WWJD with a Signing Bonus at Goldman Sachs?
Ever wonder what Jesus would do if he went to Wharton? Well, thank G-d for Revisions, Princeton's "Journal of Christian Perspective," which explains the holy joy of i-banking:
One such way of directly glorifying God through finance is by imitating God's creativity. In Genesis, God instructs Adam to "be fruitful and increase in number" (Genesis 1:27, NIV). While it may be taking the passage out of context, God desires men to multiply not only their progeny, but also everything they own, including their financial resources.
Why sit around with just one golden calf when you could barter it for enough gold to make two more? You could even team up with a biology major and found a golden calf breeding center, and propagate a dazzling new race of diamond-encrusted cattle!
Of course, because we are not God, we cannot create ex nihilo like He does, fashioning something out of nothing. Rather, we always start with an initial quantity of resources which we then manipulate so as to add value to it. ...within finance, the work invovles creating more out of less, and is thereby a celebration of God's own creative work.
When I become a plastic surgeon and create D-cups where previously there had been only B's, I will remember this logic, and will thank the Lord for so inspiring me.
Other promising headlines from this month's Revisions: "Smiling Depression Away," "Has the Church Replaced Israel?" and "Why Do We Have to Die?" The more I look at it, though, the more I think their willingness to ask that last one in earnest is kind of awesome.
38 Comments | 
| 
Print This Post
Read more: i-banking, Princeton, revisions
Email – 
Search
About
Follow us on Twitter
Report a bug
Archives
RSS Feed
April 21st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
i love how these people justify their own beliefs by twisting words out of their context – even admitting it – while neglecting more applicable portions of the bible:
“”Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Matthew 19:24
April 21st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
even at princeton, one can have idiots
April 21st, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Matthew 25:14-30
April 21st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
well then clearly one of you is wrong, or perhaps lying, because we all know the bible is self-consistent. This is why I hurl stones at my neighbor, who is a practicing wiccan, but do so lovingly (it’s for her own good).
April 21st, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I love how the atheists justify their own beliefs by taking admitted ignorance and turning it into sure fact. “There is NO God….right?”
April 21st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
@me:
* One interpretation is that “the eye of a needle” refers to a particular gate into the city of Jerusalem known to be extremely constricted. Merchants who used this gate were forced to strip their camels of their burdens and gear before they could fit through the narrow passage.
* However, the above itself is a common misconception, seeing as such a gate has yet to be found in Jerusalem. Reading the actual text in Matthew chapter 19, verses 25 and 26 (following this quote in verse 24), makes it clear that the disciples themselves thought Jesus was saying it was impossible. “When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?” Verse 26 gives us Jesus’ answer, “But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” showing that He meant that it is only possible for God to save, since nothing is impossible for God. Since the man was trying to do something to save himself, Jesus said it was impossible, but for God all things are possible.
* A more likely issues is the original translation itself. In Hebrew, without vowels, the word for “camel” is the same as the word for a thick, heavy yarn (this point is made in “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver). This makes the association with the eye of a needle far more appropriate in the first place (although it should be noted that Matthew’s Gospel was written in Greek, not Hebrew).
April 21st, 2008 at 7:45 pm
actually, Keggy, the burden of proof is on the religious. Atheists merely take the default position.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:18 pm
“me, and “@me”: yes. agreed. “cornell gs ‘10″: this is why atheists throw scripture out the window. on the one hand we’re supposed to accept it as the word of god… on the other hand we have no f***ing clue what’s been changed, intentionally or unintentionally by human intervention. how am i supposed to be a christian if there’s no reliable record of christ?
April 21st, 2008 at 10:53 pm
congrats on being good again, ivygate!
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:41 am
No one in their right mind would claim the bible to be self-consistent… nor must it be. The Bible (as it is understood by most Christians) is the gradual revelation of God to man as recorded by man culminating in the final revelation in Jesus Christ. Therefore when Jesus says “Love thy neighbor” it rewrites the previous Mosaic attempt to instill morality using harsh law. Jesus admits, quite frequently in the Gospels, to defying the law because the law is not the letter but the spirit. That said, no one expects you to believe anything. Faith is a personal matter and should be such. But to claim that there is a “burden of proof” on believers is to ignore the fundamental aspect of what defines faith – a near utter lack of evidence beyond personal conviction.
PS @ Cornell GS ‘10 – Though I may be wrong I believe Matthew was the gospel written “for the Jews” in which case it was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. However, it is true that the only surviving manuscripts of any gospel are the greek versions (though the other 3 gospels are believed to have been written in Greek).
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:56 am
@lolz
I am an atheist
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:23 am
Atheism is not the “default” position, agnosticism is.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 am
you missed out on the upcoming conference this weekend, for which that article is merely a promo.
checkit:
http://web.mac.com/blake.altman/Site/2008_Public_Lecture_Series/Entries/2008/4/18_From_Prospect_to_Wall_Street.html
featuring
“What does the Gospel have in common with the business world?… Please bring your own lunch. “
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:55 am
“….we have no f***ing clue what’s been changed, intentionally or unintentionally by human intervention. how am i supposed to be a christian if there’s no reliable record of christ?”
