Bryan Caplan likes our book: My blurb calls it, “Deeply important, wide-ranging, beautifully written, and fundamentally right” – and I mean every word. But he also has many complaints on our religion chapter. He summarizes:
A connection between behavior and divine punishment and behavior need not be one in which the behavior CONTROLS the punishment. Fundamentalist Protestants adhering to the rules in some cases is because they deviate from the sola fide/predestination doctrines of old, Protestant beliefs vary widely, but in other cases it's sort of like one-boxing on Newcomb's problem. You know that one-boxing does not change what is in the boxes. The boxes have predetermined contents. But the boxes are always filled perfectly, all the time. The sort of people who get good box contents/ are the elect/ /actually have faith are the sort of people who one box/ abide by the rules.
A connection between behavior and divine punishment and behavior need not be one in which the behavior CONTROLS the punishment. Fundamentalist Protestants adhering to the rules in some cases is because they deviate from the sola fide/predestination doctrines of old, Protestant beliefs vary widely, but in other cases it's sort of like one-boxing on Newcomb's problem. You know that one-boxing does not change what is in the boxes. The boxes have predetermined contents. But the boxes are always filled perfectly, all the time. The sort of people who get good box contents/ are the elect/ /actually have faith are the sort of people who one box/ abide by the rules.