What an interesting question...
I would agree with Antony's distinction; salvation and God's love can be
construed as a "free lunch" because they come without cost. Spiritual
faith is a scarce resource, especially from a human perspective. The
faith comes not from the Higher Power, but from us as humans, who are,
pardon the expression, human. There is a limit to our own faith,
whether we choose to accept that proposition or not, and therefore an
increasing cost of that faith. If there weren't, then we wouldn't have
martyrs (or people who back down before becoming martyrs).
Brian
Brian Peterson
Department of Economics
Central College
________________________________
From: Antony Davies, Ph.D. [mailto:antony@antolin-davies.com]
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 11:55 AM
To: 'Jose J. Vazquez'; tch-econ@elon.edu
Subject: RE: The costs of spiritual faith
I'm not sure that "faith" is the proper example. Faith is a human
response to the Divine. The "free lunch" is salvation -- the Divine gift
to humans.
Taking the Christian perspective, if one believes that Jesus died for
our sins, then salvation is indeed a free lunch. While good works can be
a natural response to one's acceptance of salvation, good works are not
a requirement (i.e. price) for salvation.
Antony Davies, Ph.D.
Research Fellow, Mercatus Center Capitol Hill Campus
Assistant Professor of Economics
Donahue Graduate School of Business
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
http://www.business.duq.edu/faculty/davies
-----Original Message-----
From: Jose J. Vazquez [mailto:vazquezj@uiuc.edu]
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 12:18 PM
To: tch-econ@elon.edu
Subject: The costs of spiritual faith
I always introduce the principle of "No free lunch" in my intro
classes by challenging students to come up with resources they think are
not scarce (and hence violate the principle). Of course I always get
the usual suspects, air, water, space, etc, all of which are pretty
straightforward to explain their scarcity. Nevertheless, from time to
time I usually get some pretty interesting ones for which the
explanations are not so clear cut. One of the most interesting
students' suggestions of unlimited resources is spiritual faith (some
students usually say God's love too). I usually use the following three
main arguments to try to convince students that spiritual faith does not
violate the principle:
1. Faith might not be considered a resource per se, but a
payment of some sort and in this sense it doesn't apply. This
explanation is usually not very well received.
2. There is an effort (perhaps time) associated with having
faith, or enjoying the benefits of spiritual faith. This argument
usually creates heated debates as some students always argue that having
faith requires no real effort and the benefits are unlimited.
3. If spiritual faith were in fact free, then everybody
would be a believer and had spiritual faith. Obviously this is our
beloved "cash on the table principle", usually our last resort. But as
it turns out this is usually the most persuasive argument.
Nevertheless, I still would like to hear what other explanations
might be out there. I think I still can do a better job at
conceptualizing the real cost of having spiritual faith. As well as
some of the other interesting ones I get from time to time, among them
"God's love", and "unconditional love from another person".
Cheers
Jose
Jose J. Vazquez-Cognet, PhD
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61820
(217) 265-0682
(217) 333-7664
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