TGFI, Volume 570: unapologetics and Harvard clones

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The best defense is a good offense (Sarah Sal­vian­der, Sub­stack): “My own jour­ney to Chris­tian­i­ty began with exam­in­ing the athe­is­tic world­view I had inher­it­ed. I was raised athe­ist in sec­u­lar Cana­da by lapsed Catholic par­ents. For the first twen­ty-six years of my life I sim­ply assumed cer­tain things that were impor­tant to me: the exis­tence of indi­vid­ual rights, the sanc­ti­ty of human life, and the impor­tance of rule of law. When I final­ly tried to trace those beliefs back to their foun­da­tion, I expe­ri­enced a cri­sis. I couldn’t rea­son my way from the most foun­da­tion­al thing I could think of—fundamental forces and par­ti­cles in the first moments after the Big Bang—all the way to the present-day con­vic­tion that every human life has intrin­sic val­ue. There was no ratio­nal, nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from one to the other—it was as though some unex­plained leap occurred some­where in the mid­dle, and sud­den­ly human life, cob­bled togeth­er from quarks and elec­trons and the forces of nature, pos­sessed intrin­sic val­ue. When I turned to athe­ist intel­lec­tu­als for answers, I was sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed. Their argu­ments offered lit­tle to no help. They usu­al­ly assert­ed that rights just exist, or make some util­i­tar­i­an argu­ment, or effec­tive­ly stat­ed that harm­ing some­one unpro­voked is always wrong just ‘because.’ I was shocked by how mea­ger the philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings of my val­ues were.”
2. Har­vard Is Sell­ing a $699 Course Taught by A.I. Clones of Its Fac­ul­ty (Sarah Kessler, New York Times): “The school aims to use Foundry to scale the school’s offer­ings far beyond the 900 or so M.B.A. stu­dents it admits each year. In that way, it is some­thing of a case study for com­pa­nies fac­ing a sim­i­lar prob­lem: Con­sult­ing firms like PWC, law firms and, at least in one case, a church, are also exper­i­ment­ing with how A.I. can expand their ser­vices far beyond their human band­width. So are some movie direc­tors — an A.I. ver­sion of the actor Val Kilmer, who passed away in 2025, recent­ly appeared in the his­tor­i­cal dra­ma ‘As Deep as the Grave.’ ”
3. Cam­pus Keep­ers of the Faith (Mary Eber­stadt, Nation­al Review): “In sum, the decline of Chris­t­ian faith in the West, well-doc­u­ment­ed since the 1960s and beyond, must be weighed today, per­haps unex­pect­ed­ly and if only in Amer­i­ca, against sev­er­al coun­ter­vail­ing fac­tors: the pro­lif­er­a­tion of home­school­ing and clas­si­cal insti­tu­tions that pro­tect and encour­age reli­gious prac­tice; ris­ing aware­ness that the ills plagu­ing this coun­try aren’t helped by rejec­tion of the Chris­t­ian rule book; the round of recent con­verts, social lead­ers and qui­et believ­ers alike; and oth­er evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the sec­u­lar­ist desert of the past cou­ple of decades has proved a durable train­ing ground for renewed res­o­lu­tion. All of which sum­mons anoth­er per­ti­nent fact about the First Great Awak­en­ing. Back then, Jonathan Edwards and John Wes­ley and their fel­lows put Evan­gel­i­cal­ism ahead of denom­i­na­tion, offer­ing a new kind of uni­ty to the divid­ed Protes­tants who chose it. Today, a dif­fer­ent kind of Chris­t­ian uni­ty appears to be afoot: one that bridges not only denom­i­na­tions of Protes­tants but Protes­tants and Catholics.”
