Thursday 11 July 2013

Saint Steven

If Steve Landsburg is right about the process for becoming a Saint, I think we ought to launch a campaign for Saint Steven. Here's Landsburg's summary:
So if I have this right, it is now the official position of the Catholic church that:
  1. The late Pope John Paul II has the ongoing power to cure brain aneurysms.
  2. As far as we know, he has chosen to employ this power exactly once. (He also once cured a case of Parkinson’s.)
  3. While hundreds of thousands of others have suffered and/or died from brain aneurysms, John Paul has not been moved to intervene.
  4. The one victim he troubled himself to save was selected not because she was particularly deserving or particularly valuable to society, but because she chose the right guy to pray to — sort of like having to suck up to the teacher to get a good grade.
  5. All of this makes John Paul II particularly fit for veneration.
For God’s sake (you should pardon the expression), if you’re looking to make the case that John Paul II was capable of performing (or at least catalyzing) genuine miracles, isn’t the defeat of Soviet Communism good enough? That right there makes him a saint in my book — though if I ever come to believe that he cancure aneurysms and has been holding out on us, I might have to retract my endorsement.
So, here's the campaign for Saint Steven.

  1. Any of you who have any kind of illness at all pray to Steven Landsburg for intervention. 
  2. If you do not receive divine Landsburgean intervention, don't tell me about it. 
  3. If you do receive divine Landsburgean intervention, please leave a record of such in the comments. Preferably with a link to a doctor's note saying that your recovery was unexpected and pretty remarkable. This should happen in maybe 1% of cases. 
  4. We submit the documented evidence of the successes, while ignoring the failures. Ta-dah! Saint Steven.
Economics has its Gods; why couldn't it also have Saints? 

1 comment:

  1. I once thought I knew something about mathematics. Thanks to Steve, I have been cured of that delusion. And I am a doctor, so this is a doctor’s note.

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