ASM123 Miracles, Abortion, and the Minimum Wage

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miracles abortion and the minimum wage all that and other completely non-controversial topics on this week's episode of ask science mike [Applause] [Music] science faith [Music] welcome to another episode of ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life now back on a weekly schedule following my move across the country it's good to be back we've got a lot to talk about not just questions crazy stuff happening in virginia yesterday so i don't know let's stop vamping and get it started [Applause] [Music] i don't know i don't really know how to do this um the peppy theme song seems weird but it seemed weirder to leave it out um i was going to i thought about maybe canceling this episode and doing a special episode but i don't know that i have a show's worth of stuff to say but if you haven't followed the there was a white supremacist march that turned violent in charlottesville virginia there were literally torch-carrying mobs of angry white men and really encouraging signs of counter protests and even clergy uh standing in the gap um and then you know somebody drove a car into crowds and i just wanted to take a moment and just grieve with you all that this is the state of our world and our country right now it's heartbreaking it's absolutely heartbreaking um that there are people who openly and proudly campaign that america should be a white only or white first nation and i think most people find that completely morally repugnant but i can't help but notice in the same vein that and i have looked i have looked all over facebook at friends and family and people who have sent in questions to the show or made comments on the past that have denounced you know black protests across the country there's a deafening silence attached to this display from white supremacists and i have to get this out of my heart and into your ears there's no room for neutrality or sitting on the fence here we've reached a point here in 2017 where you're really either fighting white supremacy or keeping it alive and i'm sorry if that sounds too plainly stated i'm sorry if that sounds offensive but since november some forces in our society have been emboldened that have always been there they have always been there the civil rights movement sent overt racism scurrying into the shadows and it was replaced by systemic racism and covert racism colorblind racism but it never went away and your voice is needed if you're white and listening to this program it means a lot for you to publicly denounce white supremacists and white nationalists and frankly to call on our elected leaders especially the president to denounce white supremacy as well not violence on all sides whatever that means there wasn't violence on all sides there certainly wasn't people open carrying assault weapons on all sides there certainly wasn't cars driven into grounds on both sides we get lulled into a false equivalency that deeply concerns me on issues of racial justice in this country and my friends we can do better as human beings we can do better if you are a christian absolutely you can do better a need for order lulls us into an uneasy alliance with forces of oppression and i'm starting this week's show by saying that has to stop now is the time for white people of good moral conscience to stand up and be counted with people of color as they seek a position of true equality in our society and folks the data is clear they don't have it today they don't have it today if we look at family wealth if we look at income if we look at access to education if we look at criminal prosecution if we look at incarceration if we look at point after point after point it will illustrate the simple fact that america operates on white supremacy that it is easier to be a white person in america than a person of color all things being equal now that doesn't mean there aren't advantages of wealth and that you couldn't point to examples where there was a rich black family and a poor white family and in some ways the poor white family had it worse that's not what i'm talking about we also have big problems with economic distribution in this country we have big problems with how the working class of all colors including white people are treated and rewarded for their labor that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about the simple indisputable fact that people of color have a different experience in this country because of the color of their skin and that it's getting worse today under the current presidential administration now i know there's a large part of this audience that doesn't want me to get political i have been accused of being anti-white more than once i am not anti-white but i am pro-equality and i i can't sit silently by as people of my ethnic heritage of my skin coloration of my cultural norms march on american streets carrying torches and chanting nazi slogans not in this country not anymore so i would challenge everyone listening to get involved if you don't understand what i'm talking about in terms of white supremacy and in terms of of the plight of marginalized people especially people of color in america get educated start reading start learning if you've already started down that path get involved you can donate to organizations like the movement for black lives or the naacp or the aclu you can donate your time when protests happen in your community you can show up with bottles of water and render aid to the people doing the work you can get involved and that starts with using your voice and saying i will not allow white nationalism or white supremacy in my country where we're nine minutes in where do i go where do i go with that i've got a script for a whole show here i've got i've got some an excitement an announcement i'm really excited about not talking to you alexa stop i have one of those echoes on my desk and sometimes in the middle of the podcast it starts listening greg just leave that in okay let's just let's go to the announcements you you all understand my duress over charlottesville i pray that you share it got some events coming up really excited about soon now actually september the 15th about a month away we're doing the liturgist gathering in los angeles california and man tickets have started moving so if you want to go to that go grab your ticket and we'd love to see you in los angeles september 15th or in boston october the 6th or in seattle