Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 52

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

1. Nicole Cliffe: How God Messed Up My Hap­py Athe­ist Life (Nicole Cliffe, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I emailed a friend who is a Chris­t­ian, and I asked if we could talk about Jesus. I instant­ly regret­ted send­ing that email and if human­ly pos­si­ble would have clawed it back through the Inter­net.”
2. The Sun Is Always Shin­ing In Mod­ern Chris­t­ian Pop (Leah Libresco, FiveThir­tyEight): inter­est­ing, although the author is com­par­ing con­tem­po­rary per­for­mance songs to old­er wor­ship songs, and I sus­pect the genre dif­fer­ence accounts for some of her find­ings. Doing some research on the author I dis­cov­ered that she wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at First Things called Stat­ting While Catholic — you should read it if you’re a social sci­en­tist.
3. Why Amer­i­cans Don’t Trust Gov­ern­ment (Lar­ry Sum­mers, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I’m a pro­gres­sive, but it seems plau­si­ble to won­der if gov­ern­ment can build a nation abroad, fight social decay, run schools, man­date the design of cars, run health insur­ance exchanges, or set prop­er sex­u­al harass­ment poli­cies on col­lege cam­pus­es, if it can’t even fix a 232-foot bridge com­pe­tent­ly.“ Sum­mers is, of course, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Har­vard.
4. Could a neu­ro­sci­en­tist under­stand a micro­proces­sor? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Could the tools of neu­ro­science be used to under­stand the much sim­pler Atari brain? The answer is most­ly no. The authors, for exam­ple, looked at three ‘behav­iors’, Don­key Kong, Space Invaders and Pit­fall (!) and they are able to find tran­sis­tors which unique­ly crash one of the games but not the oth­ers. ‘We might thus con­clude they are unique­ly respon­si­ble for the game – per­haps there is a Don­key Kong tran­sis­tor or a Space Invaders tran­sis­tor.’ Of course, this con­clu­sion would be very mis­lead­ing but what are we then to make of sim­i­lar brain lesion stud­ies?”
5. Study: Same-sex expe­ri­ences are on the rise, and Amer­i­cans are increas­ing­ly chill about it (Rachel Felt­man, Wash­ing­ton Post): noth­ing to see here, folks. Every­thing is 100% genet­ic. There are no moral choic­es involved at any point on the jour­ney. Move along, please.
6. The Return of Bernard Lewis (Mar­tin Kramer, Mosa­ic): “Forty years ago, nobody fore­saw the rise of rad­i­cal Islam—except for the pre­em­i­nent his­to­ri­an who both pre­dict­ed and explained it, and much else besides.”
7. Under Attack (edi­to­r­i­al, The Econ­o­mist): “…when pro­gres­sive thinkers agree that offen­sive words should be cen­sored, it helps author­i­tar­i­an regimes to jus­ti­fy their own much harsh­er restric­tions…“
8. Like A Prayer: Is Social Jus­tice The New Cam­pus Reli­gion? (Ana Marie Cox, MTV News): Cox came out as a Chris­t­ian (her words) last year. She has a much more enthu­si­as­tic take on cam­pus activism than many of the arti­cles I share (such as the ones above and below).
9. The amaz­ing 1969 prophe­cy that racial pref­er­ences would cause the exact griev­ances of pro­test­ers today (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the dis­claimers at the bot­tom apply to this one most of all. I at first won­dered if it was based upon a hoax, but it seems legit­i­mate. If you have a strong neg­a­tive reac­tion to this piece, you’re wel­come. Think­ing through why will help you be more per­sua­sive.
10. Amus­ing:
    • Dil­bert: Smart Peo­ple Are on Both Sides (after read­ing this, read the last link of entry 9 if you haven’t already).
    • The Baby­lon Bee: Local Ten Year Old Believ­ing God For Tripled Allowance
    • The Baby­lon Bee: Local Woman Now Pick­i­er Over Star­bucks Drink Order Than The­ol­o­gy
    • SMBC: Bayesian Fal­la­cy (nerds only)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.