The Difference Between Faith and Expectation

You Can Cripple Yourself Without Knowing It

Many times over the years, I have been asked about faith. Very rarely has the person asking intended to talk about anything but their own.
Yet a quick look at any site which describes world religions and their basic tenets reveals that almost no one has the same idea about what constitutes faith. Most have no idea, even, what other people take for granted as “true”, and fewer still realize that this word, "TRUE", has a logical definition.

So, I find it necessary to distinguish between faith and expectation - and then, between directed and non-directed faith. Yep, these things exist. Here’s how:

Expectation signifies a process by which cause and effect can be shown to produce generally repeatable results. For instance, when ordering a pizza, one can find a number in a phone book for a physical address you can actually visit; when calling the number, someone who actually handles pizza answers specific questions. Other people can do this too, with very few prerequisites. You can find someone who has actually ordered pizza and gotten it. When you call, you have the expectation that the process will be successful in your case because it has been demonstrated, and conclusively. You are not surprised at success, AND you can obtain redress for poor service.
Gee. You go in person, and you can see all of this happening for yourself!

Faith has no such structure. A promise is made that a particular result will follow an action on the part of the person expressing faith, such as a prayer, but the promise is not made by any person cited as responsible for results; actually, no one in sight of the supplication has ever seen effect follow cause. In short, pizza is promised by someone who has not only never seen the pizza delivered, he cannot say where it is coming from, or even what it looks like; having no solid definition, anything which is delivered is declared, "pizza", also without regard for the delivery method. Of course, there is always a ready answer if this figurative pizza does not arrive. Perhaps you did not perform the necessary prerequisite actions, or they were in the wrong order, or you didn't really mean to call for pizza.
Gee. There is NO WAY for you to observe any of this process...

Faith has its own, extremely potent irony: it is not possible to have faith in something which can be shown to exist. This is the Irony Of Belief. Are you carrying a bowling ball with the thumb and fingers of your right hand? The answer is simple, and it is never a time for faith.

There is a difference between directed and non-directed faith.

In directed faith, a particular deity or agent has focus in the supplicant’s wishes for peace and success. The individual prays to God™, Jesus™, Allah™ or another entity in particular (™ signifies the particular entity described by adherents of that faith).
A less-focused version of directed faith is often expressed that a particular governmental agency will "take care" of us. 
Non-directed faith - far more widely practiced, since everybody does this - is the expression of hope that the uncountable external forces which surround us do not interfere with our progress and/or health. This hope is actively coupled with denial that anything bad could happen in the near future.

This has nothing to do with the magnitude or value imagined by the faithful. Each of these above illustrate The Utility of Belief.

A belief is a sort of stepping stone, on which one can stand long enough to get on with life. Never dependent on logic or reason (careful - do NOT use colloquialisms for "logic" or "reason"), a belief generally has as its major component an emotional commitment. This is due to its being a tool to counter fear of the unknown. It is constantly reinforced by the feeling of comfort it awards - thus, there is no immediate reward for abandoning that apparent shelter. Yes, the faithful engage in things to obtain immediate gratification, because...

The price of awareness is discontent - a price many will simply refuse to pay in full. Yet it is necessary to take on part of that burden of awareness, and that depends on reason. Author J.M. Straczynski said it well: “Faith and Reason are like the two shoes on your feet: you can go farther with both than with either one.”
You have to be careful about those definitions. Confusing faith for reason, and vice versa, will strand you as you build a false foundation for yourself, and leave you vulnerable to truly tragic disappointment.

You can still dream, but the plan for getting to the land of your dreams depends on reasoning.

Minimum Wage: You Have Never Thought About "One Hour of Work"

If you think raising the minimum wage  - or even the existence of a minimum wage - is a good idea, think again.

Among other things, maybe you should realize this first: You have completely missed a basic property of wages: CUSTOMERS PAY THOSE WAGES.
 
