The Solomon Scale (5 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

Of course I’ll finally tell you what I’m doing! The last letter was getting too long.

My study design is as follows. The experimental group is 5000 new converts from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Secularism (now that the Church of Secularism has been formally recognized). We also have control groups of equal size in each of the religions who did not convert. Our study enrollment is 60,000 people in total. Each subject will come in for testing on a monthly basis to testing centers across the country. We’ve partnered with networks of private test centers to save on cost and allow for a greater sample size; this ingenuity was one reason why I think we got funding. Though the big reason is the study design and power; one reviewer comment said that this was the best possible design short of randomly assigning people to sincerely practice another religion (something I did consider, but ruled out both for practical and ethical reasons).

We expect to have enough data to answer the big question: what is the ability of each religion to improve human goodness? We’ll be measuring the moral progress of each convert, and seeing if there really is a change, and if so, at what trajectory. We’ve gotten funding to track these converts for 20 years and to track their Solomon score throughout the time. The next 19 years of work will indeed be exciting, and will be one consistent publication I can count on each year.

Our first year results are intriguing. Our “Table 1” (the starting demographics), looked good. We did a good job at pulling from every demographic. Age, gender, race and even denominations within each religion were all well represented and in expected proportions.

The starting values alone were quite interesting. They showed that Lewis’ century-old guess to the starting nature of new Christian converts was correct. Of the 12 study populations, new Christians were by far the worst (19.7S). The other convert populations and controls are all nearly average (25.2S). It also seems that Christianity not only attracts the bad people, but is particularly good at calling the really bad people It also draws all the outliers; a large majority, (7/9) of the depraved (<10s)>

And I suppose in retrospect, that’s exactly what it claims to do. Jesus calls “not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” He ate with sinners and tax collectors. This goes far in explaining the ‘average’ similarity. Christians will indeed reform, and go from say 16S to 36S through the course of their lives, but the average in time will be 26S, making Christianity look “normal” when compared to the others.

Looking at the progress in each convert is very interesting. The first thing to note is that not all the converts were real. More precisely, two thirds of all converts to every religion do not change their Solomon score over the study period. There seemed to be a fairly sharp divide between the two; there were few people who made little progress. It seemed that there were those who made progress and those who didn’t. It’s also important to note that there were huge variations in month to month measurements in the new converts. Some gave in to temptations, some valiantly resisted. Overall though, there were two fairly clean categories in each convert in each religion when looking at the year as a whole.

Looking at what we called, “true converts,” in each religion the most significant finding is that the moral velocity of each religion is very similar: 0.1S/month or an average improvement of 1.2S/year. The outlier was Christianity. It showed a slower start than the others; the first month’s measurements showed an average velocity of zero. But by the end, it had produced the same 1.2S improvement. That is, Christianity was the only religion which showed moral acceleration (0.017S/month²). The major conclusion of the paper was this: converting to any religion will make one a better person, and by about the same degree.

These results are consistent with the typical experience and understanding of religion. It makes sense that moral codes improve moral behavior. And as a result, of all that was published before, our paper has provoked less anger than most Goodness Science.

I’m so glad that your neighbor’s health has improved. I’ll continue to pray for her soul.

In Him,

Jeremy

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6 

The Solomon Scale (4 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

To answer your question: yes, I will finally start talking about me. And thank you for telling me how important I am; but remember that I am a scientist, and cannot but note that you are biased towards me. And I love it when you’re biased!

Firstly, no, the biggest surprise wasn’t the differences we found. It was just the opposite. The biggest surprise to people was the homogeneity of the measurements. There is very little difference between countries or races. Patriots and Racists from every nation and race reject the machine because it fails to show their superiority. Generationalists insist it is wrong because the Boomers were not shown to be better than Generation X. Classists dispute it because the rich are no better than the poor.

But the most intriguing result to date, and the one which has raised the most ire, is about the averages within religions. There are no significant difference between them. None. The world average is 26.30 ±0.33. Muslims are at 26.40 ±0.38, Catholics at 26.37±0.25, Protestants at 26.03±0.41, Hindus at 26.31±0.23, Buddhists at 26.41±0.17. Secular people land right in the middle at 26.30±0.51. Atheists are the only ‘religion’ which is not within the normal variation; they’re just barely below it at 25.95±0.21. Everyone, especially the Atheists, disputed this result. But it was Solomon himself who was the lead author on “The Goodness of the Religions – A Global Study,” and the science was bulletproof.

