Christianity & global warming (10 min)
Some Christians think global warming is a scientific, and not a theological, question. To that, Jeff Durbin replies:
“I’ll approach it as an atheist…As an atheist with an atheist worldview that believes that all of us are cosmic accidents and that our ancestors were bacteria and then into fish and then to African apes into where we are now, I have a question: Why should humans care? Right? Not a theological question? Really?”
Your phone habits aren’t just about you
“The worst thing about collective action problems is that even those who are most resolute in opposing the trend have no choice but to either join it or suffer its effects anyway: if I decide to stubbornly hold out as the one person in the room not bending over my phone, I’ll only have the pleasure of looking at the tops of everyone else’s heads.”
Ontario’s top court rules against a COVID-era gatherings ban
“This is the first major court ruling that found COVID-era restrictions on gatherings unconstitutional…”
Coming away cold
“‘The reason we come away so cold from reading the Word is, because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.’ We must slowly ponder it, we must diligently apply ourselves to it, we must let ourselves meditate upon it until we have grown not only in information but in wisdom.”
The Golden Rule’s 3 impacts on a business’s bottom line
So many employees hate their jobs. Changing that might be hard but it isn’t complicated: follow the Golden Rule.
Taking down the arguments for tariffs (15 min)
Trudeau, Carney, and Poilievre have all agreed to impose tariffs on the US in response to Donald Trump’s tariffs. So what’s the other side (Prov. 18:17) you aren’t hearing? As British economist Daniel Hannan notes, “Just because somebody else is shooting himself in the foot, the worst possible response is to take aim and blow off a couple of your own toes in order to show them.”
He notes free trade, rather than tariffs, always makes countries richer. So why isn’t free trade more popular? While Hannan says free trade is unpopular, he doesn’t go too deep into why. One reason might be because it runs up against our sinful instincts. Those in power seem incapable of, or too arrogant to, consider a problem might be made worse via their active intervention. And citizens facing difficulties likely wouldn’t accept their government doing nothing – tariffs might not make economic sense, but hitting back makes great political sense in the midst of an election. In the secular world, government is a God-substitute, and the world wants their god to act.