==========================================
Have you ever spoken with a person and just by the way they used their words you could tell that they were experienced / knowledgeable or suffering from Plato’s ‘Complex Ignorance’ (Not knowing that they didn’t know)? Reading the Bible for the ‘big picture’ of what it is trying to get across doesn’t require the microanalysis to the last translation error. It is not an indemnification clause sorting out liability over 4 parties. What is important is the ‘right thing’.
Also, looking around just the physical world, the amazing mathematical formation in a flower, the amazing chemical negative feedback systems in the human body that controls everything is so complex, but so casually accepted without serious thought. As an Engineer building control systems, I can attest to the difficulty of making/keeping these kinds of systems in industrial plants working at all. The body does it automatically. That fact leaves me pondering its origins on a technical basis. Just as an ant has insufficent neural connections to comprehend the proportional, integral and derivative dynamic control equations of the the fuel injection system in your car as you drive over it in the driveway, in my judgement it seems there is a less than insignificant probability that we might also lack neural capacity to conceive the next level up. Essentially the ‘unknowable’. To discount this as a possibility, would seem a tad on the arrogant side.
As for records…I have been a MBA/Chartist for years and learned that reading price action is far more reliable than dueling press releases from XYZ/ABC Inv Banks colored from their buy/sell side biases. Manipulation is rampant in everything. You just have to turn off everything, listen to your own heart/mind and decide for yourself.
Unquestionably for years man has used (is using) ‘belief systems’ to gain control of what they want. As pointed out earlier, Agnostics have no fear of ‘religion’ because it threatens them no more than the Tooth Fairy. Atheists on the other hand have their group’s ‘Belief System’ that they wish to impose through the govt. It doesn’t take a big leap of logic to see the remarkable similarities to an ‘Official State Religion’, through the forced exclusion of beliefs distasteful to them.
The Bible reflects the beauty of the world when it is read for the Spirit of the Law … not the Letter of the Law. The trivialization of the teachings of Jesus (signing bonus) unfortunately de-emphasizes the real value of honest, hard work, diligence, etc. as advocated by the Bible. Whether you agree or disagree about the existance of the ‘next level up’, I think none can dispute that while we are all being “as bad as we want to be”, we will fall into being unproductive and unhappy.
Best of luck to you and good trading,
Bruce
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:19 am
theism is not the default, i think we all agree, because it requires a positive belief in something without evidence.
agnosticism can only be a default position if you treat other highly unlikely things the same as god. so, the famous examples being the orbiting teapot and the flying spaghetti monster (wikipedia them if you’re clueless on these). if you’re agnostic with respect to god, you must also be an agnostic with respect to these unlikely items. this is why atheism wins the default-position title. in the absence of evidence, we believe that the null hypothesis holds (that there is no god).
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:21 am
Agnostics don’t believe in god but are open to spirituality if evidence emerges that some sort of god exists. Atheists, by contrast, explicitly deny the existence of god. “Keggy” is right that atheists say that there is NO god, but most “atheists” are in fact agnostics. The burden of proof, however, is definitely on the theists, who have the difficult (atheists would say impossible, agnostics would say unfulfilled) task of explaining how they know that there is a celestial body out there who is at once benevolent, all powerful, cares about us, yet sends us to hell for the slightest infractions and allows human beings to do terrible things to each other. Explain things like that and you can convert a skeptical agnostic. But something tells me that you won’t be able to.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Agnostics don’t believe in god but are open to spirituality if evidence emerges that some sort of god exists. Atheists, by contrast, explicitly deny the existence of god. “Keggy” is right that atheists say that there is NO god, but most “atheists” are in fact agnostics. The burden of proof, however, is definitely on the theists, who have the difficult (atheists would say impossible, agnostics would say unfulfilled) task of explaining how they know that there is a celestial body out there who is at once benevolent, all powerful, cares about us, yet sends us to hell for the slightest infractions and allows human beings to do terrible things to each other. Explain things like that and you can convert a skeptical agnostic. But something tells me that you won’t be able to.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 am
A wise man I know told me when I was 21-22 that we justify what we do, whatever it is, as OK with God and the universe. Compare with Matt 11:19 (in part) or Luke 7:25. Wisdom is always justified by its followers
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
“No one in their right mind would claim the bible to be self-consistent… nor must it be. The Bible (as it is understood by most Christians) is the gradual revelation of God to man as recorded by man culminating in the final revelation in Jesus Christ.”
are you calling god inconsistent? blasphemy! shame on you – repent, sinner!
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
“No one in their right mind would claim the bible to be self-consistent… nor must it be. The Bible (as it is understood by most Christians) is the gradual revelation of God to man as recorded by man culminating in the final revelation in Jesus Christ.”
are you calling god gradually inconsistent? blasphemy! shame on you – repent, sinner!
