Water crisis? Us?

The economists can fry my over this one, but the stats are too upsetting not to mention it. Apparently, the amount of money needed per year beyond current spending to provide clean drinking water to everyone on earth is $1.7 billion. The amount spent around the world on bottled water every year is...$46 billion.
Here's a simple idea. Every time I drink a bottle of water (which I do, because it stops me eating junk food—pathetic, yes, but effective), I'm going to put the same amount of money into a box for a water-based charity (e.g. WaterAid. Otherwise, that Mountain Franklin is going to have a bitter ethical aftertaste.

Source: New York Times

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Chasing God

I saw this film on the weekend, after reading very positive reviews of its attempt to explore humanity's defining feature—its near universal belief in a god. The film is just an hour long, more like a final year project than a fully-blown documentary. However, the makers did have access to some great footage and some interesting religious leaders. But it is a film with a mission—to persuade the viewer that all religions are one, and that oneness of humanity is the common goal. Bizarrely, there is no mention in the film of the differences between religions, nor any examination at allof religious texts. The only point of discussion about the content of belief is a section on the different experiences of god that people have had.

This really is head-in-the-sand propaganda under the guise of tolerant spirituality. It isn't going to get us anywhere. It would have been more fruitful to explore how people with profoundly different notions of the divine (god as a person, god as a light, god as the laws of physics) can begin to talk about their differences in a meaningful way. Then we might see some progress towards human togetherness, perhaps.

Interestingly, there was no discussion of Jesus Christ at all, and that is where Christianity alpha-s and omega-s.


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Investment and faith

Back after a long hiatus. I heard an interesting paper at UNSW recently arguing that the rise of the Christian Right in America is based on two notions. The first is premillennial eschatology, whereby certain things need to take place in the world (especially in the Middle East) before Christ will return. The second is the strengthened connection between capitalism and Christianity. The speaker summarised this nicely as a shift from the Protestant work ethic to the evangelical investment ethic. Put briefly, debt becomes the tool by which a group can advance its cause in the world. This comes largely from the work of a Catholic economist, Michael Novak (for Novak here...against Novak here...general articles on Christianity and capitalism here and here).
On 15 August, former World Bank economist, Dr Michael Schluter, will give a CASE seminar on "Why the Bible bans interest, and what we can do about it" (more details soon). It should add something to the discussion!

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Agreeably persuasive

The word of the year at CASE is swasivious. It's a beauty.
According to the OED, it's an obsolete or rare word meaning 'agreeably persuasive'.
That doesn't mean people will always agree with things they read or hear at CASE; but we do hope that the kind of persuasion we are involved in will always seem agreeable. It's a tone thing.

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