From: Randall Parker 

In <38d04cf9{at}w3.nls.net>, the sagacious richhong{at}hawksci.com Richard
Hong perspicated:
> >> I mean, what automatically should entitle those who didn't create that
> wealth to having a slice of it?
>
> Randall,
>
> Being human.  That's what entitles them.

This is not an entitlement that I recognize as legitimate.

<
>
> When the time comes, you'll have the opportunity to ask God for her opinion
> on that.

So wil you Rich. What if it tells you that you have been wrong all along?

> "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others,
> faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. "  1 Peter 4:10

So if I work long hours to make a lot of money and someone else elects to
spend the same time in sports bars watching ball games the money I receive
is a gift that I'm obligated to hand over to

> Let me try it on you this way: if all mankind are brothers (and Christian
> doctrine can't be clearer on this),

Well, this is just one more reason I'm not a Christian. I disagree.

>then why shouldn't familial
> responsibility fall on all of us to care for all of us?

The bond one feels for one's own genetic brother is a result of evolution.
We care more about those genetically closer to us. Its an adaptive
advantage for our genes that we should feel that way.

Now, having said all that: We've sent billions to various countries and
they've become worse as a result. Why is that? Well, we were corrupting the
normal selfish impulses of their elites to focus on getting money from
abroad rather than build up their institutions that support markets.

>  Abandoning a child
> in the African bush to starvation is no different from allowing one's own
> brother or sister to starve.

Did I cause that child to come into the world? Did I create the
governmental system that caused that child's country to be so impoverished?
No, I didn't.

So why don't you give up golfing and going out to dinner and start sending
all your money to help the third world children? Oh, and while you are at
it, give up your social life and work harder to make more money so that you
have more to give away.

The high school drop-outs are counting on you Rich. Get going.

>Would you let a sibling starve, even if they
> didn't do anything to deserve your aid in your eyes?  I sure couldn't.  And
> the failure which we all have, myself included, in refusing to truly regard
> all humans as our equal siblings under God is sin.

No it isn't. Its just our biological nature.

This is what I really detest about Christianity: It takes our biological
nature and so thoroughly demonizes it that real believers become estranged
from their true selves.

I think these wrong-headed Christian beliefs about human nature went a long
way toward making communistic atrocities possible via a rather indirect
route: Christianity seeped our culture with the notion that selfishness was
evil and altruism was the highest form of behavior. Then, when people lost
faith in Christianity and in a perfect world in the afterlife many of them
tried to create an altruistic utopia in this world. Tens of millions dead
later it has become clear (at least to some people who haven't spent too
much time in academic humanities departments) that a society based on
altruistic notions is not too neat.

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