Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist - The F.S.A.

An old, eccentric billionaire comes to you and offers you a wager. He says:
"Young man, I want to offer you a wager. I will pay you $1 billion to complete a task for me. There is a 90% chance that you will live, and there is a 10% chance that you die. Those are the only two outcomes. You will either complete the task and live with a 90% probability, or you fail to complete the task and die with a 10% probability. What say you?"

I have two responses to this question, but I want to hear others thoughts on the matter first. Would you take the wager or not?

This isn't a trick question or anything. There's no magic answer, it's suppose to be a test of how risk-averse/risk-loving you are, that's all.

Just in case people were wondering when I talk about my net worth bps = basis points. 1 bps = .01%. 100 bps = 1%. And so and so forth.

I utilize bps at work all the time, so it's natural for me to use it here as well (particularly when talking about small increments). Heck, even my wife has gotten use to it now, isn't that right honey :P.

In less than two weeks from now, I take my test. In the interim period I'm most likely not going to be doing much besides work, study, say hi to wife and kids, study, sleep, work...

In short, it's going to suck. However, if I can make due for the next two weeks, I'm one step closer to furthering my career which will be good for my family as well. Until then, it's just going to suck.

Jerry Falwell is dead. I'm seriously stunned. Cause of death is unknown at this point. I'll try to find an updated news story.

Update:
Linkage

Saw this intriguing post over at Make Love, Not Debt (thanks to Mapgirl). While Him was specifically talking about Asian parents and Asian culture, as a non-Asian immigrant to the US as well as being in an interracial marriage with my Asian wife, I believe I can offer some perspective on this issue.

First off: "Do you give money to your parents other than for special occasions?" The only time we've given money to either of our parents was the loan to my mother which isn't actually giving now is it :).

Secondly: "Do they expect (whether it is spoken or not) to be repaid financially for their work as a parent?". My wife's parents certainly do (at least her mother does), and for my parents, I think my mom would like me to when she retires and my dad is basically banking on me for a good retirement. I'll get to that dichotomy in a second.

Thirdly: "What does your significant other think about this cultural repayment plan?" My wife is ok with giving money to my mom and my step-dad and dislikes the idea of giving money to my dad. She feels a compelling sense of obligation to give to her mother and I absolutely detest the idea of giving her mom any money (my wife doesn't feel quite as compelled with her father, because he's done fine on his own...her parents are separated).

That's our take in a nutshell. For those who are interested, the remaining part of the post gets very personal, so feel free to skip it.

Warned you.

About the dichotomy between my parents. My mom and dad have never been married, I am what you call...a bastard child. In the tradition of many great black men before him [/sarcasm] my dad was never around when I was growing up. In fact, I had only seen him 3 times before I started college. Now that I've gone to a pretty good school and am on a fairly good trajectory salary-wise, he's starting to keep in contact more often (i.e. more than once-a-year). Why? Because he's in his 50s with only $50,000 in his 401(k) and he's going to need someone to help him in retirement. That's where I come in. Needless to say I'm not that enthusiastic about giving him any money and my wife isn't that enthuastic either. So at most we'll probably give him $50/month (he is my dad after all, even if he is a dead-beat). Even then, we might not give him anything.

On to my wife's parents. They are currently divorced after several years of marriage. Her dad is doing fine and I don't expect that he'll need anything from any of his kids. Her mother on the other hand is definitely outspoken about her desires in a kind of passive-aggressive manner. She'll say things like "I wish I could retire, but if only my kids loved me enough to help" or some such thing. Plus, as a child, it was impressed upon my wife that the children take care of the parents.

All that is fine and good, and I can understand the cultural differences, Asian families are different, yada, yada, yada. But the kicker is this: by any objective standard, my wife's mother was a teriible parent. Absolutely terrible and at the same time absolutely resolute in her belief that none of it was her (my wife's mothers) fault. Some of the stories that my wife told me are painful to recount, and I can hear anger creep into her typically cheerful voice.

And despite all that's happened to my wife, she still feels a sense of obligation to give back to her mom! For me this is frustrating to say the least. I can bring up event after event and even though she gets angry about it, she still wants to offer monetary assistance to her mother. Right now we've compromised at $50-$100/month in groceries from a peapod-type delivery service after she retires. The rest of her siblings can help out as needed.