Consider the cost to YOU, an employer, if you hire someone under those laws:
• you must identify an employee properly
• you must keep track of their hours to make sure of their status w/r/t medical care
• you must insure against their incompetence/mistakes on the job
• you must provide a workplace free of hazards per OSHA
• you must show that they are legally employed
• you must withold taxes properly
• you are directly liable for their performance.
Or you can hire somebody "under the table". The work gets done.
Yeah, I thought so.

But let's talk about money, since it's the cry of people who think their first job should be their only job. Whenever a hike is mentioned, pundits actually ask a very good question:

Why not make it $20 an hour? $100 per hour?

Have you answered that? Because that's only a matter of degree. It's logical to ask that.
The fact of the matter is that there is an effect on cost that is invisible unless you know how the market for labor works.  
When you hike the minimum wage, you devalue the dollar immediately. 
This is because there is no change in the amount of work obtained for more dollars!

Let me spell this out for you.

The DOLLAR is a marker, which people use for trade. Left to themselves, people decide how many dollars are appropriate to trade for a product or service. There is always a ratio of the number of dollars needed to obtain a product or service, and this ratio is established by the customers. It is known as "what the market will bear".
Now, when speaking about a service (labor), there is always a unit involved:  

One Hour Of Work.

Now, there is a fundamental quality to this. One Hour Of Work cannot be changed by anyone - not government, not an individual... and satisfactory work always has the same quality to it: the Hour Of Work produced the desired result.

Now, here comes a government agent, who or which has decided that the long-term effects of legislation are insignificant next to the good will and votes available by appealing to that mysterious demographic, "the poor", and people sympathetic to their plight. Somehow, it is impossible for an American to "earn a living wage" without government action.

 (You MUST IGNORE the success of immigrants for this case)

The agent declares, by law, that One Hour Of Work must cost at least X dollars. Now, the ratio of the number of dollars needed to obtain a product or service is established by the government.

The law has just set a number of dollars as being worth One Hour Of Work. 
When that number is increased - by the SAME entity which establishes "full faith and credit" for those dollars - the actual value of each dollar is immediately decreased.

Glue this to your forehead if you will forget it - legislation cannot change an hour of work. It can only change the number of dollars required to pay for it.

Maybe I should say that again for you, since a lot of people don't seem to get it:  legislation cannot change an hour of work. It can only change the number of dollars required to pay for it.

And have you noticed this? "Government", or the employer, is not paying the unskilled worker more - YOU, the Customer, ARE. It is always the customer who pays the costs of any business. You are not changing this, either.

Want a great example? Look at any Federal facility, like Savannah River Site. Workers there make quite a bit more than minimum wage, which you might grant because of the hazards of handling radioactive waste -- but will you get more work if you raise their pay? NO.  

Work is determined by the process, not by wage legislation. If they - I - were granted a raise, you, the taxpayer, would pay more for the exact same tasks.
How do you like that idea?

Here's what happens in the workplace, courtesy of Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl's, Jr:

“For example, Apple did $39.5 billion in business last year, and only has 97,000 employees. So they made about 407,000 dollars per employee, which gives you a lot of latitude to increase wages, if you want to do so.
In the retail segment, if you take all 22 retailers on the Fortune 500 and add them together, they did about $34 billion in business last year, and … made about 6,300 dollars per employee.
Now if you give a minimum wage employee an increase to 12 dollars an hour, rather than making 6,300 dollars an hour on employees, you lose about $1,100. If you give them a raise to 15 dollars, you lose about 6,000 dollars per employee.”

It doesn't matter if we talk about Andy Puzder or you: you must make money to keep your business open, and it costs about 135% of a person's declared wages to employ them.

Let me present a practical example.
Imagine for a moment that I have gifted you $50000 to open a store, and that once ALL of that money is GONE, you now have a store with two employees. Business licenses, insurance, power, water and data(phone), are paid for, a year in advance. The store sells Gadget™ brand Doodads© of fifty kinds, and nothing else. There are one thousand Doodads© in stock.
You will pay the wages to two employees, and save up to pay those recurring bills, from the money you get from your customers as they buy Doodads©. You also buy new Doodads© to replenish stock. Whatever you have left over, if anything, is yours to keep or invest as you choose, because a) the gift was to YOU, and b) it is ALL GONE. It is now up to you to stay in business.
1) Where does a pay raise come from?
2) What if taxes or those recurring bills go up?
3) What happens if the Affordable Care Act applies to your workers?
4) Is there any such thing as "free" money?
Go ahead. Make things up. You can do that here, but trust me, no bank is going to let you pretend anything.

