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David Sklansky, famous poker theorist, is offering a $50,000 reward for any American fundamentalist Christian who is good at math (or a good deal many other Christians, depending on your definition of "fundamentalist").
See also physicist Sean Carroll's coverage of this, Putting Your Money Where Your Beliefs Are, where I heard about this from.
If you can pass a lie detector test saying that with at least 95% confidence you believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually happened, and that adults who die disbelieving in the resurrection cannot go to heaven, then this man is betting you $50,000 that you suck at math compared to him. And he'll pay you the 50-grand if you can beat him on the math section of either the SAT or the GRE, where the time is cut in half to avoid a tie due to perfect scores. Of course, you also have to put up 50-grand to play, that he gets if you lose. (You might think money would be a problem, but I think since evangelical Christians have proven themselves historically good at raising large sums of money, I don't think this is much of an issue... if there is really such a person around who can beat him, there are more than enough evangelicals around who could raise the money to finance that person... turning a profit for the Church, as well as discreditting the hypothesis that there is no such thing as a smart fundamentalist Christian.)
This is pretty amusing, and reminds me of the comment I made last weekend about the feeling that I often get that poor math skills are closely related to religious superstition, at least of the fundamentalist variety. I think in most cases, both of them stem from a lack of basic reasoning abilities. That said, I think Sklansky may be ignoring an important thing, which is that taking any statistical correlation about a population and applying it to all of them is going to get you in trouble. Even if there is just one Christian fundamentalist out there who is good at math, Sklansky could lose his shirt. While the vast majority of Christian fundamentalists are no doubt terrible at logic and math, I wouldn't be completely shocked if there were 1 or 2 somewhere in the country who for whatever reason are capable of maintaining cognitive dissonance balanced on a razor's edge. And if there are, they can make a bundle at his expense... which would be interesting to see.
Another thing he's ignoring is that lie detector tests are not always accurate. With a bit of training, it should be possible to pass them. As is not uncommon in my profession, I scored a perfect 800 on the math GRE, so you might think I'd be a good candidate to take him up on the bet... if, of course, I could learn how to pass a lie detector test. However, the problem in my case is that even if I managed to pass the lie detector, he might still find out that I'm not a Christian from my blog or elsewhere, declaring the bet invalid. So is there anyone else reading this who is up for the challenge? Is it worth $50,000 to lie about one's religious convictions? Or, on the other hand, are there those out there who could honestly answer yes to both of his questions, and are good enough at math to have a better-than-even chance of beating this guy? At any rate, spread this around if you know of anyone who is up for the challenge... I think it's an interesting bet. I should also mention, as a general public-service announcement, that I will not argue with you or make fun of you or remove you from my friends-list just because you are religious. Yes, I tend to speak out against religion and even say some downright nasty things sometimes. But it's the ideas I dislike, not the people themselves. I do realize that there are occasionally very bright people who come to believe in some very strange things, and I will not hold that against you as a person even though I think you are naive.
And speaking of religious challanges, sort of coming from the other end, there's also this one (via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
veleda):
Take the Blasphemy Challenge
http://www.blasphemychallenge.com/
The Blasphemy Challenge video reminds me of how powerful words can be psychologically. Just saying something out loud can give a person so much more power over their life, and change the way they think about themselves, even if the actual act of saying it seems a bit silly. That's one of the few things about religion I will not deny, the power of incantation.
See also physicist Sean Carroll's coverage of this, Putting Your Money Where Your Beliefs Are, where I heard about this from.
If you can pass a lie detector test saying that with at least 95% confidence you believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually happened, and that adults who die disbelieving in the resurrection cannot go to heaven, then this man is betting you $50,000 that you suck at math compared to him. And he'll pay you the 50-grand if you can beat him on the math section of either the SAT or the GRE, where the time is cut in half to avoid a tie due to perfect scores. Of course, you also have to put up 50-grand to play, that he gets if you lose. (You might think money would be a problem, but I think since evangelical Christians have proven themselves historically good at raising large sums of money, I don't think this is much of an issue... if there is really such a person around who can beat him, there are more than enough evangelicals around who could raise the money to finance that person... turning a profit for the Church, as well as discreditting the hypothesis that there is no such thing as a smart fundamentalist Christian.)
This is pretty amusing, and reminds me of the comment I made last weekend about the feeling that I often get that poor math skills are closely related to religious superstition, at least of the fundamentalist variety. I think in most cases, both of them stem from a lack of basic reasoning abilities. That said, I think Sklansky may be ignoring an important thing, which is that taking any statistical correlation about a population and applying it to all of them is going to get you in trouble. Even if there is just one Christian fundamentalist out there who is good at math, Sklansky could lose his shirt. While the vast majority of Christian fundamentalists are no doubt terrible at logic and math, I wouldn't be completely shocked if there were 1 or 2 somewhere in the country who for whatever reason are capable of maintaining cognitive dissonance balanced on a razor's edge. And if there are, they can make a bundle at his expense... which would be interesting to see.
Another thing he's ignoring is that lie detector tests are not always accurate. With a bit of training, it should be possible to pass them. As is not uncommon in my profession, I scored a perfect 800 on the math GRE, so you might think I'd be a good candidate to take him up on the bet... if, of course, I could learn how to pass a lie detector test. However, the problem in my case is that even if I managed to pass the lie detector, he might still find out that I'm not a Christian from my blog or elsewhere, declaring the bet invalid. So is there anyone else reading this who is up for the challenge? Is it worth $50,000 to lie about one's religious convictions? Or, on the other hand, are there those out there who could honestly answer yes to both of his questions, and are good enough at math to have a better-than-even chance of beating this guy? At any rate, spread this around if you know of anyone who is up for the challenge... I think it's an interesting bet. I should also mention, as a general public-service announcement, that I will not argue with you or make fun of you or remove you from my friends-list just because you are religious. Yes, I tend to speak out against religion and even say some downright nasty things sometimes. But it's the ideas I dislike, not the people themselves. I do realize that there are occasionally very bright people who come to believe in some very strange things, and I will not hold that against you as a person even though I think you are naive.
And speaking of religious challanges, sort of coming from the other end, there's also this one (via
veleda):Take the Blasphemy Challenge
http://www.blasphemychallenge.com/
The Blasphemy Challenge video reminds me of how powerful words can be psychologically. Just saying something out loud can give a person so much more power over their life, and change the way they think about themselves, even if the actual act of saying it seems a bit silly. That's one of the few things about religion I will not deny, the power of incantation.