As for my mom, we'll probably do $100-$200 in cash. It just depends.

There's not an easy answer to this, as we have our own family to take care of right now. At the same time, we'll keep discussing it with each other and look at our budget when the time comes.

Two Quick things I forgot to mention in my last post about Jesus Camp.
1. Everything was in Jesus' name, and I do mean everything. There was a funny scene where pastor Becky Fischer was going around blessing things before the camp started. Included in this was the electricity and the powerpoint, I thought Jesus was only a carpenter, not an electrician or IT tech support!
2. As Basil Bizarro mentioned, Ted Haggard was part of the movie. Knowing what we do now about his homosexual indiscretions, talk about hypocrasy. As MaryAnn Johanson put's it, his appearance was "homo-hypoc-a-riffic".

Really, people need to watch it themselves to get the full effect. Here's a clip from youtube, classic.

One of Richard Dawkin's more controversial point in his book, The God Delusion, is that religious indoctrination is akin to child abuse. As a father myself, I have to say that I disagreed with his assertion. It felt that he wanted to tell parents how to raise their children, and I was strongly against any such infrigement of what I considered my right as a parent.

Then I watched Jesus Camp.

After being thoroughly disturbed by the movie, it made me reconsider my initial reaction to Richard Dawkin's assertion. I will come back to that, but first some more thoughts on the movie itself.

The stars of the movie are the children. Oh, the children. It was difficult to watch at times, particularly when it begins to get really over the top. I didn't take notes, but here are some highlights:
- Home school scene where the mom says, "Did you see the section where it says that science doesn't prove anything".
Yes, technically that is true, science does not prove anything. All science does is observe, hypothesize, test, and create theories to explain the world around us. For proofs, look to mathematics with it's rules and axioms and assumptions. But no, science doesn't prove anything.
That being said, science has proven to be immensely useful in everyone's daily lives. You drive a car, you use a computer, you give your kids antibiotics. You are using science, even though it hasn't "proved" anything.
In addition, would they assert that the bible "proves" anything? Don't be ridiculous. The bible is a collection of stories written by men, and nothing more. It doesn't "prove" anything.

- Scene where young Levi (who was at most 12 years old) talks about being saved at 5, because he wanted more from life.
This young boy was shown preaching in the movie. It was disturbing for me to hear him say that at 5 years old, he wanted more from life and became saved. He's 5 years old. He's just a kid, what could it possible mean for a 5 year old to want more from life? I'm not really sure

- Interview with the children's pastor Becky Fischer where she tells of her ability to walk up to a random group of children who don't know anything about Jesus and in minutes can have them hearing God's voice and speaking in tongues.
Because they're KIDS! You take young impressionable minds and you can make them believe that they were touched inappropriately by their parents if you try hard enough. Give me a break, there's nothing special about that "ability".

There are so many more scenes that disturbed me as a parent with young children. It was painfully obvious to me that these children (like all children) were doing these things just to gain the approval of the adults around them. There is a part of the movie where the children are all shouting (and crying and wailing and ...) "RIGHTEOUS JUDGES, RIGHTEOUS JUDGES" in regards to the supreme court overthrowing abortion. My impression is that these children don't really understand what they're saying. They're just mimicking the adults to gain their approval.
Take young Levi for instance. When he preaches, he's essentially repeating what he's heard the other adults say and thinking of other things that they adults want to hear. That's all he was doing. It was obvious to me as an outsider looking in, but I'm sure for the parents and the pastor, he has a gift.

In a case like this I would have to agree with Richard Dawkins. This type of indoctrination is a type of mental child abuse. It's brainwashing. There's no other way to put it. However, that raises more questions. Parents have a right to raise their children how they see fit, but the state places limits on those rights, i.e. you cannot abuse your child mentally, physically, etc. So then how do you determine what type of religious indoctrination is child abuse vs. which is not? Besides the fairly obvious ones (physical of sexual abuse) where does one draw the line? It makes for an uncomfortable intrusion from the government.

In either case, I recommend that atheists and theists alike watch the movie. It makes for a good substitute for a horror flick.