october the 27th the liturgist gathering will be in all those places tickets are selling quick for all dates so go to the liturgistgathering.com to learn more i'm going to be doing an ask science mike live tour in the uk october 11th london october 13 uh manchester october 17th edinburgh very cool october 21st i'll be in dublin at the rubicon conference love to see you there november the 15th the ripple effect conference in lawrence massachusetts uh news or links to all those you can learn more at asksciencemike.com just click on the events tab way cooler pete ends the man himself author of some of my favorite books on the bible bible scholar has agreed to answer your bible questions on this show all you've got to do is use ask bible pete on twitter or you can go to sciencemike.com and send me an email or a voicemail just reference ask bible pete to have your question be considered for that episode a bible-themed episode i'm really really really excited about that few people have been as influential in how i understand the bible as pete ends and i can't believe he's agreed to do it so that's uh it's kind of a dream come true it's lightening my mood a little bit so that's our announcements and uh what do you say let's do some questions hi science mike this is casey from new york uh my question is about raising the minimum wage so a cousin of mine recently mentioned on facebook that he's going to vote for the first time and he went on uh to discuss a bunch of uh policies that he had positions on uh but one of them was the the minimum wage increase um thinking that raising the minimum wage favors people um who haven't done any any hard work and that it it um works against people who have worked uh hard um so my question is if there's uh what the science is on on raising the minimum wage in terms of the economy and how about how that would affect people who started at a lower rate and have worked their way up to above minimum wage and how that relates to our uh duty as christians to uh to kind of lay ourselves down for the uh disenfranchised and the poor and the needy um so uh yeah that would be great thanks a lot and i really love the program so thanks for listening for the record uh there's some really politically divisive questions this week i did not pick them [Laughter] oh man i get more than um more controversy than i'm interested in uh i don't i don't love that so minimum wage is man is that a hot button issue so let's figure that out i think the first thing i would say is the whole merit or people haven't worked hard enough thing in terms of wages drive me insane you know what i mean like tell tell a mom who works in housekeeping in a hotel about not working hard enough to get ahead some of the hardest working people in the world make the least and have the least career mobility so that that is a line of thinking um that really disturbs me you know i get it my dad grew up in poverty literal poverty and he worked really hard he got a college education he made a career path he became quite successful and kudos to my dad for doing that but he's he speaks english his parents spoke english he's white so as he started to uh struggle and and genuinely work as hard as i've ever seen anyone work for his success he had a number of advantages and that can't be ignored when we talk about wages and wage growth is that in the data in our economy there are things that are better predictors for economic success if hard work is a given although frankly you can succeed without hard work if you have enough innate advantages starting out but let's go back i think i've skipped too far ahead here and let's talk about how economists would argue the minimum wage uh which i'm not an economist and not especially strong in economics just full disclosure so here's one one one position economist would take raising the minimum wage reduces employment and drives inflation higher why well if if a company has a set number of dollars to pay employees and you raise the minimum wage well the money has to come from somewhere so they're either going to increase prices which is driving inflation or they're going to cut back on their employees hours or they're going to let employees go so they can pay the remaining employees more forcing productivity higher right so that would be the argument against minimum wage it ends up driving inflation and reducing employment therefore hurting the economy another position economists would take would be raising the minimum wage increases the real income of the bottom 30 percent of income earners meaning once you raise the minimum wage first an immediate benefit is on people who made incomes below whatever the minimum wage is being raised to but then because you raise the minimum wage it starts to push up wages of people who are who are just above the minimum wage based on market principles so that people can still retain employees with competitive salaries okay those are the two positions i haven't weighed in on either one i've tried to represent them as simply and as accurately as i can and what the minimum wage tells us is at its heart this is an issue that stands as a rallying point for free market advocates people who think less regulation in economies is better and economic progressives people typified by the new deal saying that equality and fairness is part of a healthy economy not simply growth okay and and what your worldview tells you is going to say like what's more important in the minimum wage like if you're progressive you might say you know what a little inflation is okay if it helps out people at lower income levels if you're a free market person you're going to say the merit should determine where the money should go and the deciding force is the market those are the two ends of the spectrum of course people can be anywhere in there now let's let's be real here i used to be a libertarian on economic and social issues i thought as little government involvement as possible was the most fair gave people the most liberty but then i spent a long time in corporate america and often the way decisions are made in large institutions are made in ways intentionally that benefit the people at the highest levels of management who make the most money and i'm talking here about big publicly traded companies a lot more than like a mid-sized business you know we've seen some studies that tell us there's a great thing about small and mid-sized businesses everybody knows everybody the owners know all the employees and they tend