This homogeneity has led to attacks by the Universalitsts and Relativists that the religions are all the same. They say that the Solomon Scale finally proves what they’ve been contending all these years. I’ll admit when I first read the Solomon et. al. paper, it was hard to accept. I struggled with it for a long time. I found this data hard to reconcile with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the redemptive power of Christ. But since first reading it, I reread Mere Christianity. And I realized something. Lewis makes the clear and powerful point that Christianity is, as he puts it, “not about making nice men, but new ones.” Beyond this, he proposes a theory there what we can now test empirically.

He claims that Christianity is indeed the best way of reforming men, but to do a proper experiment, it must be prospective. A cross-sectional study tells you nothing about the long-term and individual moral trajectories of a group. I was inspired by his book to write a grant to evaluate: is Christianity any better at improving the goodness of a person than any other system?

You may ask how I can fairly evaluate this, being that I am emotionally tied to the answer. I’ll answer that I have faith in Christ, and that though I believe His work to be scientifically verifiable, it is not inconsistent with His character to work in secret. But my duty is first to Truth, His Truth, whatever it may be. Not to my theories or those of my favorite 20^th century theologian.

My lab won the NIH grant to do this study. After seeing the great value of Goodness Science, they’ve eased up on the anti-religious prejudices that they once held (and probably gained a few Solomons in so doing). We are doing a prospective study of new converts to the major religions and will follow their Goodness over 20 years. We have completed the first year of the experiment, and our paper was just admitted to Science for publication. It was a great and humbling experience for our work to be so well received by the thought leaders of the day.

Love you,

Jeremy

P.S. I will be praying for your neighbor.

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6 

The Solomon Scale (3 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

Sorry I was so brief in my last letter. I hope to make up for it in this one. Thank you for your prayers, I think the grant was written well. I got an insight at the end which I’ll have to credit to God by your prayers.

As I wrote to you last week, everyone does have a Solomon score at any given time. Last year (the 2042 results aren’t published yet), the world average was 26.3S with a standard deviation of 6.0; it’s pretty close to a normal distribution, though with many outliers (there are many who are very good or very bad). That means that 68% of humanity is between 20.3-32.3S, and 95% fall between 12.3-38.3S.

Criminals and bad men usually came out in the 10-20S range, normal people 20-40S, and particularly nice people sometimes make it to 50S. And then, every once in a while, we find an anomaly. A housebound old woman living alone got a 75S, a homeless man that scores 92S. Most publicly good people (pastors, doctors) turn out to be in the normal range, but I tend to expect outliers of them. I’ve heard of some pastors breaking 100S. The world record is a Chinese evangelist: 147S. In my own lab we recorded the lowest score on record, 0.8, from a popular religious leader. He has since joined the skeptics and believes the machine to be an “instrument of the devil.” When he shouted that, I felt the childish urge to shout back, “It takes one to know one!”

In addition to having a score, everyone also has a velocity. Some are increasing their goodness, in Solomons. Others are falling. We call this “moral velocity.” The scale shows that the world’s velocity is slightly negative (-0.02S/year). And some people are getting better, faster. Their moral velocity is increasing; they have positive “moral acceleration.”

I should mention at this point that there is another quite large group of dissenters to the machine who call themselves Hegelians, who argue that the machine must be flawed because it is self evident that humanity is advancing morally, never declining, never falling back. How they think that 10 years of measurements are at all conclusive one way or another is beyond me.

But if their assumption is right (I’m still withholding judgment), it means that what you’ve been saying to me all these years is exactly right. “When I was a child, we’d never…” or “Young people these day don’t have courage/discipline/piety that we used to.” If you’re right and if we extrapolated this 10-year average back to when you were a young woman 60 years ago, your generation would have been 1.2S better than ours, or 27.5S. But if you were better in your youth, you’ve slipped down with us; there are now no statistically significant moral differences between the generations. For better or worse, we have only ten years of data and we don’t have the data to support such conjectures.

Who knows? Maybe in 20 years, we’ll have enough data to prove you right! Thanks again for your prayers! Is there anything I can be praying for you about?