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Yes, it’s great how while the validity of anything else in the world is judged by its coherence and consistency, the Bible is the only thing that gets a free pass.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Yes, it’s great how while the validity of anything else in the world is judged by its coherence and consistency, the Bible is the only thing that gets a free pass.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Yes, it’s great how while the validity of anything else in the world is judged by its coherence and consistency, the Bible is the only thing that gets a free pass.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:22 pm
FAITH is actually an important aspect of religion from what i understand. this is the eternal divide between believers and agnostics/atheists. discuss.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Barbara Kingsolver is an anti-patriotic, anti-male, anti-religious, anti-white hate monger.
Is there any wonder the Posionwood Bible was called the “Damn Africa Book” when people were feeling patriotic?
Now all of the sudden it’s appropriate to imply that white Americans are greedy and worthless?
BITCH
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Barbara Kingsolver is an anti-patriotic, anti-male, anti-religious, anti-white hate monger.
Is there any wonder the Posionwood Bible was called the “Damn Africa Book” when people were feeling patriotic?
Now all of the sudden it’s appropriate to imply that white Americans are greedy and worthless?
BITCH
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I don’t want to start splitting hairs, but I would say that unless you grew up in Antarctica if you are not engaged in an organized/unorganized religion then you are more atheist than agnostic. The reason being that all ivy leaguer have by now been exposed to at least one religion and so by not accepting one you are tacitly rejecting all of them. Why? Because if the idea of an omnipotent, omnipresent creator of all we behold did not entice you enough upon first exposure to look more deeply into the subject to explore its veracity (even in the context of other religions if the first wasn’t to your liking) you probably never will.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
the distinction between atheism and agnosticism is subtle when it comes to definition and one’s personal thoughts on the (strong) distinction is usually more based on their exposure to varied use of the terms in juxtaposition with each other rather than their definitions.
::
there appears to be overlap in at least some standard dictionary definitions. from dictionary.com:
>atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
>agnostic: a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
>> these are not necessarily mutually exclusive. take for example a person who thinks that the essential nature of things is unknown and unknowable and in the absence of that knowledge does not believe (or disbelieves) the existence of supreme beings. this is a situation that i find myself in (for at least the time being) and think that many others (repeatedly referred to in the above discussion as “most atheists”) find themselves in a similar situation.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
What! you mean you can’t accept the idea that 1000 monkeys on typewriters can come up with a master plan for all of the complexity of life in 1,000,000,000 years? Our monkey overlords will have your head for that.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
i’m not sure that Revisions ever publishes anything humorous, but regardless of intention sometimes i feel like a lot of people are missing out on a chance to enjoy the humor that can be found in articles like the one above when we force the interpretation to be from such a serious/analytical perspective. on the other hand, this thread is surely not representative, because most who laughed probably didn’t bother commenting ; )
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:02 pm
most people believe quite a bit that they’ve never seen and can’t prove. if this comes as a surprise to you, check out a course in the history of science.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:25 pm
believe whatever you like but leave science and your false analogies out of this. No scientist has ever believed anything without proof, unless he/she has had very strong evidence to point them in that direction. The idea promulgated by some pseudo scientists that science is a religion is complete balogna, and only supported by wishful thinkers who want to justify their own lack of rigor, and who don’t understand how science works.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Jesus makes shady deals with Indian businessmen.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:11 pm
this thread is now about biblical inerrancy. gogogo.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 am
Who said anything that an ‘omnipotent, omnipresent creator’ is a necessary condition of religion?
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm
@burdened
You’re kidding, right? You honestly think “no scientist has ever believed anything without proof”? I don’t know where your concept of a generic scientist, if there is such a thing, comes from, but it’s wrong. Talk to any science or engineering prof and not a single one will say s/he lives his/her life only believing in mathematically proven concepts.
And before you spout crap at me, know that I am an agnostic engineering student.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Thank you for your synopsis of Intelligent Design propaganda. Please read a book, preferably by my personal Lord and Savior Richard Dawkins, regarding evolution and how such complexity can arise through natural selection coupled with fucking 4.5 BILLION YEARS. Also, question: how do you get from that somewhat impersonal Creator God to having a faith in Jesus Christ? It seems an argument supporting the former does not at all precede a belief in the latter. Finally, wouldn’t a God able to bring about sch complexity be even more intelligent than his creation? Like all first cause shite, you restrain the natural world to laws (intricacy requires creator) that you completely ignore when discussing God.
Please pray for me. Oh and who gives a flying fuck that you work with control systems? I’m in engineering but I don’t suppose that I have the necessary knowledge to comment on biological systems. Just like the religious though: trying to inject their tripe where they don’t belong (government, schools, science classrooms, the minds of children, etc…)
April 24th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
EvilYalie – I completely agree with your post, and with the idea that religion is a matter of personal belief. However, I think the reason atheists revel in such discussions is because there is an aspect of modern Christianity that wants to convert everyone. If you think about that, it flies in the face of the idea that religion is personal, and worse, it is inherently hostile and confrontational.