to treat them a little more fairly when you get an institution that's so large that your employees are aren't known to you they're basically points of data in a spreadsheet the way that you compensate and care for those employees changes and i can say i've worked for amazing small and mid-sized companies and then the problems i see definitely come in when you talk about large-scale publicly traded companies so that sort of swung me towards becoming an economic progressive which is what i am these days i look at some place like the netherlands i look at uh you know the scandinavian countries all those areas and i say now that's that's a that's a healthy form of economic progressivism where we have a strong social safety net where workers have guaranteed rights but that innovation still exists that you have a strong capital economy i think that seems to be a good system in our world today although frankly the libertarians in my audience are going crazy right now as are the leftists there's a lot of leftists that listen to science mike who are constantly trying to get me on board with economic leftism but here i am in the messy middle and here's why i'm more of a progressive libertarianism i think ignores the systemic effects that allow people with more money to earn more than people without the way that capital amplifies liberty in a free-market society is ignored in the philosophies of libertarianism and that success isn't an indicator that they've worked harder or are smarter or have more merit in some form because the biggest predictor for wealth we see in america today is how much wealth your parents have riddle me that if it's merit why are the children of rich people do they always have more merit right if you want to go anecdotal everyone can think of some wealthy person's child who's been extremely successful as an adult but doesn't work terribly hard right now anecdote is not the day the plural of anecdote is not data so i was kind of fighting anecdote with anecdote there but my point is how much money your family has is the biggest prediction for how much money you're going to have not how hard you work um and since going back to the white supremacy discussion earlier since white families tend to have more money their children tend to make more money and this is a big systemic problem so me i'm for raising the minimum wage i'm for anything that starts to increase the share of the economy for people lower on the income ladder because i don't buy the argument that these are lazy people that don't work hard it's not my experience with low-income earners my experience with low-income earners is that they work hard for low-income but the minimum wage isn't some silver bullet it takes a large collection of policies to more equitably distribute the gains in an economy right now the wealthy have been increasingly getting higher portions of income growth and overall wealth not just the the lower ends of the economic spectrum even the middle of the economic spectrum has been left behind and people who make like if you're worth a million dollars net worth you haven't gotten as many gains as someone with 10 million and if you have 10 million you haven't gotten as many gains as someone with 200 million or 500 million we've got this crazy slope happening right now that historically has not been a good predictor of long-term economic health or social stability it's a real problem if you combine economics with history which is why i care about it so i'm sure i'll get a ton of email about how i was dramatically wrong on this answer from both sides but that's how i understand it today [Music] okay our next question came in via email and it reads greetings and salutations and other words like that what is your opinion of craig keener's work miracles on one hand it's really interesting to hear stories of these events but how does this affect the non-believer's claim along the lines of god doesn't grow limbs or other sorts of obvious undeniable miracles greatly looking forward to your thoughts and then there's a link to the book okay bad news i've never read that book it's a 65 academic book that i don't own and uh i didn't i didn't buy it for the show and i wouldn't have time to read it well yeah so how how does a book that tries to make a case for why miracles are a thing how does that affect skeptics i don't think it affects them very much now i'll be honest my first instinct was to give one of my super inspirational everything as a miracle speeches which if you've listened to science mike especially the live episodes before you've heard it but i know that's not what you're going for so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna skate and just you know go for the uh emotional resonance that makes people happy i'll actually try to engage the question fairly here's one thing miracles bring up really troubling questions about when god chooses to act and therefore when god chooses not to act right like if god heals one person one another another um if god can intervene in times of disaster where's god in like a tsunami right this this this places at god's agency all good and evil that happens and it creates a very troubling picture of god but if we put all that aside there's another issue skeptics would say regardless of this book miracles we don't have any and i mean any sufficient forensic evidence that a supernatural miracle has occurred to accept that they exist right if you were to write a paper on why miracles exist and cite nothing but scattered human testimony that that paper is not not going to do really well in peer review you could write a paper on that people believe miracles occur and it'd be a slam dunk 80 percent of people in the united states believe that miracles occur this is a majority held position but for a skeptic popularity is not validation for an idea or a belief evidence is so how you know how do i approach this what's my opinion of craig kinger's work i don't have an opinion of craig keener's work i haven't read it it wouldn't be fair um it but his work doesn't affect skeptical claims that say to believe in miracles i need to see evidence human testimony is just not going to get it there um you can get human testimony for all sorts of things human testimony has been studied and is generally unreliable i'm actually one of the people that thinks human testimony shouldn't be admissible in a court of law that's how little confidence i put in human testimony my own included by the way i can't tell you how