Now, think about those bullet points up there and those two employees.
Administrative costs are real. It turns out that you have to EARN at LEAST 135% of an employee's wages before having that employee benefits your business. For example, you have to take in about $13.50 an hour to pay them $10 for that hour. The employee has to help move those Doodads© at a profit.
This is one reason there is markup on merchandise (the other is storage, handling and inventory tax expenses).
If you sell a Doodad© for {Cost=$10} + $3.50, you must sell one every hour just to pay the employee.
If this does not happen, you lose money, and cannot continue to employ that person no matter what - and you must sell more Doodads© to pay the other expenses you have before the business earns one penny.

Back to that universally-mandated minimum wage idea: Remember asking when you would ever use algebra in the real world? Well, here you go - what happens when you add the same amount everywhere? Yes, when you hike everyone's pay, nobody is better off. They just feel that way momentarily because they see a bigger number on their paycheck.
Nationally, minimum wage increases are one of the Big Three reasons for the inflation you see today (the other two are Affordable Care Act restrictions on full-time workers and Federal pandemic spending without sending government employees home).

Go look on the shelf at the supermarket, at the gas pump, in a jeweler's cabinet and see what you're supporting by way of wage - and therefore price! - hikes. It's not "them" - it was you, supporting minimum wage. One of the reasons illegal immigrants are here and textile jobs are overseas.

What Do You Really Know?

I am so sorry - your school hasn't taught you everything, because it couldn't.

Now that Facebook has allowed the speedy delivery of idiocy and nonsense from all over pop culture, I thought it might help if we all had somewhere equally speedy to look to figure out if what is posted is "the real deal". So, in addition to Snopes.com, here are a few links to help you figure out if your buddy's ladder has a top step:

Engineering Issues:
Now and then, somebody will post something nuts about how human artifacts are built. Try The Engineering Toolbox
Few things online indicate the advanced state of the scientific arts better than this page from the National Institute of Science and Technology...
Keep in mind that technology is not a thing - it is the process that allows things to be made!

Aircraft:
You might have a problem with statements about air travel.
The ultimate crash data center is the Joint Air Crash Data Evaluation Center
A ridiculously complete photographic archive - of everything that flies! - is at Airliners.net
If you want a pilot's perspective of how the aircraft industry is run, including some observations about the current state of American airline security, you can Ask The Pilot

Religion:
Ahh, yes, the subject best not mentioned in polite company!
At one time, a non-profit group produced a Web page called "Adherents", with a thorough desciption of the basic tenets, rituals, etc., of over a hundred religions. That site is off-line, and so a Wikipedia article is the easiest thing to show.
Hope you picked the "right" one... not much about religion is logical after a commonality of purpose is adopted by the participants, and what they claim is surprisingly limited once you realize how much real study goes on elsewhere. In a world populated by those who can measure currents under the surface of the Sun and detect atmospheres on planets orbiting distant stars, there are those who haven't learned very much. Here are a couple of eye-openers that challenge some of the assumptions religious people make without really thinking about them (take a deep breath, these are serious articles!):

• Evolution
• DNA

Earth Studies:
There is a HUGE amount of material to study at Darwiniana . In case you have a problem with the title of that Web site, well, you can independently find many of the same things by going to:

• Earth - An Introduction To Physical Geology
• Radiometric Dating - A Christian View 
• The Scale of The Universe
• The National Climatic Data Center page on ice-core data

If you'd like to see photo-detail of the Earth itself, few things are as fun as Google Earth. The Moon and Mars are also shown in detail there courtesy of the Lunar and Mars Reconaissance Orbiters. Also, you can actually get Google Street View to show you what the Martian landers are seeing!
There are a couple of other places to find amazing photos. Take a look at Mars and Saturn while you're browsing. Those Cassini probe people have a lot for you.