I love you dearly,

Jeremiah

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6 

The Solomon Scale (2 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

I got your letter and you are right. I forgot to talk about the kind of man Dr. Solomon is. He is an incredible man who loves God. I respect his work and his character. We stay in touch and have collaborated on a number of studies.

To answer your other question, the the machine was hailed with all variety of reactions. Most were skeptical of it until it started showing consistent and useful results. Goodness, it would soon be discovered, was not quite what everybody thought.

And yes. You are right. Every person in the world does have a goodness level, a Solomon score, at any given moment. Actually that’s not entirely true; some people have no recordable goodness. On young children and the mentally handicapped, the machine returns “error.” This was a great disappointment to many people, as they expected the children to be consistently higher than the rest of us. These “Innocents” are one of the many groups that still remain skeptical of the value of the Solomon Scale. Though in my opinion, they are naming the solution to their objection. Innocence is not goodness, it is innocence; the machine is a goodness machine, not an innocence machine. But that’s another debate.

But it does remind me of Dr. Solomon’s most recent work on modifying the machine to break out the individual virtues. His preliminary data shows that two people at 20S might be there by different means; one might be a courageous miser and the other a generous coward. But this work is still very preliminary; I’ll keep you updated in later letters.

Sorry I didn’t have much time for letter writing this week and rambled a bit. I had another grant to submit (please pray for me!). Next week I’ll have the time to answer your questions about the science itself.

With love,

Jeremy

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6 

The Solomon Scale (1 of 6)

Dear Grandmother,

In your last letter, you wrote to me asking about the Solomon Scale and how it related to the research I am now doing. I am writing to you to explain the system, including a bit of its very exciting history. Since you left your chair at Harvard, I know that you have trouble keeping up in fields not your own; impenetrable writing is the rule in science these days. I do not fear that the science or math will be beyond you, for I know you are truly an educated woman in the truest sense; but I apologize in advance if I complicate it with Goodness Science jargon.

The story of Goodness Science started ten years ago. According to the father of the science, the scientist and theologian John Solomon, God spoke to him in a dream and told him to build a machine. He said that He wanted to show men their depravity, and that they seemed blind to all but numbers; so He would give Dr. Solomon the plan to build a machine to measure the goodness of a man. Like Moses building the tabernacle or Solomon the Temple, he followed this vision very carefully.

He completed it, and it looked like a hat and vest connected to a box. The subject would sit in a chair next to the machine, and relax. The machine would analyze the state of his soul based on the decisions he then would make in that moment. It would probe the soul and put it through 2.3 million moral tests (which was the minimum number for a consistent reading) to see what it would do in that moment if tested. He would be put through ten thousand temptations, prove his courage on ten thousand battlefields, be annoyed by his boss ten thousand times in ten thousand ways; he would be injured by his brother 490 times and then tested to see if he could forgive. It would then take into account the subject’s upbringing, his genetics, his mind and his intentions; that is, it would consider the raw material with which a man’s decisions were made. Finally, after all that happened in twenty minutes, the machine would read out an absolute score of goodness. The “Solomon Scale,” as it was called, was similar to the Kelvin scale in that both were based on an ‘absolute zero.’ A score of zero Solomons or 0S would mean a perfectly depraved human being.

I hope this clears up the early history of the story.

Your loving grandson,

Jeremy Paul

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6 

On Evangelicals’ Danger and Hope

When Evangelical churches consider giving (they are the only churches which I have first-hand experience with), their first impulse is to maximize salvations. They want to work in places that are “unreached.” Then they look for missionary organizations to win souls. Some of them will go one step further, and support explicitly Christian organizations to serve the poor, but only so long as they do it in Christ’s name. Never would they give to a ‘secular’ charity (for how would the people hear the Gospel, or know from whence the goodness comes)?

Do not misunderstand what I am about to say. I believe in missions, and in evangelism. Of any single action, it is still, in my mind, the most valuable; it is a deed with the highest honor. But there are other parts, essential parts, of Christianity which have been eclipsed by our blind pursuit of this highest honor. Any virtue or impulse may be corrupted if it is sought at the cost of all others. As C.S. Lewis points out on the dangers of focusing purely on the love of humanity, “If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials ‘for the sake of humanity,’ and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.” So, I think, if we hyper-focus on missions and evangelism, we will become a cruel and loveless church.

