ¹¹ Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. ¹² As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

¹³ But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. ¹⁴ The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. ¹⁵ Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.

In Athens

¹⁶ While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. ¹⁷ So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸ A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. ¹⁹ Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? ²⁰ You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” ²¹ (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

²² Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. ²³ For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

²⁴ “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. ²⁵ And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. ²⁶ From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’^[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’^[c]

²⁹ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. ³⁰ In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹ For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

³² When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” ³³ At that, Paul left the Council. ³⁴ Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Footnotes

1. Acts 17:5 Or the assembly of the people
2. Acts 17:28 From the Cretan philosopher Epimenides
3. Acts 17:28 From the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus

 

Wednesday Bible Study: Continuity error

All of a sudden, in the middle of chapter 16, without explanation, the narrator shifts to first person. Now it's "we" who are doing all these things. He does not identify himself or tell us how he came to be with Paul, Silas and Timothy. Whatever. For some mysterious reason, God won't let them preach in Asia or Bythynia, but instructs them to go to Macedonia. BTW, as Paul later writes in Galatians, that Timothy is circumcised means he cannot be saved. Guess Paul changed his mind.

 

Anyway, the preposterous events in Macedonia speak for themselves. The jailer was so impressed by the (second) miraculous jailbreak that he converted on the spot, and made his whole family get baptized no matter what they thought about it. Of course, they were his to do with as he pleased.

 

16 Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. ² The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. ³ Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. ⁴ As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. ⁵ So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

Paul’s Vision of the Man of Macedonia

⁶ Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. ⁷ When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. ⁸ So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. ⁹ During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” ¹⁰ After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

Lydia’s Conversion in Philippi

¹¹ From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day we went on to Neapolis. ¹² From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district^[a] of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.

¹³ On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. ¹⁴ One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. ¹⁵ When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

Paul and Silas in Prison

¹⁶ Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. ¹⁷ She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” ¹⁸ She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

¹⁹ When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. ²⁰ They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar ²¹ by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

²² The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. ²³ After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. ²⁴ When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

²⁵ About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶ Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. ²⁷ The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. ²⁸ But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”

²⁹ The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. ³⁰ He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

³¹ They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” ³² Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. ³³ At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. ³⁴ The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.

³⁵ When it was daylight, the magistrates sent their officers to the jailer with the order: “Release those men.” ³⁶ The jailer told Paul, “The magistrates have ordered that you and Silas be released. Now you can leave. Go in peace.”

³⁷ But Paul said to the officers: “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.”

³⁸ The officers reported this to the magistrates, and when they heard that Paul and Silas were Roman citizens, they were alarmed. ³⁹ They came to appease them and escorted them from the prison, requesting them to leave the city. ⁴⁰ After Paul and Silas came out of the prison, they went to Lydia’s house, where they met with the brothers and sisters and encouraged them. Then they left.

Footnotes

1. Acts 16:12 The text and meaning of the Greek for the leading city of that district are uncertain.

 

Ignorance is bliss . . .

At least that's the Republican platform. Adam Rogers in Scientific American tells the depressing story of the Dump administration's destruction of the American scientific enterprise. You should read the whole thing, but I'll just pull out a couple of points and look at them from my point of view as a public health researcher.

 

There are two main themes in Rogers's piece. One is that after World War II the U.S. invested heavily in basic science. The National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation funded a lot of basic research without regard for potential for monetary profit, or even for the most part any consideration of the likelihood of practical technological results. The philosophy was that you can't predict how basic knowledge might turn into commercial products or public benefits, but the more we learn about the universe and our own biology the more we'll surprise ourselves with technological progress.

 

I'll digress a bit from Rogers to give you an example.  You probably don't think that quantum mechanics is of much practical importance, but you're wrong. The Global Positioning System that enables your phone to direct you to out of the way places depends on atomic clocks which work on quantum principles. The design of the transistors in your computer depends on understanding quantum effects. Without the quantum theory, the world would be very different. As for biomedicine, NIH in 2025 cut the amount of grant funding it awarded by 40%. An analysis that Rogers reports on finds that if grants in the bottom 40% of reviewer scores had not been funded over the years, half of all FDA-approved drugs would not exist today.

What has happened is that venture capitalists and their philosophy of moving fast, breaking things, and making a shitload of money has taken over. The idea of pursuing knowledge for its own sake is no longer part of conservative philosophy. But there's another pernicious element of the conservative approach to science which is, essentially, that any facts that threaten conservative ideology have to be rejected. In public health, and indeed in medicine, we know that so-called social determinants of health are very important -- in fact more important to health outcomes than any medical intervention.   

But NIH now refuses to fund any research into social determinants of health, or even that focuses on particular disadvantaged categories of people. As Rogers tells us:

 

When Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD), first got to the NIH 12 years ago, she wanted to increase research into the social determinants of health—structural racism in home-loan practices meant that nonwhite people got iced out of home ownership and generational wealth, which forced them to live in neighborhoods closer to toxic sites such as factories and highways, without sidewalks and amenities. “It’s a challenging field to quantify, but we’re getting to a place in science where we can start asking these questions,” Norton says. Now the topic is verboten in U.S. grants. “That whole line of research has been shut off and censored because some people find the words ‘structural racism’ offensive.” . . .  

Researchers who manage to get grants to study health outcomes on the condition that they ignore the effects of variables such as socioeconomic status, gender and ethnicity won’t even be able to publish their findings, because peer reviewers, an NSF director says, “are not going to suddenly indulge this fantasy.” They’re going to demand that studies factor in relevant variables. 

