It doesn’t, if you think about it:

A few years ago, Pew did a poll of Americans to find out how much they knew about religion. This is discussed in the CNN video below. But I can tell you the results: they don’t know much. In addition, atheists and agnostics do better than most religious groups on the test. The reason for both of these results is that in America, the default orientation is religious.

If you don’t think much about religion, then you almost certainly have some kind of warm and fuzzy feeling about a God who loves you and an afterlife that will instill the mess of your current life with meaning and hope. So most of the Christians who took the test were only identified that way in the most casual of ways. Of course, this doesn’t mean that more serious Christians didn’t also do poorly on the test. In particular, even Christians who know a lot about their own religions are often shockingly ignorant about other faiths. A good example of this is the second “difficult” question asked in the CNN segment, “What is the main religion of Indonesia?” I would have thought that this was pretty obvious given the reporting since 911.

Just as the devoutly religious people know more about religion in a general sense, so too will atheists. This is because they think about religion seriously. If they didn’t, they would just be whatever religion mom and dad were. And atheists have another advantage. They tend to learn at least a little about most of the major religions, if for no other reason than that they want to make sure that they too are loony.

So it isn’t surprising that nominally religious people would know little about religion—even their own. And it isn’t surprising that atheists would know a lot about religion. What is surprising is that the United States would be a “nation of believers” when their people don’t give religion much thought.

Back on Friday, Matt Yglesias wrote that Mitt Romney will probably be better for the economy in the short term than Obama will be. This is really not an outrageous statement. This is pretty much what I think. Republicans always campaign about getting rid of the deficit, but once in power, they spend like a teenager with his first credit card. But understandably, many people were shocked by Yglesias’ claim, even though he has been very clear that he plans to vote for Obama. Since then, he has been defending himself and finally today publishing another article, Why Romney Might Boost Growth More Than Obama.

Yglesias offers three reasons why Romney would boost the economy more than Obama. First, as I’ve already mentioned, Republicans tend to run higher deficits than Democrats and for now, deficits are a good thing. Second, the Federal Reserve does a better a job under Republicans because the Fed is mostly made up of Republicans who are a bunch of assholes who should be tried for treason. And third, Republicans would stimulate the economy at the expense of the environment.

There is no question about his first reason. But there are a number of reasons to be against it. Republican deficit spending is not nearly as effective as Democratic deficit spending. This is because Republicans use the debt to pay for things that are not very stimulative: tax cuts for the rich and weapons manufacturer contracts. These don’t stimulate the economy the way that social welfare and infrastructure and education spending do. Eventually, the debt has to be paid off. The question is whether we get good value for this spending and with Republicans the answer is no.

On the second question, Yglesias is using the Frum Conjecture: since the Federal Reserve does a better job of stimulating the economy under Republicans, we should elect a Republican rather than let the Fed continue to fuck us. In fairness to Yglesias, he isn’t saying this. He is just saying that the economy will do better because the Fed acts this way. However, I don’t think the case is quite so strong now that it has been made very public that the Fed does this. I don’t think the Fed ever acted this way on purpose, and I tend to think in the future they will try to be more evenhanded. And even in the last couple of months, I think they’ve done a better job.

Yglesias is totally wrong the third point. Recessions are the perfect time for companies to clean up their processes. As is well known, companies are sitting on trillions of dollars that they don’t know how to spend. This money could be used effectively to fix their dirty infrastructures and simultaneously stimulate demand. While it is true that allowing more oil drilling would also stimulate the economy, it is not nearly as effective. Remember: the problem is not supply, it is demand. So I don’t think Yglesias is giving enough benefit to the clean environment side of the equation.

Regardless of all of this, there is a reason that Yglesias is still going to vote for Obama, and I think it is every bit as important as the social issues that he cares about. Under Obama or Romney the economy is likely to do quite well over the next four years. If Romney will be better for the economy, he will be only slightly better. I will add another ripple: if Romney managed to get the Ryan budget passed, it would greatly hurt our economic recovery. The odds are long on Romney being able to do that. But is even a 5% chance of success a risk we want to take?

House Republicans have called the presidential race: Obama is re-elected! I know this because Politico is reporting that Republicans are already complaining about forcing rich people to pay a little more in taxes, House GOP Warns Obama to Think Twice on Tax Hikes. But that title makes it sound like the Republicans will make Obama pay for going against their wishes. This isn’t the case.

The aide for one of the Republican bigwigs in the House told Politico, “Poisoning the well right out of the gate makes no sense if the goal is a productive second term.” That’s a belly laugh line. Just on the surface: do the Republicans really think we believe that they will work with the president regardless? But there is a deeper level that is funny but also annoying: the Frum Conjecture. This is the idea that if only Obama will agree with the Republicans on policy, they will go along with him. (Note that with healthcare reform, Obama did go along with the Republicans and they still didn’t offer any support.)

Of course, the Democrats aren’t falling for this nonsense. They are already scoffing at a “compromise” from Republicans to make the cut off for the top tax bracket $1 million instead of $250,000. You can imagine what would happen if the Democrats went along with this proposal: not a single Republican would vote for it. Chief of staff for Harry Reid, David Krone, says, “We haven’t even had the election yet and already the Republicans are drawing a line in the sand. It’s really sad to see.”