One commandment of God which is almost completely ignored by us today is charity for our brethren in Christ. Paul tells us, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all [men], especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10) and the author of Hebrews reminds us, “For God [is] not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister” (Hbr 6:10).

We do a mediocre job locally with the poor in general with food drives and homeless shelters. But we do an appalling job of providing for poor brethren abroad. We know generally about poverty and how we are to provide for the poor. But we forget that we have a special obligation to poor Christians.

But who takes collections for poor believers today? How high a priority in the modern Church are poor abroad? We often see poverty work only as a means to the end of evangelism. How many church dollars go to some few thousands of pagans in the Pacific Islands, while millions of our brothers starve in Africa? We send missionaries to the “10/40 window” because there are few Christians there. But how many of us really care about the plight of our brothers in that same window? How many sermons are preached on the plight of the brethren in that window? I have not heard one. We are letting our brothers starve so that we can first win new converts. This ought not be so. We ought to first take care of our own family , and then seek to serve others.

And were we not commanded to? Who are the sheep in Jesus’ Matthew 25 parable? Was it those who were powerful missionaries? Were the goats sent to hell for their lack of evangelism? No. It was for a lack of charity to “the least of these my brethren” (Mat 25:40). Those who saw Christ’s brethren in prison or naked or hungry and did nothing were sent to hell. And who are Christ’s brethren? He tells us: “he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!” (Mat 12:49).

And where are the least? Where are the hungry, poor, imprisoned Christians? They are in the developing world. The centroid of Christianity is moving back again to the south and east, where there is still terrible poverty, disease and death. There is again a need amongst our brethren to the south and east. It is not now in Jerusalem, but in Africa and Asia.

Remember also Paul’s warning, “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Ti 5:8). John also questions the faith of those who fail this duty, “But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels [of compassion] from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1Jo 3:17). We Evangelicals struggle with hypocrisy, with doctrine, with patience and lust. But there is no place where we are closer to hell than in our apathy about the poverty of our brothers abroad.

We care more for the material condition of the unsaved than our own family. After coming to Kenya, I’ve often been asked about the missionary opportunities and never about the poor condition of the brethren. And I was not offered help to relieve their condition, but instead, Bibles. Bibles are good in themselves, and so are missions. But the fact that the condition of our brothers in Kenya is not even thought of is damning. In the present and manifest distress, the fact that church global missions budgets are often an hundredfold higher than global poverty budgets is damning. We must repent.

Providing for our own family is of utmost concern. Of what other duty which if we neglect it, are we promised hell (Mat 25:46), called worse than infidels (1Ti 5:8), said we abide in death (1Jo 3:14) or asked how the love of God could abide in us (1Jo 3:18)? What other duty was so important to distract Paul, the missionary’s missionary, from missions (Rom 15:26, 1Cr 16:3, 2Cr 8:2)?

But consider the wonderful opportunity God has arranged for us. For where we are poor, our brothers are rich; and where we are rich, they are poor. We should remember: we in the West were made rich in money but poor in spirit. Consider the power of the Holy Spirit, spreading Christianity like a wildfire across China, India and the rest of the developed world. Missionaries, evangelists and prophets are being raised up in multitudes by the Spirit there. And what of us in the West? Though we have a heritage rich in Missions and Evangelism in the First and Second Great Awakenings, now it seems to be God’s will that the fire be cooled.

But in the place of that fiery passion, God has blessed us instead with the riches of this world. We are the most productive people ever to have lived. We are far richer than the Romans, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Byzantines and the Britons. We have money, business, ingenuity, organization and technology. We are better equipped than any other people in the history of the world to end the desperation of poverty, an affliction persistent since the Fall of Man. We are the first generation in the history of the world with the ability to actually do it.

Missions is a higher calling indeed (1Cr 12:28), but not one that we are particularly good at. I came to Kenya thinking there was some opportunity for missions. I soon realized that I had exchanged an excellent mission field for a poor one. Though God has given me gifts in evangelism, there were fewer opportunities in a rural village in Kenya than in the ivy halls of Stanford. Christianity is stronger in Kenya than it is anywhere I have seen in the US, and I found myself especially ill-equipped to evangelize, particularly when compared to my fiery brothers here.