Public Issues:
"News" vs. the law: You should know the difference between such editorial content and the information source. Do you know where to find the actual content of legislative bills?
Right here: The Library of Congress 

Nuclear Weapons: You might not know how many atom bombs the USA has tested, much less how many have been tested elsewhere; did you think that Iraq had no WMD program, because you forgot that the Israelis bombed it? Anyway, here's a fascinating report on those weapons: The Nuclear Weapons Archive

Crime is one of those things that everybody thinks they know about, but don't, because it depends on definitions. "Evidence", for instance, is only what is presented to a jury when you speak of a trial - it is NOT what you see as a spectator. I bet you think you saw evidence in OJ's trial. You did NOT.
I hope you have more sense than Cheez Whiz and can look up the laws of your state, rather than counting on hearsay or Facebook. Need crime statistics? Here's the Bureau of Justice Statistics page. No, some people are not being picked on by police.

Discussion Tool:
A fallacy is a statement containing a flaw which immediately invalidates that statement. Here is a list of those fallacies. If you want to make a point and make it true, you don't have a choice - you MUST avoid these! (No, really - you don't have a choice. The law of cause and effect extends from the real world into logical argument!)

If you're looking at this material, take a minute, sit back and relax, and then marvel at something almost invisible: there were thousands of discoveries, moments of inspiration and connections between investigations to produce what you see. Then, there are people at the store now who have no idea where meat comes from.

Now, you can find out. We have something in common here!

"Miracle!"

A miracle is an event or phenomenon of rare occurrence or circumstances, for which the cause or sequence of events is not clear to the observer.

Recently, I have been asked to support the idea of a belief in "miracles".

Nope. I'm not going to - but not for the reason you'd assume, especially if you are in the habit of taking things on faith, without thinking too carefully.

Look at the description above, then consider any event that you find extraordinary, or maybe one that you have heard described as "miraculous" by some observer. If you look closely, you will find that the observer very simply cannot understand how such a thing has happened.

The short story is that the incredulity or expertise of the witness has NOTHING to do with how any event or phenomenon occurs. Suggesting this effectively insists that something happens differently depending on whether Albert Einstein or Forrest Gump is watching.

If you went back in time and handed your cell phone to Dad in 1970, he'd have called it a "miracle" - and you know Samsung or Apple built it, even if you don't know how, so it's not miraculous to you.

On a more personal level, "miracle" is often applied to events with harsh consequences. We hear of the cancer survivor beating horrible odds, or the infant flung a hundred feet from the flipping SUV and surviving. In fact, neither of these events violates a single natural law.

We don't consider a lottery win a "miracle", because we know that a Lottery Commission controls the odds of a win and publishes them for all to see, but we'll use that term lavishly for things which are more common. 

Have you considered the term, "believe in"? That indicates a serious emotional investment in whatever is being discussed. Do the emotions of an observer change the process by which an event occurs? NO.

The laws of cause and effect are not changed by anything. Do you, or do you know someone who is prone to call something a "miracle" and then assign divine intervention of some kind to the event? That's common, because people fervently wish for there to be some force acting to keep order, so that they can be safe and comfortable -- but in order to claim one cause, you must actually rule all other causes out. I'm sorry, but this does not change based on how good a person you are, what church you attend or which way you face when the National Anthem is played.

When you see or are told "a miracle" has happened, do not stop there, with mouth open in astonishment. Work to understand what happened. If there was injury or death involved, you may discover a way to avoid that risk.

And you will not disperse any of the wonder and awe that attended the event. I think you will marvel, instead, at the forces at play.

Global Warming? Start With The Basics, and Make The Distinction Between Science and Politics

This issue does not depend on the idea of government telling you what you can do, or if you mistake being able to drive for some sort of liberty, even though opportunists and hustlers are doing their best to take control of you using this issue.

Do you recognize that if you light a candle in your house, the house is hotter immediately? Do you recognize that your house is NOT a closed system?

