I moved this topic to JackSherrickFirstEssayNotes so that when the standard essay template is created for you it doesn't conflict with these items.

Elaborating on one of the questions I posed in IdeasAboutIdeas

It might be useful (and intellectually respectful) to ask how the relevant legal systems actually deal with the question. It would also be reasonable, I think, to draw not only upon theologians, but also the legal thinkers who necessarily must address the issue, perhaps with slightly greater sophistication than might be expected from the treatment you propose here. One could take a synoptic view of the discussion of this question in the history of Islamic law by jumping off from Noel Coulson's brief, comprehensive and insightful treatment in Conflicts and Tensions in Islamic Jurisprudence. The best introductory treatment of the subject with respect to American "Puritan" thinking so important to our national political and legal development is G.H. Haskins, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts. The Jewish literature is, as one would expect, immense: this is, after all, one of the basic questions around which Talmud is organized. The very clearest introduction for the general reader, presenting its own masterful synthesis of the long tradition, is Chaim Saiman, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (2018), a brilliant work by a former student of mine now Professor of Jewish Law at Villanova, of which there appears as of yet to be no copy in the Columbia University libraries.

Elaborating on one of the questions I posed in IdeasAboutIdeas

Question: Why do religious adherents who rely upon a Holy book of laws follow secular laws? What kinds of psychological gymnastics are going on there? (Question derived from Max Weber, Calvin, my hometown community)(Look most closely at the Folklore of Capitalism, Lawyerland)

I'm trying to refine my thoughts about the above question but as you can see below, what I've got so far is pretty much gibberish. I'm trying to distill a single idea out of this that I can really latch onto.

Potential Idea - y=β_1 X_1+ β_2 X_2+ ε

y = expected utility over span of life (assume soul is immortal so "life" is for all of eternity)

X_1 = temporal utility

β_1 < ∞

X_2 = heavenly utility

β_2 = ∞

β_1 X_1 < β_2 X_2 always

ε = error term (what does this capture with respect to X_2?)

Assuming this equation dictates behavior of religious adherents, a rational actor has no reason to do anything to improve their temporal condition. If heavenly utility is infinity, why care at all about earthly affairs.

• Luther's reaction to the peasant revolt as support for this function
• Luther's Freedom of a Christian essay

More of a helpful heuristic than a mathematical truth.

Discounting future preferences is irrelevant because coefficient is ∞

Miracle Motif

Kierkegaard on paradox of faith

"Mathematically correct" laws (Holmes) are those contained in the Bible. Why tolerate anything other than a theocracy if the perfect laws have already been written?

Eternity as a dissociative tool

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