many times i have found some piece of forensic evidence that undermined my recollection of a series of events in my life constant constant it used to trouble me now i've just realized that uh i don't have a consciousness as much as i have a narrator which is true of everyone our consciousness really tells a story about our life more than makes decisions about what we do and because of that my faith is not a debate or an argument i'm trying to win i don't i don't honestly seek to address skeptical skeptical concerns about miracles nor do i seek to like empirically validate miracles that's not where i'm going with the scripture when i go to the scripture when i go to the bible i'm looking at a collection of documents and books and letters assembled by the church that tell me how people have understood and contemplated god throughout history in the judeo-christian tradition that's it that's it it is not my magical book of miracles or something to instantly validate me about my worldview it is a way to wrestle with what it means to be an entity that's aware my life will end one day and sure miracles are borrowed that placing them within a historical context where an author wrote to an audience with a specific agenda sure miracles are part of that have i had things in my life that felt miraculous absolutely but they are nothing that would comfort a skeptic or convince them that you know my understanding of god is correct and therefore they should convert to my way of seeing god and i can't imagine much that interests me less than that and and this is not a critique of your question it's a really good question as i say it sounds like you're probably one of the 80 percent who believe in miracles or someone wrestling with where you are on miracles and given my messy marriage of mysticism and empiricism i'm probably like the worst person you could ask so maybe i should have done that everything is a miracle speech after all [Music] hey mike um first of all i just want to say i have recently started listening to uh this podcast um after being a fairly long time listener of the liturgists and uh i also attended the chicago liturgist gathering and was able to speak with you a little bit [Music] but i had a a question that has been brought up into my mind as of late due to you know the women's marches that have gone on and just a lot of uh back and forth arguments about this topic but i wanted to touch on a topic of abortion really quickly and see what you your thoughts are on that topic specifically in terms of when the soul enters the body i realize that's not very scientific however to me that would change drastically how i feel about the topic as a whole and um i also just wanted to kind of get some some insight um on just how to think about the issue in general um being a bit more of a progressive pro-choice christian um thanks for everything you do bye you know this episode has brought me to a realization and that i am very comfortable when i'm asked questions about facts if you ask me i love science questions why because i can i can i can relate to you scientific fact really well i'm good at remembering and synthesizing those things and then i'm okay um at offering advice there's a lot of advice questions that come into the show and i'm comfortable doing that because a lot of times all people really need is to know that they've been heard and and understood um and then you can say well here's what i would do and if you could be right you could be wrong and that's fine you're just humble about it but the questions i have the most trouble with are when you all ask my opinion and uh three out of four questions this week are looking for my opinion you would be shocked folks how many things i don't have an opinion on i think i don't have an opinion on most things i'm a peacemaker who meditates a lot and that's not i have non-judgmentalism oozing out of my pores that's probably why i do well with the advice questions i don't judge people but to give you my opinion i have to judge something and i'm terrible at it so i'll do my best here uh this is this is possibly the most divisive issue in our nation and in our culture um if you look at most social issues there's statistical movement over time and uh abortion has been like locked in place for 25 years almost an even split in this country we did a liturgist podcast episode about it i think rachel held evans joined us on that one i think it's called pro-life pro-choice uh i'll try to find it and put it in the show notes this week so you can get deeper thoughts and more than just my thoughts a few things on how i approach abortion you said so when does the soul enter the body which is a very common place to start on this issue the problem is i would return this question what is a soul does everyone agree on what a soul is if we can't agree on what a soul is can we agree when a soul comes into the body i know there are many people who believe in a soul that enters the body at conception i know there are people who believe there's no such thing as a soul at all and i know that there are people who exist somewhere between those ends of uh polarity right so can we make a a universal legal decision based on something people fundamentally can't agree on or provide sufficient merit for their position so i don't know that the soul thing can enter the legal discussion because even among people who believe there's a soul there's not an agreement on what a soul is or what the implications are for the law so maybe we could back it out and say when does life begin well i mean what is life you know by any reasonable definition of biology sperm are living cells egg cells are living cells and sperm die all the time most people have no problem with using a contraceptive that has spermicide that kills sperm if a man masturbates and he hasn't had a vasectomy every time he masturbates sperm die right uh if if we don't want human cells to die then women should have to conceive every month which isn't even possible do you see what i mean that's a ridiculous standard so some people go to well when can an organism suffer will we kill things that can suffer all the time when's the last time you had a hamburger or a chicken sandwich or some bacon so maybe we elevate human life to some special position and we say when can humans suffer and after that point uh an abortion is not legal but then that's an odd approach to suffering because we don't mind if um if people are hungry because they aren't working and could work a