While not given particular gifts in evangelism, we as a culture have powerful and unprecedented gifts in “healings, helps, governments” (1Co 12:28); let us use these to their utmost, while ever coveting the greater gifts of our brothers in the developing world. We have a greater ability to give than any people at any other time in the history of the world. One in our middle class has a greater ability to give than even kings and merchants of old. So let us give in abundance and “with simplicity” (Rom 12:8).

And let us never forget the other edge of the sword of opportunity; it cuts both ways. “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” (Luke 12:48). We will not be held guiltless if we squander the greatest opportunity for generosity in the history of the world. And we will surely draw close to hell if we close our hearts to our brothers.

Let this generation of Evangelicals be remembered as our great forbears in Britain were. Two centuries ago, William Wilberforce and his fellows ended the slave trade in Britain and will be forever remembered for it, both on earth and in heaven. Let Evangelicals of this generation be remembered not as those whose greedy hearts were cold, but as those who set the captives of poverty free, those who brought food and shelter forever to billions. Let us act like the Philadelphians, the city of love for the brethren, a Church that keeps God’s word to provide for our Christian brothers and for the poor. And then we can receive Christ’ promise, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, [which is] new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and [I will write upon him] my new name” (Rev 3:12).

Of Alliances and Kingdom Building

We are not saved by works alone. But the Kingdom is not built by faith alone. And it is not only built by Christians. Certainly God uses all for his purposes. Even Satan himself will serve God’s purpose, as will his instruments like the Pharaoh of Exodus; even vessels for destruction have their place in the Kingdom (Rom 9:22).

There are many men who have seen God, whose work will survive them. The mathematician who sees beautiful Truths of God but fails to worship Him will indeed pass away. His postulates will not. And there are many men who love God, but whose work is headed for destruction. The Christian who builds a corporation which oppresses the poor may reach heaven, but as one escaping a fire (1 Cor 3:15).

Truly, we are commanded to use “mammon of unrighteousness” to achieve God’s ends (Luke 16:9). I once heard a missionary speaking on medical missions, encouraging the use of secular grants over church donations, “Why use God’s money for what Satan will pay for?”And if we are to use the fuel of the Enemy, why not also his vehicles? Would not Christ also commend us for our shrewdness in that regard?

This is war. Our mission: to bring about the Kingdom in every way to every place. And if Poverty is one foe standing in our way, can we not coordinate our efforts with its fellow foes? If Poverty is entrenched in a non-Chrisitan region, call it Sodom, can we not support those fighting it, whatever their alignment? Even if this does nothing to fight another of our enemies, Faithlessness, does this not advance the cause of Christ nonetheless?

But it is doubtful to me that these Enemies of the Kingdom are not aligned and strengthened by one another. Let us return to Sodom. Its citizens have never seen compassion before, but the coming of a secular organization shows it to them. Will they not be drawn to know from whence that compassion comes? And will not their inability to answer (for few secular people have any idea why they do good) create an intense yearning for Truth? Would not this Secular compassion till the spiritual soil of Sodom, allowing missionaries to sow where they had not tilled?

Does not “every good gift…[come] down from the Father of lights” (Jam 1:17)? Does compassion have any other source but Christ? And if it is from Christ, will not even secular compassion “draw all men unto” to its source (Jhn 12:32)?

But even assuming we could know that Sodom would never repent, would fighting Poverty there be in vain? I think not. All of Christ’s charity failed to win converts, for by the end of his ministry, “all forsook him, and fled” (Mark 14:50). I would think it blasphemy to call any work of God futile. I think His charity will live on eternally even if its objects do not. Of course, it is the greatest thing for both to live on. But the hard-hearted cannot sabotage the reward of the charitable. There is some element of the charity itself which must be eternal.

Is it wise for Christians to draw such a hard line in their giving? I think not. I think we shall be rebuked for a lack of shrewdness if we continue along our present course. When effective organizations who serve the poor better than Christian ones are ignored for their secularism, will we not be judged for the poor who went hungry because of our foolishness? We should aim to serve the poor by the best means presented to us.

We should remember that arrows into the heart of Poverty are no less lethal because they are shot by a secular bow. And if a secular bowman has the shot, should we deny him arrows?