Truck and Barter

Calculus of Faith

Tino’s post about death caused me to ponder a little about spirituality. I think only the spiritually hollow people feel that death makes life meaningless. Jeffrey Lang, a mathematics professor at University of Texas, in his book “Even Angel’s Ask: A Journey to Islam in America” attempts to develop a conceptual model for the one who wants to improve his faith:

“If one were able to plot a person’s spiritual growth against time, a Muslim would envision it as a continuous curve that, at any point, is either ascending, descending, or at a critical turning point. According to this perspective, faith is not a steady state. A believer must be on guard against unwittingly slipping into a downward slope,…”

It follows from the model that we must always continuously review the current state of one’s religiosity. Some diagnostic checks that could be used might include asking questions: “how’s your faith?”; “Do I feel closer or farther from God in my daily prayers lately?”; “Am I giving more or less in charity these days?”; “Was I at greater or lesser peace with myself and with others in the past?”

Most religious rituals enable people to develop discipline over the course of their lives. Muslims fast during one month of the year from sunrise to sunset; I try to use this ‘Ramadan button’ during times of hardship in life (for those familiar with Stephen Covey's work might understand it as the ‘pause button’).

I agree with the advice of Bryan Caplan that ‘immortality through your work is better than nothing’. It was memorably put by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:

"If I could think that I had sent a spark to those who come after I should be ready to say Goodbye." (cited by Thomas Sowell at the end of his biography A Personal Odyssey)

My advice to Tino for his unlucky attempt at making himself religious is read some spiritual autobiographies. My favourite is Mohamed Asad’s Road to Mecca. Across the economics blogosphere the most religious blogger seems to be Rasmusen. John Palmer had also noted that one day he would like to post on the econometrics of God; I think this book will be of some help, Frank Tipler’s The Physics of Immortality.

It was ironic that while writing this the TV was showing the Hindi film, Kal Ho Na Ho (Tomorrow May Never Come).

Posted at July 3, 2005 06:18 AM

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