I would alter it to say,

“… it is us, the citizens and voters, who are brain-off when we take the bait and believe that they can accomplish PRETTY MUCH ANYthing they promise …” When you are referring to Obama and McCain.

Point well taken on the difference between being brain-off and unprincipled.

Your article and explaination appears to line up with my recent realization that politicians such as Obama and McCain aren’t the brain-off ones when they contradict themselves in all of their political offerings. No, it is us, the citizens and voters, who are brain-off when we take the bait and believe that they can accomplish everything they promise even though it violates principle.

There is nothing unprincipled about raffling the product of someone else either. It is not about the virtues or short-comings of a raffle, or even of a gimmick. It is about trying to solve a character ethic problem with a personality ethic solution.

I don’t, on a purely economic level, see anything wrong with a clergyman raffling his services, if he feels it is in his self-interest to do so. However, any Christian clergyman would have a pretty hard time convincing me that raffling his services to increase his own financial gain is in compliance with the doctrines found in the bible, and consequently a hard sell to convincing me that doing something against his own doctrine is in his self interest as a clergyman.

I also never said that the raffle was brain-off, or brain-on for that matter. Let’s not confuse our own colloquialisms. Being unprincipled is not always brain off, it just won’t necessarily bring the results you think you want. Brain-on and brain-off has to do with how you approach problems, and if you use reason to make decisions or not. Violation of principle is all about cause and effect. If you violate principles, you will experience the consequences. If you comply with principles, you will reap the rewards.

I can conceive of several situations where a raffle would be an excellent and principled way to accomplish many principled ends. As I have already said, a raffle is a gimmick. It is not virtuous or destructive in and of itself. It’s just a superficial, cosmetic solution for an internal problem.

Question for you – why is it unprincipled for a church to essentially raffle their services? Not all churches are “non-profit” and so it may be in the pastors self-interest to profit from this form of transaction.
I remember Rick highlighting a story a few months ago about a homeowner using a raffle to sell their home. He remarked that this was a brain-on move in this housing market. So why is it brain-on for a home seller to use a raffle to sell their product but not for someone else to do it for their service in this gasoline market?

It is not my place to judge this. I don’t know the whole situation. They very well could have done something to change their delivery and were just using the gimmick to get people to come see the “new and improved” services at church.

The problem was the message in the article. It portrayed to me the message that gimmicks are a way to use self-interest to “bring people to Christ” and this is simply not true.

Gimmicks are a part of the personality ethic rather than the character ethic. They are a superficial and temporary substitute for real self-interest. They are not wrong and can, like much of the personality ethic, be useful tool in improving one’s Human Life Value. It is just important to recognize them for what they really are.

I guess my thoughts have been based in the idea that a church has a prescribed message of truth and that the world in general doesn’t seem to care for that message. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the church is lacking in value–it could just mean that the world isn’t even paying attention to that kind of value. There is only so much a church can do to spice up that message without modifying their doctrine. So, a church that wants to get the attention of a distracted world without changing their message or the general delivery of their message will have to be creative in their ‘PR and marketing’. While I don’t think ‘gimmicks’ are going to be as effective as service projects or other visible displays of religion in action, I don’t think they are inherently wrong, either.

A church or similar attendance based organization is mostly interested in keeping people coming. If attendance is diminishing, it is because there is a lack of value creation. A gimmick does not change the value creation of what is really being “sold.” Once the gimmick goes away, the problem which caused the dwindling attendance in the first place would still be there.

Brad-
Thank you for your comments. You make some important points about government.

For the record, I’d like to point out that I never said that what the churches were doing is wrong, only that it is not based on principle, and will not solve what they are hoping it will solve, based on what was said in the article.

I also disagree with your statement, “Is it inherently wrong to judge individuals’ free exchange between two self-interested parties? Yes.”

I would say that it is imperative to judge the free exchange between two self-interested individuals. It is this which helps us to see the value of exchanging based on self-interest. Now, I will say that it is a violation of principle to judge the individuals who are making the exchange, but that is different than judging the exchange.