lot of people say well if they if they can't work they don't eat well that's suffering ah but now there's some agency do you see what i mean this spirals out of control so quick and frankly we can't discuss abortion in a vacuum without examining how it intersects with women's rights and how little say women have had and their reproductive rights historically it's just a messy messy issue and i get i really get in trouble for saying this but i think both sides of the abortion debate hold positions that are logical and ethically consistent within their world views if you believe life begins at conception [Music] then abortion is murder if you believe that there's a an immortal soul in a child the moment or an embryo and a fertilized egg and that's it's then abortion is murder if you don't believe that then abortion isn't do you see what i mean it comes down to your world view and since i'm the i don't know what a soul is guy it's hard for me to throw in with either of those camps i do get concerned that human rights do they only begin post-birth if if they begin pre if they begin pre-birth then like there's some really troubling things that nobody talks about in just like fertility clinics and fertilizing lots of eggs with the hope that some survive but it seems most pregnancies spontaneously abort anyway turns out human reproduction is pretty tough uh so i don't think you can solve this on paper and come up with some perfectly airtight moral ethical logical position i haven't been able to and when other people tell me how they have i remain unconvinced so when i'm lost in the woods like this i go straight to pragmatism moral pragmatism it seems all things considered less abortions is probably better less unwanted pregnancies it is a better indicator of a healthy society so how do we do that you legalize abortion while providing access to contraceptives and comprehensive such education that has been shown across cultures including ours to be the best way to lower abortion rates it doesn't seem that making abortion illegal significantly lowers abortion rates and frankly abstinence-only education has been shown to lead to higher rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and yes unwanted pregnancies if you really care about this give people condoms help them understand how sexual reproduction works and yes make abortions legal and affordable that's pragmatism um i have a problem as a as a as a guy telling women what to do with their bodies but then there's still part of me that says like at some point human rights has to come into play so when does a human get agency when do they get legal autonomy and that that is the sticky question so in the meantime let's legalize abortion provide easy access to contraceptives and comprehensive sex education for every american and when you do that the abortion rate consistently declines and we have the data to indicate that so i probably just made literally everyone angry if you'd like to hear more from smarter people check out the liturgist podcast episode pro-life pro-choice [Music] okay last question this week are there any challenges to evolution that come from within the scientific community rather than creation scientists and advocates of intelligent design neil degrasse tyson said in cosmos episode 2 that evolution is not just an opinion it is scientific fact i'm worried that kind of attitude makes it difficult to propose different theories in a community so that so rigorously defends the theory thanks okay that's that's a reasonable critique but i mean i would also say uh heliocentrism in our solar system is not just an opinion it's scientific fact now that doesn't mean it's impossible that you couldn't make a case that the sun's not the center of our solar system but you would need one incredibly compelling idea with some serious data to back it up some things are the institutional center of gravity some things are so rigorously defended because they have such extensive evidentiary support and the theory of evolution is one of those things the theory of evolution it should be hard to challenge it because precisely because there is so much evidence backing it up now that doesn't mean there's absolutely no um non-religious secular scientists and philosophers that don't have problems with with darwinism um one camp has to do mainly with things in evolution that seem very improbable like the persistence of life or some sense of genes that don't change very much over time and another tends to be concerned with from a political or progressive stance um concerning um social darwinism or an interpretation of darwinism you know that would say like white people are are better and smarter because of evolution neither of those things uh disprove evolution um and there are actually better social critiques of darwinism than that i did a bad job representing that position but like critiquing some part of darwinism or or focusing on some point in the theory of evolution that we don't have well defined yet doesn't take out the entire theory it just means we should look more at that and that's how science works it is okay for there to be a center of gravity or an established set of agreed-upon facts within science with the understanding that absolutely everything in science is open to question is open to reinterpretation with new data emphasis on with new data anyone who's a credentialed scientist would be happy to tell you about the letters they get that make fantastic claims with no data with no data that's why science is based on evidence you need data to form scientific beliefs you need the evidence otherwise we just have a bunch of conflicting claims with no way to decide which one is right and so i am not worried that neil degrasse tyson's attitude on evolution is too dogmatic because there is such overwhelming evidence to support darwin's theory of evolution another week another episode of ask science mike please send in your hashtag ask bible pete questions we've gotten a lot already but you know me i always want more i want to thank andrew golucky for his work on pre-production want to thank greg nordin for producing the show i want to thank jeb bottaford for that amazing theme song and a special thank you to all my patrons on patreon who make the show possible if you'd like to throw me a dollar a month or five bucks a month to keep at science my going you can learn more on asksciencemike.com just click on the patreon button thanks for listening everyone and i'll talk to you next week