If your answer in either case is "no", I suggest that you have been brought into this argument by emotions, and that you have something to learn about heat. Please relax and consider the laws of thermodynamics before you continue. It is necessary to know something about them to make intelligent judgments; it is not necessary to know everything. In short, heat is not temperature. Heat is the transfer of energy due to a difference in temperature. Heat transfer occurs by the mechanisms of conduction, convection and radiation, and there are factors we can show we have changed to produce a difference in things we can actually see and measure.

This issue is being screwed up by fighting over what to do about it.
You might not know how to figure out who is lying and who is not. This is pretty simple to figure out, if you can simply understand that heat flows from "hot" to "cold" because the "hot" area has more energy in it than the "cold" one.

Pictures of the Earth from space will show you cities. Lots and lots of cities. Expending energy, right on the surface of the earth.

So here's how that goes:
There are cities where there were none before.
Human population and energy usage grow over the years.
It is hotter in the cities.
It is that simple. Population is proportional to energy release into our living environment.

This is not debatable: our liberation of energy from chemical and nuclear sources occurs directly into our living environment.

Do you know how to figure out how much water vapor and CO2 your car puts out? You should, if you want to understand human impact. Gasolines and diesel fuels are blends, and they also contain impurities, but they generally do these things: the carbon in a fuel molecule makes many CO2 molecules when burned, and the hydrogen in a fuel molecule makes many H2O molecules. You can derive many of the properties of gasoline as a fuel by observing this article.  Note that ~114 grams of fuel - about 1/4 pound - will combine with ~272 grams of O2 to make about 386 grams of exhaust vapor? In the process, your exhaust will release most of the heat of combustion to the air around you.
And one gallon of gas is about 24 times this amount of fuel.

Burn one gallon of gas, produce about 20 pounds of heated exhaust gases.

Now, look around you in traffic. Have you ever noticed that thirty cars making 30mpg burn one gallon to get one mile? I bet not. So you and 29 other people went to the convenience store a mile away, or drove a mile in traffic. Or drove less than a mile on the Interstate, in formation, at 80mph because 70 is inconvenient.
Did you notice it took mere minutes to burn that gas? So. Hundreds of millions of cars, buses and trucks are on the road worldwide. Ships and trains burn fuel, too - like trucks, their engines are a bit more efficient, especially newer models, but this is less than a factor of two - we're still in the ballpark.

So heated exhaust emissions are in the billions of pounds per minute category.

Take a look at this graphic (click to zoom). It shows the sources of energy and its usage in terms suitable for comparison. It also shows us something the layman might not recognize at all: rejected heat. You can think of this as the unused energy found in your hot exhaust gases - feel the tailpipe of your car. Realize that heating your exhaust pipe didn't push your car.

Look at the ratio of each of the Energy Services to Rejected Energy, and you will see that we:
• Lose more energy than we use;
• Lose more energy as a fraction of usage in "transportation" than anywhere else.
Think of millions of cars idling. That's waste, and that's where electric cars are going to save a great deal. The chart does NOT indicate exhaust gases, because the loss of energy occurs even in processes where gases are not emitted, like nuclear power electrical generation, AND it does not address direct heating of the environment by lighting, or building heaters.

Okay, now.
Two wrongs do not make a right. If you were downwind of a factory that let off sulfur dioxide, you'd never tell them, "Hey, that's OK, volcanoes do that!" It doesn't matter what volcanoes or other natural forces do at all. Citing them invokes the "two wrongs" fallacy, and does not excuse our deliberate actions.

You might have a hard time when some well-meaning duffer blames a severe thunderstorm, tornado or fish kill on "global warming". Hey - I do, too, because warming cannot be credited for an individual incident without investigation. That's not right. You MUST show your work.
That said, a hurricane's wind is the product of a truly tiny differential pressure exerted across hundreds of miles of compressible medium. I bet you can't describe the mechanism, and I bet you don't deny that a hurricane is a real thing.

This issue does not depend on the idea of government telling you what you can do, or if you mistake being able to drive for some sort of liberty. This article is NOT political. You should notice it does not depend on who is in any government office.

The laws of thermodynamics will have the final say here. You should know what they are - and realize that when you set fire to something, the fire is the hot part.