Consider this brain buster: You go to a discount warehouse and buy two dozen frozen bagels for, say, $9.60. Or you go to your local bagel shop and buy them for 75 cents apiece. Which one saves you more money?
Well, if you eat a bagel every morning, you clearly save money by buying the warehouse-store bagels, which come to 40 cents a pop. But what if you now eat two bagels every morning because you have a whole refrigerator full of them? What if you start making your lunchtime sandwich every day with bagels instead of cheaper sliced bread? ... Might you end up spending more money in the end? And what about your waistline? ...
People are often price-sensitive about an initial purchase. But after the money has been spent, there's a tendency to view the stash -- be it a pile of bagels or imported stout -- as manna from heaven. And that's why I've often wondered if shopping at discount clubs saves people as much as they think.
In short you have an agnostic who "attempts" to take all the Old Testament law literally. He, for example, avoids clothes with mixed fabrics. Yet, at the same time, lightly tossing a small pebble or two and stoning are two entirely different things. Still, the talk seems worth a listen.
He ends with the notion that "Thou shalt pick and choose" and avoid parts that might today be considered intolerant. Yet while I reject his consumerist approach to faith as well as the conclusion that you can have "sacredness" without God, he does succeed in raising a few interesting points.
How, for example, should the Old Testament law be treated? (Here's one short answer.) Are Christians (and those of other faiths) already picking and choosing the parts they like and disregarding others?
"Everybody was familiar with the concept of women's biological clock, but when we introduced 'male' to the equation, the reaction was 'What are you talking about? Men can have children at any age,'" recalls urologist Harry Fisch, director of the Male Reproductive Center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and author of The Male Biological Clock. "It became a social issue. Men do not like to be told they have a problem."
Nonetheless, a virtual tidal wave of recent research has made it irrefutable: Not only does male fertility decrease decade by decade, especially after age 35, but aging sperm can be a significant and sometimes the only cause of severe health and developmental problems in offspring...
