Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 303

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

This is the 303rd edi­tion, which is fun because 303 is a lucky num­ber, a cat­e­go­ry of num­bers that gives us insight into prime num­bers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Dr. Fran­cis Collins Dis­cuss­es The Com­plex­i­ties Of Herd Immu­ni­ty (Col­bert Report, YouTube): sev­en min­utes. Dr. Collins is a fel­low believ­er and emi­nent sci­en­tist. He flat-out shares his tes­ti­mo­ny! Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
2. Why I Did­n’t “Just Bake the Cake” (Jack Phillips, First Things): “My com­mit­ment to God and to the truth of a book I believe to be his holy Word is the defin­ing premise of my life, the focus of my faith, and the guid­ing direc­tive for my actions. If you ask me to sep­a­rate all of that from my work, from my deci­sions, from my art … I sim­ply can’t do that. Not just won’t—can’t. It’s like ask­ing a con­trac­tor to build a great build­ing, but first remove the foun­da­tion.”
3. It’s Time to Devel­op a Bib­li­cal Ufol­o­gy (Kyle Beshears, The­ol­o­gy in the Mid­dle): “What is the rela­tion­ship, if any, between UAP phe­nom­e­na and Chris­t­ian angelolo­gies and demonolo­gies? How does the doc­trine of the ima­go Dei fit in? Can our the­ol­o­gy of the fall address extrater­res­tri­als? What if they arrive deny­ing the lord­ship of Christ (Gal 1:8; 1 John 2:22)? What if they arrive pro­claim­ing the lord­ship of Christ (Rom 10:9)?”
4. The Myth of the Val­ue-Neu­tral Mar­ket (Mark Movs­esyian, First Things): “The neu­tral mar­ket does not cre­ate tol­er­ance for diverse views; rather, it’s the oth­er way around. Tol­er­ance for diverse views cre­ates the neu­tral mar­ket; when tol­er­ance dis­ap­pears, the mar­ket becomes as polar­ized as every­thing else.”
5. The future of war is bizarre and ter­ri­fy­ing (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “The world may yet explode into anoth­er WW2-style con­fla­gra­tion, or the kind of nuclear holo­caust we feared dur­ing the Cold War. If so, then my bet is that drones will dom­i­nate that bat­tle­field. But most of the mod­ern mil­i­tary tech­nolo­gies led them­selves to a very dif­fer­ent kind of great-pow­er war — a war of con­stant snip­ing and harass­ment. Assas­sin drones, cyber­at­tacks, info ops, and bioweapons raise the pos­si­bil­i­ty of nev­er-end­ing low-grade attacks that are below the thresh­old of mas­sive retal­i­a­tion.”
6. For Cos­mopoli­tan Chris­tians, Sec­u­lar Approval Is a Com­mon Temp­ta­tion (Justin E. Giboney, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “We need Chris­tians who aren’t smit­ten with the cul­ture or mere­ly pro­fi­cient at regur­gi­tat­ing its litur­gy. We need believ­ers who can wres­tle with sec­u­lar thought, affirm­ing the mer­its and oppos­ing the lies. Chris­tians must be con­fi­dent and dis­tinct­ly Chris­t­ian in our fields—boldly speak­ing up when the emper­or is strid­ing around with no clothes. When change is nec­es­sary, we must cor­rect the mis­takes of our elders by mov­ing clos­er to the Bible, not fur­ther from it.”
7. Some thoughts about Wuhan:
   • The medi­a’s lab leak fias­co (Matt Ygle­sias, Sub­stack): “If some­thing is a 70–30 issue but the 30 are keep­ing their heads down, it can look like a 98–2 issue.… There is just more dis­agree­ment and dis­sen­sion than you would know unless you took the time to reach out to peo­ple and speak to them in a more relaxed way. My strong sus­pi­cion is that this is true across domains of exper­tise, and is cre­at­ing a lot of bub­bles of fake con­sen­sus that can become very mis­lead­ing.”
   • Check­ing Facts Even If One Can’t (Zeynep Tufek­ci, Sub­stack): “If any­thing, all this over­reach and hur­ry to declare every­thing a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry or ‘not fol­low­ing the sci­ence’ just helps erode what trust author­i­ties or fact-check­ers may have had in their pro­nounce­ments. Imag­ine that in a few years, we do get some evi­dence that real­ly helps resolve the ques­tion one way or the oth­er, and the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty were indeed able achieve a con­sen­sus of sorts. Who’d believe it after this?”
   • The Con­sid­er­able, If Cir­cum­stan­tial, Evi­dence of a Wuhan Lab Leak (Jim Ger­aghty, Nation­al Review): “Per­haps the least plau­si­ble argu­ment in oppo­si­tion to the lab-leak the­o­ry is that the staff of the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy or oth­er Chi­nese facil­i­ties are just too dili­gent to ever make a con­se­quen­tial mis­take. The orig­i­nal SARS virus had acci­den­tal­ly leaked from the Chi­nese Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy in Bei­jing, part of China’s Cen­ter for Dis­ease Con­trol. Twice.” The com­pi­la­tion of the evi­dence is com­pelling. To use a legal image, if I was a on a jury I’d vote to con­vict unless the oppos­ing coun­sel had some slam dunk argu­ments — and in this sit­u­a­tion the oppos­ing coun­sel is fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to get the case dis­missed before it comes to court.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Social Media Com­pa­nies Remind Users They Can Be Banned For Say­ing Any­thing False Or Any­thing Too True (Baby­lon Bee)
• Meet Amer­i­ca’s Newest Chess Mas­ter, 10-Year-Old Tan­i­toluwa Adewu­mi (NPR): “When he start­ed, Adewu­mi and his fam­i­ly were liv­ing in a home­less shel­ter in Man­hat­tan after flee­ing reli­gious per­se­cu­tion by the Islamist mil­i­tant group Boko Haram in their home coun­try of Nige­ria” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From. (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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). 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.