   • I do see a tighter alliance between Catholics and evan­gel­i­cals than I used to. I think there are a lot of rea­sons for that. First, many Amer­i­can Catholics are func­tion­al­ly Protes­tant. Sec­ond, we often find that we are say­ing the same things in response to what­ev­er the lat­est cam­pus trend in sex­u­al absur­di­ty is. Third, most Chris­tians just don’t know that much the­ol­o­gy (Protes­tant and Catholic alike) and so fail to appre­ci­ate the mag­ni­tude of the dif­fer­ences between us. So I’m pleased to coop­er­ate with Catholics on a whole host of issues, but I urge all Protes­tants to remem­ber that we’re right and they’re wrong on — and I do not think I am exag­ger­at­ing when I say this — every sin­gle the­o­log­i­cal point of dis­pu­ta­tion.
4. A Drone Killed Three Ukraini­ans. It Was Guid­ed Entire­ly by A.I. (Andrew Kramer, New York Times): “The drone was pro­grammed by human oper­a­tors to trav­el toward a par­tic­u­lar gas sta­tion, but once it got close, it chose its exact tar­get — most like­ly propane tanks — on its own, based on its train­ing to rec­og­nize such tanks and strike them, the experts and mil­i­tary offi­cials said. It is a devel­op­ment long watched for in the war in Ukraine, pre­sag­ing a dystopi­an future in which killer robots roam the skies mak­ing life-or-death deci­sions that reduce tar­gets to data points.”
5. This Is the Only Durable Way to Stop Stu­dents From Cheat­ing (Adam Grant, New York Times): “A.I. hasn’t just made cheat­ing hard­er to catch. It’s made cheat­ing so effort­less, entic­ing and avail­able that many stu­dents no longer believe it’s wrong. One Ivy League stu­dent in my sur­vey wrote, ‘Cheat­ing is a cre­ative expres­sion and a form of prob­lem solv­ing. If you can get around the restric­tions put in place and not get caught, then good on you.’ Real­ly? How would you feel if you found out your sur­geon cheat­ed to get into med­ical school — or cheat­ed in med­ical school? .…The heart of integri­ty is rec­og­niz­ing that the ends don’t jus­ti­fy the means. What we achieve may define our suc­cess. How we achieve it deter­mines our char­ac­ter.”
   • The author is a psy­chol­o­gist at Penn. His solu­tion is lack­ing, btw. For those read­ers who call Christ Lord, a sim­pler and more pow­er­ful ratio­nale is that cheat­ing dis­pleas­es God, so don’t.
6. No Easy Fix for Bogus Respon­dents in Online Opt-In Polls (Andrew Mer­cer, Pew Research Cen­ter): “Lat­er in the sur­vey, we asked respon­dents if they had ever vis­it­ed the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion; 10% said they had. Final­ly, we asked if they had ever served on a Polar-class ice­break­er ship, only two of which were ever built and only one of which remains in active use by the U.S. Coast Guard; 8% answered in the affir­ma­tive. A total of 1,963 cas­es (18%) answered ‘Yes’ to one or more of these trap ques­tions and were flagged as bogus.”
   • The trap ques­tions aren’t the point of the arti­cle, but they made me very hap­py. There are sev­er­al more trap ques­tions and that sec­tion, at least, is worth your while.
7. They Spent Our Trust. Now the Bill Is Due. (Erick Erick­son, Sub­stack): “Delta’s CEO has said his com­pa­ny will use AI to max­i­mize its prices and boost prof­itabil­i­ty by charg­ing dif­fer­ent cus­tomers dif­fer­ent rates, though Delta lat­er clar­i­fied it was charg­ing based on route demand, not based on indi­vid­ual con­sumer pro­files. Do you believe that? …Peo­ple oppose data cen­ters because they do not trust arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. They also do not trust the peo­ple who man­age it. And, giv­en the claims made by AI’s advo­cates, you can’t real­ly blame them.… When you nego­ti­ate in secret with peo­ple who tell you they might enslave you or, at a min­i­mum, take your job and that of your child, you have earned every bit of the sus­pi­cion you get.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• We Asked AI To Give Us The Unbi­ased Facts About AI Data Cen­ters (Baby­lon Bee, YouTube): three and a half min­utes
• Texas High School Pro­pos­es Adding Aca­d­e­mics To Its Foot­ball Pro­gram — (Baby­lon Bee)

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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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.