Last night on 60 Minutes, in a segment Is the U.S. Senate broken? Steve Kroft bemoaned the fact that members of the Senate couldn’t just compromise. Fools like Kroft seem to think that compromise is good in and of itself. But normally, compromise comes out of the wish on both sides to get part of their agenda enacted. Now, the Republican agenda is simply to destroy the government—or at least the parts that help the poor. And as we’ve seen, no amount of compromise will make the Republicans yield. It is in their interest to be intransigent, and reporting like Kroft’s that perpetuates the equivalency myth means Republicans pay absolutely no price for it.

It works like this. The Nazi Party wants to kill all Jews; the Social Democrats want to kill none. They argue. The Nazi Party wants to kill all Jews; the Social Democrats want to kill 10%. They argue. The Nazi Party wants to kill all Jews; the Social Democrats want to kill 25%. The media are exasperated, “Why can’t the Nazis and Social Democrats agree to compromise?!”

That’s what we get in the United States. The Democratic Party does compromise and the Republican Party does not. The fact that the two parties don’t reach consensus does not mean that the two parties are not compromising; it means that one party is not compromising. And sometimes, a party should not compromise. Killing half the Jews is not an acceptable compromise. And in the case of the Democrats, destroying half the social safety net is not an acceptable compromise.

I had never thought that the Republicans would work with Obama in a second term. I suspect it will be better than the first term, because Obama seems to have learned that the only way to get Republicans to work with him is to force them. But they certainly won’t work with Obama as readily as they would Romney. But that isn’t because of compromise. That is because Romney has the same vile policy ideas as the Congressional Republicans.

Obama will not get the Republicans to compromise by playing nice. He will get compromise by playing mean. And if House Republicans are already starting to squeal, it just may work out.

Proposition 37 in California is the Mandatory Labeling of Genetically Engineered Food law that would require that genetically modified (GMO) food be labeled as such. In general, I don’t think that GMO foods are that big a deal. But they could be and I don’t think that the science is all in on this. Those Serious Centrists who want to believe the false equivalency myths like to use liberal mistrust of GMO foods to counter conservative beliefs that global warming is a conspiracy. These two beliefs are hardly equivalent. The the truth is that there are very real questions about GMO foods and even more questions about just how helpful they have been to farmers.

I believe that foods should be labeled. This is a justice issue: very much like putting someone guilty of involuntary manslaughter in jail. Such a person is not in the habit of harming others. He behaved foolishly with terrible consequences. But putting him in jail isn’t going to make him less likely to do it in the future. Similarly, I doubt that people will change their eating habits because of GMO labeling, but they still ought to be told.

One thing that cannot be denied: GMO technologies have been great for chemical companies. The GMO opponents get a bad rap for being resistant to data, but much the same thing can be said for the chemical companies. In Europe, where GMO hysteria is much greater, labeling laws do not seem to have affected purchasing decisions. So why do the chemical companies care?

And they do care. They are spending many millions of dollars to defeat Proposition 37. And it’s working. In September, Prop 37 was winning by a landslide. But since October when chemical company ads started to appear (pitched as appeals to protect the small family farmer), the initiative has been losing badly.

On its merits, I think Proposition 37 ought to pass even though it isn’t that big a deal. But now that I see what the chemical companies are doing, I’m a strong supporter. Vote “Yes” on Proposition 37!

According to the ONION, President Obama has made a major announcement, This May Not Be The Ideal Moment Politically, But It’s Time To Talk Reparations.

It’s a funny OpEd. The President does not bring the issue up lightly, but he isn’t going to lie, either:

This brings up an obvious question: how many conservatives will tweet and email this articles to friends and family. “Can you believe what Obama is doing!?” We may even get some blog posts. Like the ONION‘s Obama, I am serious about this. The problem is that the ONION has too perfectly created the Obama that conservatives think is real.

It’s sad, but it could be damn amusing!

I first heard this line applied to Doctor Faustus: “It has a beginning, a muddle, and an end.” The truth is that this could describe most of drama, but it does seem very fitting for Christopher Marlowe’s play. It has a fundamental problem that is nonetheless repeated constantly: there aren’t a lot of third acts to follow a first act when the protagonist sells his soul to the devil.

Ever since Goethe, writers have tried to find a clever way to get the hero out of his deal. In Goethe’s case, it turned out to be a syntactic trick and no one that I’m aware of has much improved on this. Marlowe at least has the good taste to treat Faustus as a tragic character with no way out. But even in this case, Doctor Faustus seems more like an essay than a play: tell the audience what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them. Boring.

For the past year, I’ve been working on my own Faustian play, but at least I have the good sense to make Mephistopheles the star, rather than Faustus. He’s the interesting character, because he’s the guy who gets to watch Faustus make the same mistake that he has observed (and probably also committed). This is explicitly in the original play:

In other words, Faustus is an idiot. And thus the play is about an idiot who makes a choice, delays the choice for the second act, and then suffers for the choice in the third act. This, more than anything, is why the play is so rarely done. People love the idea and the dialog, yet it is always and forever unfulfilling.

And yet, I do love it. It is clearly the play of a very smart and erudite man. And it is hard for any intellectually inclined person to no see it as a metaphor for his own search for knowledge. The only filmed version of it is the tedious Richard Burton production. It does have one shining aspect: Andreas Teuber’s performance as Mephistopheles. It somehow makes sense that Teuber went on to be a professor of philosophy at Brandeis University. Unfortunately, all I can find of the film online is the most famous scene, “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships”:

If you are interested, here is the whole play (as much as these things ever are) that was filmed. It is directed by Jeremy Cole.

How can you resist?