 

If this had happened 20 years ago, I would not have had an academic career at all, and neither would most of my colleagues. In fact I don't think the Brown School of Public Health would ever have come to exist. And many people are being forced to leave academia, or leave the country, and many are in fact doing the latter. The U.S. is being diminished in so many ways under the present regime, for which I will coin the term lunaticocracy, but the ruination of our scientific infrastructure is one of the worst, and it isn't getting enough attention.

Sunday Sermonette: Laying down the law

Acts 15 represents an important event in the history of the Christian church. It's probably a reasonably accurate description of what happened, either witnessed directly by the author or told to him firsthand. The apostles have been struggling with how to reconcile evangelism to the gentiles with Jewish law and tradition, so at a church council in Jerusalem they decide to make a partial break with Torah law, decreeing that it is not necessary to be circumcised to join the Christian community, nor to follow much of the law with four exceptions:

". . . abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." 

 KJV has "fornication," rather than sexual immorality, but apparently the Greek is not specific. The other three items may seem a bit mysterious, but essentially they require people to break with certain pagan practices. "Food polluted by idols" means sacrifices to pagan gods. The bit about blood and strangled animals has to do with the Jewish dietary laws, which required animals to be slaughtered by cutting their throats so the blood would drain out. Note that this decision directly contradicts numerous statements by Jesus as recorded in the gospels that people should follow more of the Torah law, but obviously it was necessary in order to recruit gentile converts.

 

Nowadays of course many Christians do eat blood, in the form of blood sausage. Modern secular slaughtering is normally by a blow to the head, and while the blood is drained it is not done thoroughly and non-kosher meat does contain a modicum of blood. This prohibition is not observed by most Christians and in fact they are likely completely unaware of it, the exception being Jehovah's Witnesses, who take it so seriously that they will not accept blood transfusions and in fact would rather die.

 

15 Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” ² This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. ³ The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. ⁴ When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them.

⁵ Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”

⁶ The apostles and elders met to consider this question. ⁷ After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. ⁸ God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. ⁹ He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. ¹⁰ Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? ¹¹ No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

¹² The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. ¹³ When they finished, James spoke up. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. ¹⁴ Simon^[a] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. ¹⁵ The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:

¹⁶ “‘After this I will return
    and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
    and I will restore it,
¹⁷ that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
    even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things’^[b]—
¹⁸     things known from long ago.^[c]

¹⁹ “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. ²⁰ Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. ²¹ For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

The Council’s Letter to Gentile Believers

²² Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, men who were leaders among the believers. ²³ With them they sent the following letter:

The apostles and elders, your brothers,

To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

Greetings.

²⁴ We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. ²⁵ So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— ²⁶ men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁷ Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. ²⁸ It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: ²⁹ You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.

Farewell.

³⁰ So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. ³¹ The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. ³² Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. ³³ After spending some time there, they were sent off by the believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. ^{[34] [d] 35} But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.

Disagreement Between Paul and Barnabas

³⁶ Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” ³⁷ Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, ³⁸ but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. ³⁹ They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, ⁴⁰ but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. ⁴¹ He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

Footnotes

1. Acts 15:14 Greek Simeon, a variant of Simon; that is, Peter
2. Acts 15:17 Amos 9:11,12 (see Septuagint)
3. Acts 15:18 Some manuscripts things’— / ¹⁸ the Lord’s work is known to him from long ago
4. Acts 15:34 Some manuscripts include here But Silas decided to remain there.

 

A new plague

 You might have expected a Juneteenth post, but what can I say? Slavery was bad, glad it's abolished.

 

If you lived in the Boston area 15 years ago, and even if you didn't, you may remember the case of Philip Markoff, the so-called Craiglist killer. He was a Boston University medical student, with a wedding date set, who developed a hobby of making dates with sex workers at Boston area hotels and robbing them at gunpoint. One of them resisted, and he shot her dead. The guy was obviously a psycho to begin with, but he also obviously had a lot to lose, so why did he do this?

It turns out he had a massive amount of gambling debt. As a matter of fact the cops arrested him while he was on the way to the Foxwoods casino with his fiancee. (He killed himself in jail awaiting trial.) 

If you live in Connecticut now, or even if you don't, you might also know about the New Haven chief of police, who embezzled $80,000 from the evidence locker because, you guessed it, he had a gambling problem. The argument for legalizing gambling was always that it was happening anyway, you might as well let the state get some of the proceeds instead of the mafia, and you can regulate it. Uh huh.  The mafia didn't advertise heavily during every sportscast, it didn't employ evil scientists to figure out exactly how to stimulate the dopamine receptors to keep people addicted and compulsive, and it didn't offer gambling opportunities on your (nonexistent) smartphone or at every convenience store.

 

As of 2024 (and I'm sure the numbers are higher now) more than half of adults buy lotteryckets, about 1/3 gamble in a casino at least once a year, and more than 1/4 bet on sports. Obviously approximately 100% of them lose money. Of those people, literally 70% to 80% or more report serious gambling problems including lying to hide their behavior, feeling withdrawal symptoms if they tried to stop, and 84% had financial problems resulting from their gambling. If you do the multiplication, that's something like 35-40% of the entire adult population.

Now you can't watch any major league sporting event without not only advertisements promoting gambling, but the announcers touting gambling in between play calls. Several cases of corruption have already been proved and I'm pretty sure that's just the tip of the old iceberg. The sports leagues are digging their own grave if people lose faith in the integrity of the game. This has got to stop.