Are you saying that Christians shouldn't study economics because eventually the world is going to end? If that's the case then why should Christians study much of anything?

I don\'t see where I mentioned any of those in the post above. Did you mean to post this somewhere else?

Additionally, I don\'t presuppose that secularist ethical theories are false, I conclude they are false elsewhere mostly because 1. any action can be justified in them if we simply tweak the desires or perceived utility of an act and because they 2. fail to provide an adequate ground for moral obligation.

John, what you\'ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought or response to this post (which was about atheistic grounding for morality, not about how Christianity hurts your feelings). Everyone reading this site is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

You forgot to mention how those two dudes had no knowledge of the meatpacking industry, had no interest in even pretending to be objective in their analysis, and only reported the very worst things they found.

You also forgot to mention how, in the end, the laws that were passed to regulate the industry ended up helping the big meatpackers so there was actually a disencentive for them to clean up their acts for the inspectors in the first place.

Like I said earlier; Its bad form to base your political views on fiction. But I guess you can\'t help it if you think that a socialist economic policy is preferable to a free market economic policy.

\"I have an utter contempt for him. He is hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful. Three-fourths of the things he said were absolute falsehoods. For some of the remainder there was only a basis of truth.\" -Theodore Roosevelt

And that was from the guy who used his work in order to push through his interventionist policies!

[HT Gero]

Nearly ninety years ago, muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a book titled The Jungle which wove a tale of greed and abuse that reverberates to this day as a powerful case against laissez faire. Sinclair’s focus of scorn was the meatpacking industry. The objective of his effort was government regulation. The culmination of his work was the passage in 1906 of the famed Meat Inspection Act, enshrined in most history books as a sacred cow (excuse the pun) of the interventionist state.

Were Sinclair’s allegations of a corrupt industry foisting unhealthy products on an unsuspecting public really true? And if so, should the free market stand forever indicted and convicted as a result? A response from advocates of freedom is long overdue. Here’s a healthy start.

The Jungle was, first and foremost, a novel. It was intended to be a polemic—a diatribe, if you will and not a well-researched and dispassionate documentary. Sinclair relied heavily on both his own imagination and on the hearsay of others. He did not even pretend to have actually witnessed the horrendous conditions he ascribed to Chicago packinghouses, nor to have verified them, nor to have derived them from any official records.

Food inspection can be a service provided by the market.

It's bad form to base your preference for government intrusion on a fictional novel expressly developed as propaganda in order to fuel government intrusion.

Yes, since everything she says runs against the grain of \"accepted wisdom\" she must CLEARLY be brainwashed. There is no POSSIBLE way she could have, oh I dunno, researched any of her points. Its not like she was giving a report or anything.

BTW: As hard as it may be for someone who has only listened to liberal sources to believe, the truth-claims made by this girl are facts.

Your comment appears to presuppose that God doesn't exist as an presupposed condition. It strikes me as odd that you would say that reason is the enemy of the church when the best you have to offer is a straw man of an emotional basis for belief. I suppose it never occurred to you that such an emotional basis could also constitute the core of a person's unbelief as well.

Tell ya what, how about you take the time to study some more and come back when you have something a little more meaty to bring to the table.

I'm a guy and while I respect her right to sell herself like a piece of meat, I don't think her choice to do so is praise-worthy in any respect.

I would argue that the only valid grounds for separating yourself from someone would be a combination of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Mostly based on the external signs of orthopraxy which lets us know that there is something wrong with the orthodoxy.

For example, if a man is caught having an affair we should seek to reconcile him. If he agrees to be reconciled we should work with him. If, however, he continues his pattern of behavior (orthopraxy) then it is safe to assume there is something wrong with his beliefs (orthodoxy). So it would be fair and valid to require he meet certain criteria (call another mature brother in Christ whenever he begins down familiar sinful paths, etc.) before continuing to walk with him in orthodoxy.

However the situation mentioned in my post had absolutely nothing to do with sin (orthopraxy) but only involved belief (orthodoxy). In that case I find absolutely no grounds for separating from a believer just because they hold (potentially) wrong beliefs. Even if they were to deny the core tenets of Christianity (deity of Christ, bodily Resurrection, etc.) our course of action should be to seek to correct them in love and with patience, not to divide from them.

Dividing from others because we think they are wrong or because we don't like their doctrine is never warranted as far as I can tell. We may spend less time with them in favor of being refreshed by more mature brethren but we shouldn't write them off.